Bored and in Need of Enlightenment

In hopes of fixing our living room ceiling sometime when the weather is warm enough to open our windows and Mike is home to help, I've been daydreaming about lighting in there.
I like this guy a lot:

 

That is the Tarlton Semi-Flush ceiling light found at Linens-n-Things. I like him. But Mike still wants a ceiling fan (help me talk him out of that). 

I also like the Inglebrook:

 

This one is also found at Linens-n-Things.

If we MUST keep a ceiling fan, then this could be an option:

 

This big guy is also at Linens-n-Things.

While we are on the subject of lights, I want this one for our back porch. It is on sale at Linens-n-Things, too. It suits the style of our home AND it has a motion sensor for those nights we park in the garage and come in the back door. No more failed attempts and finding the right key.

Power Flower

My parents gifted me with a Pier One gift card for my birthday. When we were near Pier One that same day eating lunch I couldn't resist visiting the Pier to see if there was anything I might need. There was no intent on using my gift card ... I wanted to keep it for when there was something there the Bungalow really needed. Lucky Bungalow, I stumbled upon some wall jewelry that was 60% off!

Mike and I saw this gem about the same time and gave each other puzzled looks. Did we like it? Was it too big? It seemed we both thought the same thing. This monster might actually look cool one one of our gigantic bare walls in the stairwell. So we took a chance and I spent my gift card. All but $7 of it. And guess what ... we love our powerful flower!

The flower (I feel like I should type FLOWER) is about three feet in size. It works perfectly with our artwork hanging below it, too. We moved the downtown Morgantown print and we're still deciding on where it will be placed. We may hold off to see what other artwork goes up before committing it to a new location.

This flower (FLOWER!) demands attention. It commands so much of your eye when walking up or down the steps that now the rest of the stairwell looks extremely plain. We must work on finishing its walls.

For more perspective, look at this shot. Look how far the petals stick out! She really wants you to look at her!

Lilo's View of the World -- Improved

Lilo likes to peek out the front window. She does this when we leave the house. Sometimes she does it when we come home. She does it when Thunder, the German Shepherd down the street, walks by. Her peeking has taken its toll on many of the blinds in the house. She has been most rough with the front window. We eventually got rid of the sad pieces of blinds hanging on for dear life and ended up with this neat square hole. Lilo's forlorn face poked through it every time we left her at home:

A view with blinds open:

While Mike was away vacationing, I mean, working in Miami, I wanted to try something new. I installed the Basic Blindz faux wood plantation blinds from Lowes.

 A look at the blinds closed:

 Much better. And much easier to keep clean. We have been leaving them open when we leave the house so Lilo can look right through them. It's been working well so far. But now we need replace all of our blinds. See the window on the left ... she attacked those blinds at some point, too.

We will slowly transition to the new blinds. I already have two additional sets to install. This is a welcome change because of the horrific condition of our kitchen blinds. They're just nasty. Can't wait to tackle the six foot window over the kitchen sink. Yes, I'm accepting any volunteer assistance for installation of that one!

American Horror Story

Things have been slow around the Bungalow as far as home improvement or nifty additions go. We got caught up in a way-too-busy schedule of work and holiday grind. But now it is time to show some love to our sweet abode. Before doing that we have to embrace her faults (and ours).

We are messy. Terribly messy. My plan is to corral this mess and make some sense of our house. First on the list are the Guest Room and its closet and the Basement. The closet needs shelves and I need discipline as far as not treating the whole room as my closet. The basement is going to remain ugly for a while, but it doesn't have to be such a mess filled with things we don't use. It is time to clean, purge and organize! With that in mind, the first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem. Well, I admit it:

 Guest room after Christmas. It's a little bit better now. Not much.

This is from a different angle.

Then there is the corner of the stairway to the basement and the basement. Terrible.

 

 

 

But not ALL is terrible. Our living room looked nice for the holidays.

For 2011 I had a mile long list of resolutions for the bungalow's upgrades. That list is still quite long. This year I'm keeping it simple -- Clean up the mess and keep it clean. Fingers crossed. Whatever we get accomplished on top of that (hello, new living room ceiling?) is icing on the cupcake.
Happy New Year!

Art deco

Get it? Art deco ... meaning I acquired more art to decorate with.

Our evolving staircase is still mostly a blank slate for art I want but cannot afford. I did make my yearly trip to WVU's Mountaineer Week craft fair and visited artist Annie Morris Simco. We have prints of her work in the living room and a small original piece, also in the stairwell, I splurged for last year at the fair. And now we have a new print in the stairwell!

 Isn't it lovely? Of course I would love to the have giant original of this, but it is not in our price range.

 

I also hung up my print taken by my friend, Jill Olexa. It is a shot of the mural painted on the back of the Chic N Bones building in downtown Morgantown. Check out Jill Olexa Photography if you're interested!

 

 

I like the two new additions to our gallery. Just gotta keep on movin' up ... the wall.