Painted Pumpkins in Lillie's Room

Lillie's been begging to paint some pumpkins pink. We bought a few the other day and I'm planning on getting out the paints with her soon. In the meantime, I thought I would surprise her the other morning when she came home from school with two pumpkins for her room. The large one is real and painted with Lillie's old nursery wall color, Melted Ice Cream. It looked more pink on the walls. It looks a bit yucky on the pumpkin and I wish I had just painted it Ballet White like the smaller faux pumpkin. I did these pretty quickly seeing how they were just a playful little surprise for Lillie and I got a little sloppy with my painting but Lillie didn't care. She was so excited when she saw them and kept exclaiming over them. I love this age - they are so easy to please and impress!

I let Lillie paint these two little mini pumpkins once Lola was in bed.

 

I hope you all are having a lovely week!

Better Homes and Gardens is Out!

 I am so excited! Not quite a year ago we received an e-mail from an editor at Better Homes and Gardens saying they were interested in photographing our home for their 2012 Christmas Ideas issue and a few days later spoke with her on the phone. As a girl, I never dreamed of being a movie star or any of other "normal" things,  I dreamed of being the first girl in the NBA (I snort now at such a thought) and of having my home be featured in a magazine...yeah, I was a very strange kid. =) And even though it was my dream I never thought it would actually happen. Even after speaking to them, I kept thinking it was too good to be true or at some point they would call and say they had changed their mind. After they came and photographed our home back in January I still kept thinking maybe once they saw the finished photos they would realize our little townhome didn't belong in a magazine and tell me they'd made a mistake, so it wasn't until I saw a proof earlier this summer and then saw the actual magazine that I finally believed it! It really was a dream come true. I couldn't get over how easy the photographer and stylist made it. I am so grateful for not only the opportunity but for what an amazing experience it was!

Here are the first two pages of our ten-page spread! I can't believe how little Lorelei looks!

The magazines we found in VA look like this:

And the ones we found in NH looked like this:

You can also read it online here.

Two of my favorite bloggers, Marian of Miss Mustard Seed and Melaine of My Sweet Savannah's gorgeous homes are featured in the magazine as well!

Also, we've restocked our "As for me and my house..." pillow covers:

I hope you all are having a lovely week!

September Porch

Well, here is our September porch. You can also see we moved our dining room table out here now that we have the new farmhouse table in our dining room. It's a bit tight but it's so much easier eating out here on this table than it was on the one that was out there before and we really do enjoy eating as many meals as we can out on the porch - especially this time of year!

Because the armoire is blue now, I didn't want to use the orange that I have incorporated in the past out here. I liked how it looked last year when the armoire was ivory but it just didn't look right this year so I stuck with a lighter color scheme for now, especially seeing how it's still quite warm here. In another month or so when the weather starts to get chillier I will add in some more tans and chocolate colors, I think, to warm it up a bit. I also have a few fun things I'd like to do out here for Thanksgiving. I just finished drawing some pilgrim silhouettes that I plan on using both inside and out here and that we plan on selling in our shop as well. For now, though, here's what it looks like:

I replaced our summery oversized photos with updated ones. I will share with you a little trick I learned the hard way. DO NOT just tape a new photo over your old one if you used our super easy oversized photo tutorial (which can be found here). I did that for this one above the daybed and it made the paper wrinkle up. =(

So, for this one I took the time to remove the photo that was on there and then put this new one on and it worked just like it was supposed to - yay! Now I just need to get around to fixing the other one above the day bed. It hasn't bothered me that much until now that I am staring at it on the computer and it's driving me crazy! =)

Oh and it's not just the oversized photo that's wrinkled on this end of the porch. =) I had just washed the coverlet a few hours before I took these photos and so it was a WRINKLED MESS. I wish I had waited a few days to take the pictures. Within a day or two it has smoothed itself back out.  

You can see this years summer porch here (my favorite, I think!), last years summer porch here, and last year's Christmas porch here. Although I enjoy changing things out with the seasons I have to say fall is probably my least favorite as far as decorating goes, although it's my favorite actual season!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! And if you missed yesterday's post we announced all FIVE winners of our big giveaway. Just scroll down to the post below.