to paint or not to paint

this is the question i pose to you...

do i paint perfectly good wood trim and doors???

my design preference is to paint,

but....

it's A LOT of beautiful wood to paint

and

i feel kind of guilty.

this morning i went through my design file,

and out of 414 photos, i could only find 5 with wood trim.

ACK!!

here is what i found... (not much...but very encouraging)

 i've always loved this room. especially with the grasscloth... which we are considering for the foyer.

i LOVE this room too... grasscloth (again) and white furniture. lovely. right?

the wood trim paired with the white beadboard... kinda cool!

found this in my lake cottage design file (a dream of mine).

i'm liking the white walls and windows paired  with the wood trim.

 wood floors and trim paired with white walls and crown molding.... yes, please!

i think the common theme is wood trim, windows and doors

look very nice if you bring in pops of white in other ways.
what do you think? be honest. i need it!!

xoxo -erin

google

yesterday, i was a little bored.

so i googled our new address.

wondering, if maybe, we have a notorious address. 

we don't.

i thought i might find some past foul play or something of interest.
you know... break-ins, ghosts, maybe an unsolved crime?
just to be clear... i wasn't hoping to find something :)

ya, i'm a little nuts.

anyhow,

there was no foul play to be found,

but what i did find was a very old mls listing.

not sure how far back it goes, but it's pretty bad.

although these photos look nothing like the home we moved into.
there were a few items left behind
that indicated this was in fact my new home.

feast your eyes on these beauties....

 family room.... some seriously ugly window treatments
and check out that odd spattering of artwork on the wall!

master bedroom.... not awful, maybe a tad crowded.

 can see the horrible sunflower border that i blogged about last week?

master bedroom sitting room... i have no words. really. no words.

the eating area off the kitchen... oh dear.

dining room... very traditional, not horrible.... but again, what's with the crazy window treatments?

they were left behind when we purchased the house 
and it took me over an hour to get those suckers down. 

i've always said...

as long as a home has good bones...

you can make it pretty.

the calm after the storm

yesterday the weather, here in illinois,

was ridiculous!

rainy, windy, cloudy, windy, sunny, windy.

did i mention windy?

one gust was so intense,
it propelled our trampoline into our neighbor's tree.

not high up in the tree,
but pretty much stuck in the tree.
and it stayed there until dan got home from work.

although we're still getting some pretty intense wind

and it's really chilly.....

the view from my kitchen window is glorious!

fall colors and the golf course.... not a bad view as i'm sipping my morning coffee

fun day at the pumpkin patch!

for those of you who live in my neck of the woods...

you know, the fall isn't the fall without

goeberts pumpkin patch.

i LOVE their apple cider donuts.

YUM!

here are a few photos of our wonderfully fun day...

the kids can spot this dude for miles

i can never get a good shot of all three of them.... oh well!

 coop's favorite.... the pumpkin eating dino!

 giraffes ROCK!

 coop was so gentle feeding the animals.... he makes my heart melt!

this photo cracks me up.... they're so serious!

 

it's always fun to climb on a pumpkin pile!!

there you have it 

our day at the pumpkin patch

it was a great day

screaming, crying, begging for toys/food included!

so sorry

sorry it's been so long!

as you can imagine, life has been crazy since our move.

we've been...

entertaining house guests (my parents from california)

we've been...

settling into a new school

and a new neighborhood! (which we LOVE)

we've been...

 UNPACKING!

AND we've been...

 undoing some seriously ugly 

interior design choices.

i've also been so so sick with bronchitis! ugh!

you think i'm joking about seriously ugly design choices???
proof is in the pudding.

following are a few shots of my wallpaper HELL.

it's been a battle and i think the wallpaper is winning!

from the downstairs powder room... it makes me dizzy

from the kid's bathroom.... reminds me of airplane wallpaper

border wallpaper from the master bedroom... ahhhhh sunflowers! HA!

master bedroom wallpaper...... more sunflowers. ugh!

between all the wallpaper and shiny brass light fixtures... i have some work ahead of me.

of all the light fixtures, i think this one is my favorite-worst...

don't you love the rose colored glass???

ok.

sorry about all the ugly.

to make up for it, here's some pretty...

vintage scale in our kitchen

new custom 60" round table from a vendor at the kane county flea market.

 fits perfectly in our octagon shaped eating space in the kitchen.

our fireplace decorated for fall

my favorite new purchase.... the CB2 big dipper arc lamp!

that's all i got (for now). more tomorrow and the next day

and the next day. i promise!

missed you! -erin