Last week, Southern Weddings featured my little family and home as part of their new (awesome!) Southern Newlywed series! (Shay Cochrane took some amazing photos of us in our space!) We’ll be married six years on October 18th. Six of the most incredible, difficult, amazing, heart-filling, growth-filled, tear-filled, love-filled years of my life. I’m excited to continue the home and family tour here on my blog and answer some of the questions you’ve asked on Instagram, Facebook and on the SW post.
I’m going to try and link to sources for everything I can think of below each photo… if you have more questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll try and find sources for you!
Bryan lived in our home in Tampa, Florida before we got married. In fact, we dated long distance for 8 months before he proposed and I moved down right before our wedding in 2008. Our house was built 20 years ago. Bryan says when he bought it – it had plaid wallpaper in the kitchen and yellow walls. In 2008, “dark brown” was the style so we painted our kitchen espresso brown. Yikes.
Sumner table and Wynn chairs and Manchester barstools from Pottery Barn.
hemnes entertainment center (I painted the knobs gold), speakeasy table tray //coffee table books: Kate Spade and Perfectly Imperfect Home // faux hydrangeas // propeller – ebay // coffee table – craigslist // white floor lamp from Target
Restoration Hardware chairs // Blanket basket — Love these. We have them all over our house to corral stuff. Tourance Blankets from OKL on the backs of the chairs – I’m obsessed with these.
That whole dark color thing wore off quickly and in 2010 – 2011 I spent months changing our tan / brown house into a bright, white, personable and comfortable home. We decided before we ever started really decorating our home that we would splurge on good quality lasting furniture pieces and save on decor, pillows, etc. The brown chairs are from Restoration Hardware and the couch is Martha Stewart for Macy’s. BUT the turquoise table is a spray painted table from Target, the coffee table is our prized possession that Bryan found on Craigslist for $200 (!!!) made of real barndwood, our entertainment center is Ikea and that propeller on the wall is from Ebay ($150 or so – a Christmas gift for Bryan one year… it’s a replica but we also have a [not shown] real boat propeller that we’ll hang one day).
The Family Rules Canvas was done by the incredible Lindsay Letters. She lettered our ACTUAL family rules (See Brady reciting them here. Hysterical). And… big news… it’ll be available as a two-tone gold foil print in our shop THIS WEEK!
We painted all the walls except Brady’s room and our bedroom Conservative Gray from Sherwin Williams. It’s amazing, by the way, what all new doorknobs and hinges will do to your home. And I spray painted a bunch of our old silver hardware gold.
We remodeled our kitchen totally (see the before and after here), painted all the walls and baseboards (twenty years can do some damage to baseboards), removed vertical blinds (yuck) and tore down crazy box-shaped window treatments to bring as MUCH light as possible into the space. WHAT A DIFFERENCE those few inexpensive changes (well, minus the kitchen remodel) made. I’m still finding small (FREE!) things we can do to our home to make it more comfortable and fill it with more light.
One of my favorite things that we did to our kitchen was turned a sit-in desk and overall mail-drop area into a wine bar. Brady was really little when we remodeled our kitchen and this was our attempt to create date nights at home! After a trip to Sonoma in 2012, we LOVE trying new wines and love having this special space in our kitchen.
You’re Looking Particularly Good Today print // copper cups
Other than all the “bring more light” into our home changes we’ve done two additional things: 1) swapped our “junk” and meaningless STUFF for mementos that mean something to us and bring back memories (our favorite places are Home Goods and One Kings Lane) and 2) organized our home in ways that makes SENSE.
For instance: it makes no sense to hang our backpacks / purses / jackets in the hallway near our kitchen where we’ve had them forever, so we put three hooks near our front door (initials: B, E, B from Anthropologie) and replaced our big rack with a gorgeous Kenroy Home Gilbert mirror (read to the end to find out how to WIN a Kenroy Home Gilbert mirror!!) and Target key rack (painted the hooks gold!)
Kenroy Home mirror // growth chart from pop pop :) // table // chairs
One of the BEST things we ever did was turned an odd little cubby / wet bar area into a toy storage space. My dad built white shelves above two white cabinets and I purchased some clear / colorful bins from Target. I went to work with my label maker and a few hours later most of Brady’s toys were up off the floor and organized by activity into these bins. A few of the names on the bins so you can understand how we set this up: cars, animals, pretend (for funny hats and pretend doctor tools), play-dough, trains, arts and crafts (thats that big one on the bottom). Brady’s favorite toys and legos are in his room but when he wants a box to play with, he asks us for it (sometimes we hold him up and let him see [easy because the bins are clear-ish]) and we get it down. He knows he has to clean up one box before he can get a new box down. I love this system because it keeps my house remotely tidy and it allows Brady to play with one set of toys at a time. When he’s done with his trains, he’ll get out his play-dough, etc. Speaking of B’s room, let’s hop over there…
madras bedding // animal prints
I love this toy storage system from Target. We sorted all Brady’s legos into these and I labelled them with Martha Stewart gold press-on label holders (from Staples). They’re organized by set (though they never stay that way) and the top ones are generic legos organized by color. B loves to sort them (he’s his mama’s child haha).
Our front room is an odd space. This whole “two living room” layout is strange to me. A lot of homes built in the 90’s seem to have this. This is what we call our “formal living room.” It’s a place for Brady to have quiet time and watch Frozen for the eight billionth time or for me to read a book. Truth be told that custom Ikat chair (from Haverty’s) is the time-out-chair. :)
couch // custom chair from haverty’s // paintings from home goods // pillows // rug
I tend to spray paint a lot of things, by the way: our front entryway table and all the knobs on our Ikea entertainment center to name a few. My favorite spray paint is Valspar.
I adore our bedroom but I’m really itching to paint this space WHITE. Maybe one day.
white dresser // duvet // mirror
And last but not least, welcome to my little office! I’ve worked here since day one and will work here until we move one day. It’s 10 x 10 – quite small. When we used to ship from our house my business bled into the dining room but now it’s just me in this little room. I love it really. Brady comes in and draws on my big white Ikea mirror with dry erase markers. I have plenty of space to ship small packages if necessary and table space for any projects that need to get taken care of. My desk faces to Home Goods chairs (such a great find!) and it just feels so comfortable in here now.
There’s a new product sneak peek up next to those big YAY letters! :)
pink striped bins // white chair (I lucked out — mine’s from home goods)
Thanks for stopping by my house!!
And now… Kenroy Home is giving one lucky reader a gorgeous GILBERT mirror like the one you see hanging in my hallway! There are a few ways to enter and you can enter as many times as you’d like:
- “Like” Kenroy Home on Facebook and leave a note here letting us know you did so.
- Follow @KenroyHome on Instagram. Be sure and leave a note here to let us know you did.
- Head over to Pinterest and follow Kenroy Home! Leave a note here of course, letting us know. Be sure and check out this gorgeous board. I’m so inspired to start redecorating our bedroom now!
Giveaway ends on Tuesday, May 6 at midnight EST. We’ll choose one random winner on Wednesday, May 7!
xo,
Emily
PS: Thank you SO much to the fabulous Shay Cochrane for taking these images of our home!!
