not leaving, just moving

One of my (much) earlier white waxflower blog titles was "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes" after everyone's favorite David Bowie song. Had I not already used it, that might have been the perfect title for this post.

My furniture-decor-party-refurbishing-graphic design, etc. business has grown from something I did on the side for fun to something that keeps me so busy I can barely keep up ... in a good way! I've loved blogging white waxflower, but I simply don't have time for it anymore. It only costs me $10 a year to keep this site up and running, so I'll leave it up for a year or so for those of you who might want to look up an old craft project or something:)

But as the title of this post says, I'm not leaving, just moving:) Check me out RIGHT HERE at my brand-new, not-even-close-to-finished business site, where there's already a fun and simple little craft tutorial:) See you there!

the latest changes

I realized yesterday that it's been a while since I showed some of the changes I've made in the master and guest bedroom. With the constant flow of furniture going in and out of this house, things change weekly, if not daily! Our sea victory painting is now over the bed, I hung a vintage lamp from the ceiling, and those "end tables" are really just old cabinet doors on top of TV tables. Ha! We're building brand new end tables this weekend:)

My office/studio has really evolved into something useful for me, that works well for my needs. This week I put up a floating shelf above the desk, to serve as a place to put all my visual inspiration. My small inspiration cork board just wasn't cutting it anymore!

Doesn't the bullfighter look happy in his new home?

The wall above the bed is currently empty, so I'm working on creating some sort of wall art out of all these counter samples. They're from the 70's, and I can't help but love all the tacky burnt orange and moss green!

As I predicted, I never was really able to give up my habit of using the couch and the kitchen counter as a "desk", so this desk never gets used for office-related things. Lately it's just been used as a sort of work bench, which is working out pretty well. Look at all these awesome furniture pieces I found while I was in Tennessee!

I've been experimenting a lot lately with upholstering furniture in custom-dyed/painted fabric, so I also hung up a little clothesline for my samples, so I can keep track of what I've created:)

PS I've been having sooo much fun pinning with you guys! If you're on Pinterest and we aren't following each other yet, add me!

PPS I've updated my house tour.

I KNEW it!

So this is me (in the leopard print) just a few hours after posting this post about how my husband BETTER not be throwing me a surprise party. My friend Julie (sitting on the floor next to me) was in on it and took me out for birthday dessert while my husband set everything up, and when Julie brought me back home there was a room full of people ready to embarrass the heck out of me ... hahaha:) 

Sadly, I was too busy having fun to take pictures, so all I have are these two of everyone playing Apples to Apples. I have to say, I was wrong about surprise parties. I had SO much fun and I'm so glad my husband ignored my request to never throw me one! He thought of everything ... he knows I hate cake, so he put candles in a pizza, and he had a slideshow of my baby pictures playing on the wall from the projector. He even bought all clear beverages so I wouldn't worry about our white furniture, LOL

I was going to wait until the coffee table/ottoman was done to put any pictures up on the blog, but you can sort of see it in those surprise party pics. It's not quite done, but here's another sneak preview!

And lastly, check out these flowers from my friends (and soon-to-be-married-couple) Spencer and Becca. Aren't they pretty? And see that yellow compote bowl thingy? It's vintage and I got it at an estate sale last weekend for just 5 bucks! 

I'm hoping to post official "afters" of some furniture re-do's in the next day or two, so don't be a stranger;)

I did it.

Sorry to keep you all waiting for pictures, the haircut took 4 hours, then I went straight to my husband's office to show him:) Then we were off to the mall where I bought some pretty dresses and took the pictures above, and now I'm home just long enough to write this post before we're off for a night on the town!

I really hope you guys like it!

pixie in a pretty dress: updated

Update: My haircut is scheduled for tomorrow, the votes are in, and once I added some "yay" votes and subracted some "nay" votes, here are the grand totals:

• Yes, chop it off: 27 votes
• No, keep the hair you have: 8 votes

So what's a girl to do? Tune in tomorrow, same time, same station to find out just how brave I get when actually faced with those scissors;)

If only this lovely pixie-wearer could be there to hold my hand.

Lately I've been on the hunt for over-the-top, girly-girl dresses. I live in light, flowy dresses during the warmer months, and even though it's only January, I'm already starting my spring/summer shopping:)

{from modcloth}

{from anthropologie}

{from marc jacobs}

And if you thought that by reading this post you were done having to hear me talk endlessly about the pixie cut, you thought wrong! I tallied the votes from yesterday, and I got 10 for "yes, get a pixie" and 11 for "no, don't do it!" Now I'm determined to change all 11 of your minds! And don't think I won't keep track of who changes their mind and who doesn't ;)

First of all, look how long that ponytail is! If I get a pixie, ALL of it can go to Locks of Love. You don't want to be responsible for depriving them of all that hair, do you?

Secondly, I pinned up my hair to look like a pixie and played dress-up last night, and look how cute it looks all gussied up, complete with a headband! Don't I look like I'd be a barrel of fun to hang out with, with my mischievous, impish little haircut?

And third, I'd like to think I have a good head and face for a pixie cut, since I have a sort of ovaly, square-shaped face and a short neck.

Did I change anyone's mind? Anyone? Bueller? Buuuueller?

please pardon my absence

This is where I've been holed up the past few days.

And these are the things I've been relying on to keep me going. I'm now on day 4 of a really not-fun run of the flu:( I'll be back to my regular posting schedule just as soon as I can hold my eyes open! In the mean time, I hope you guys are having a good (and healthy) week:)

I've been working on the new blog design off and on since Christmas, and it isn't actually done yet, but I was so excited to put some of the new stuff up that I just couldn't wait until it was all done to show you guys.

I'm really proud of it, because I made everything from scratch! Including the buttons up there, which I made by taking these images, and using an app called SketchPad Pro on my iPad:) 

I even used my own face for the "mary grace" button, so if that silhouetted head looked familiar to you, that's why;)

As you can see, the banner is terribly off-center, but I promise I'm going to fix it ASAP! Thanks for bearing with me through all the mess:)

Hope you like the new look ... and if not, don't worry, I'm sure I'll be changing it all again in a few months!

Update: So I've finished drawing the banner and I have it nicely centered, but now there are giant, weirdo gaps in between the button pieces and I have no idea how to fix that! Dear Internet friends, will you still be my Internet friends even if I never figure out how to fix my banner? 

Does anyone know the HTML code for telling my banner pieces to hang out as a group rather than trying to run away from each other?

a blank-slate bedroom

As you can see, the guest bedroom has come a long way since it looked like this:

It took about a week, but I found places for all the junk in that picture, got a bookshelf, gave up on the idea of a daybed and moved the bed away from the wall, gave up on the idea of mega-desk (that's a The Office reference), and I made a new headboard! Whew!

The idea for the headboard came courtesy of this tutorial from design*sponge, though theirs was embroidered and I just painted on my design using acrylic paint. It would have taken hours for me to embroider it, but it only took a few minutes to paint it, so while it may not be quite as charming, it was definitely quicker!

So now that the room is a big ole' blank slate, here's what needs to be done:

• buy or find a vintage desk and chair
• create some sort of bulletin board to go above the desk
• buy frames to make a gallery wall for the right side of the room
• replace, or at least cover up, those terrible blinds
• buy a white quilt for the bed

And I already know the perfect thing to go above my bookshelf, but I don't have it yet because it's at my parent's house. It's a really cool vintage painting of sailboats at night, and it was a gift from my grandmother. For now I just have my little bottle collection there, which I started collecting when I was 9 years old.

Aren't they cute?

This one is my favorite.

PS I hope you like the new banner! I made it just for you:)

I have good news, bad news, and dilemmas.

This post is going to be chock-full of doom and gloom, you guys! Project Make-the-Guest-Bedroom-into-a-Room-We'll-Actually-Use (Project MtGBiaRWAU, for short?) is off to a rocky start. I'll begin with the good news, though, which is that it only took about 30 minutes of carrying coat closet junk upstairs, and carrying jackets and hangers downstairs, to take the coat closet from this:

to this:

Yayy!

The bad news? Well, for starters, there's this: I decided that there's no sense in planning out a room and hunting for furniture if I'm not even sure what exactly my storage needs are, so I pulled everything out of the two junky-closets to get a better idea of what we're dealing with here. I'm sorry to say that what you see in this picture below is probably less than half of it. Where does it all come from?!? Looking at all of that makes me wonder where on earth it's going to go, if not right back in the mess of a closet from whence it came. I feel a little in over my head!

My second piece of bad news is really only bad news to Jemima, who has had her whole little world turned upside down. You see, quite a few months ago we had a relatively minor earthquake, but it shook Jemima to the core and she took up temporary residence under the guest bedroom bed. She hardly came out for days, and while I believe she has recovered from the emotional stress of the quake, underneath the guest bed has been her favorite place to spend time ever since. She uses her lair, or her "clubhouse" as I like to call it, as a place to hide treats, store special toys, and get some time to herself, away from her annoying parents.

Apparently, by moving it over a few feet, I have ruined everything. Now she won't set paw under there, and she's been in a state of emotional turmoil ever since ... a state she hasn't been in since the unspeakable horrors of the month of the rat.

How the situation appears to us (i.e. the bed has moved over a few feet).

How the situation appears to Jemima (i.e. the world, and everything in it to which she holds dear, has been destroyed)

And now for my third piece of bad news: when I posted this post, I had several ideas (labeled A through D) in mind for how I could make Project MtGBiaRWAU a reality. Sadly, I somehow overlooked a major detail while doing my planning:

There is a large radiator/heater/unit thing sticking out from the right-hand wall, right smack-dab in the middle. I guess I could still put furniture there, but it would have to be sitting at least 6 inches away from the wall, and that would drive me crazy. So which of the ideas does this rule out? Pretty much all of them but the "B" plan. And yet another thing I didn't really consider?

It's going to be hard to make a pillow-lined, daybed-ish bed out of this when the only place in the room where the bed can really go is right up against a window. (Side note: doesn't Jemima look despondent?)  I don't like the idea of half the window being covered by pillows, but I also don't like the way the bed looks with all the pillows at the head of the bed.

And after reading all of your comments in my last post, I started getting really excited about the idea of having a home office (plan A, shown here). It would be great to have a place where I could set up crafting supplies in a permanent spot, as well as have a work-space other than the kitchen counter. And when one commenter (Anon #2) mentioned that she and her husband have double desks and chairs, I got super-excited about that idea. I really, really like the thought of having a long, antique work table or something to serve as a big "His and Hers" desk.

Which brings me to this: it doesn't look like it in the picture, but the space between the bed and the right-hand wall is actually pretty long, so there's definitely room to bring in a big desk without having it pushing up against the bed. I could still put the bookshelves on the left-hand wall, but (unlike in plan A up there) the bed can't go against the right-hand wall because of the heater. If the bed is not in the middle of the room like it used to be, the only other place it really can be is running along-side that window. But, like I said earlier, that sort of rules out lining it with pillows to make a day-bed sort of thing. And I'd really like to keep a full bed in there, rather than have to get rid of it altogether and bring in a pull-out sofa.

What's a girl to do? I don't know yet! 

whew...

Oh man, I was seriously kidding myself this morning when I said I'd be back "this afternoon" with a new post! The only problem with doing these how-to videos is that, in addition to taking all the pictures, I have to film every step, edit it, add in all the text clips, etc. etc. And in this case, all that turned a one-hour craft project into more like a five-hour one!

But to make a long story short, I went from this ....

To this! It's a book-pages Christmas tree. Pretty cute, right? Try as I might, I just couldn't get the filming and editing done today, so please check back tomorrow for the video, and better pictures.