This week's inspirations...

Two photos jumped out at me this week during my blog surfing. This one I love because I've been wanting to paint our piano. I even googled "painted piano" a few months back looking for inspriation, but didn't find much. Our piano came with our house. I love it and hope to teach the boys to play someday, but it's sort of beat up and not the nicest color brown. I love this picture from Katie Fine Design via Little Green Notebook:

The other one is Pierce Allen via jentrified. I am in love with this image on a number of levels. As Liz Lemon would say, "I want to go to there." :-) We have large closets upstairs and I am daydreaming of using one to make a space like this...or maybe two and make them the boy's beds (Caleb's room has two large closets - one on each side). I'm pretty confident it won't happen, but it's fun to daydream....

Formerly Blooming: Chives

The chives are all done blooming, but I still wanted to post these pics. :-)

Paper Source Blog

I noticed that Paper Source now has a blog called P.S. Lots of super cute ideas for all that pretty paper!

True Story

So, the other day it rained and Dan noticed all my newly bloomed peonies were lying on the ground. He thoughtfully cut some and placed them in my new vase (75% off at Target!). As I looked, I couldn't help but notice the resemblance to the painting above...pretty similar! The weird thing is, I LOVE this painting (real painting on canvas that I got at a garage sale for $1!), but I never even noticed it was peonies! And doesn't the vase look similar, too?

I know I'm a nerd for even posting this, but I just thought it was weird (in a good way). :-)

House Rules

I came across this image on a blog somewhere and couldn't find the origin, so finally I found it on etsy here. It looks like they are sold out, but I would really love to have this in our home somewhere. I just love what it says and hope we can have a home where these rules apply.

Now Blooming: Peonies (Finally!)

I've always loved peonies, and when we moved into our house, we transplanted a couple of bushes (?) from my aunt. They came up the next year, and the next, but hadn't bloomed until this year. Yay!

I've been watching, watching, watching in anticipation. It looks like one is really light pink/yellowish (far right) and the other is going to be really big pink blooms.

I was also wondering the significance of ants helping them bloom. You can read more about that here.

Summer Recipe Series: Cobb Salad

I love watching cooking shows on PBS (mostly because I don't have cable). One day they were making cobb salad on Everyday Food (the recipe is here). A couple of days later, we were having enchiladas and made a mexican version with black beans, corn, feta and a little bit of cilantro.

Really, you can do just about any toppings you'd like - lining them up on top makes it look colorful and fancy. :-) I think I'll be using this one quite a bit this summer!

Now Blooming: Columbine