the Decorating Chica

I want to know who it is that designs living rooms? I go to a lot of open houses and it never ceases to amaze me how badly living room layouts are! There is always a door in a stupid place or a fireplace off center in a room or something that makes it incredibly hard to decorate a room around. Well, my living room is no exception. It is a long rectangle with no natural focal point. The front wall (which is a long wall of the rectangle) has two double windows right next to each other, the wall opposite has three doorways...count them, three! Two go into the same room! The two end walls, one has a window and the other is broke up by these two partial walls with ugly spindles on top! Yikes. One of the first things that I did when we moved into this house was to take down the dark, heavy drapes that covered these large window to let some light in. Actually, our view is not too bad either! Many paint colors and room  transitions later, I have ended up with my new mis-treatments. This...

Recently my mother-in-law moved a couple of hours away, selling her house that was near us. In the process of cleaning out 20+ years of stuff, she gave me some landscaping lights that I was wanting. She had thrown them in this box that was getting discarded. Wow, can't believe this almost got thrown away. Oh, I gotta say there was some seriously sweet stuff that she got rid of. But, alas, she did not offer any of it to me...sigh. It is a wooden box from, I don't know how long ago! The box sat in my garage for months cause I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it but new I couldn't throw it out! It was just 2 kool! I debated about using it for a box to hold wood for the fireplace. One day, I started messing with it first by washing it out (It had sat in her garage for years!) then I told some pickling stain and whitewashed the box. Let it dry. I then bought some of those decorative balls made of branches to stack in the top. It's a pretty big box and didn't ...