EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! Tablesetting competition!

(taken from Rosana's post on her blog about the contest)

Okay, I can barely even type this, I'm so excited. And I'll ellaborate more later, but I just found out that my favorite local (Seattle) based tablewares design firm, Rosana Inc., is putting on their 3rd annual Tablesetting design competition.

Here's the link to Rosana's blog (Which I just found today and am peeing my pants over), and the rules for the contest. I'll be submitting mine, but must take some careful consideration as to the theme and execution, and will most definitely be enlisting the help of my super secret decor mavens: my florist sister, Kate,

(seen here with the ever precious Riley)

and everyone's favorite gay, Adam, aka Poods.

(Which you remember from my recent project of redoing Paul's office...stay tuned for another update and post on that)

Remodel your bathroom recently? Live in Seattle? Wanna be on HGTV?

Great, then listen up: I just got this info from a list serve I'm on here in Seattle. If you live in the greater Seattle area, have recently remodeled your bathroom, and want to be on HGTV to show it off, read the following:

From: Brooke Schledewitz [mailto:bschledewitz@highnoonentertainment.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 1:43 PM
To: gazette@georgetownneighborhood.com
Subject: HGTV Needs the Help of Your Neighborhood Association!

Good Afternoon!My name is Brooke Schledewitz and I work for the show, "Bang For Your Buck²on Home and Garden Television (HGTV). We are now in production of our 2ndseason and are looking to bring the show to the greater Seattle, WA area.I'm hoping for your help in locating homeowners who may be interested inhaving their recently remodeled master bathroom featured on our show!I am contacting you to see if you know of anyone in your neighborhood whohas completed this type of renovation and/or if you could pass thisinformation on to the people in your community.I have attached a press release for you to take a look at. If you have anyquestions or need any additional information please feel free to call ore-mail me. We are looking to select our homes within the next couple weeks,so time is of the essence.Thank you very much for your help!

Sincerely,

Brooke Schledewitz
HGTV's "Bang For Your Buck"
High Noon Entertainment
Phone: 303.712.3168
Fax: 303.486.3881
bschledewitz@highnoonentertainment.combschledewitz@gmail.com

Before and After: Bedroom makeover, almost

Okay, the next update I have for you is on my bedroom, which as you recall I was looking for a new frame for quite some time!

To jog your memory, we started with this:



In which this was used as my bedframe:


And then I bought this on Craigslist (this is the picture they had posted):



And we ended up with this new set up in my bedroom (albeit not totally complete as I have curtains to hang, but I don't know if I care enough right now to hang them......

This frame makes the bed much more sturdy, and give the room more space visually even though there's less actual space.... it picks the bed up off the floor, and now you don't sink down when you get in and out of bed in the morning.

Before and After: Carport/outdoor dining room Phase 1 complete

Hello, my faithful followers!

This weekend was Emily's (my roommate and best friend from childhood) 27th birthday, and she planned a girls night at our house to celebrate. We were very excited, and my end of the preparation was to get our carport to phase 1 completion of it's "outdoor dining room" endeavor.

To jog your memory, here's what we started with:



And after many days of prep work, building my vintage mason jar lanterns (which took so much arm strength, I think I got my upper body work out taken care of for the next two weeks), lots of de-cob-webbing, sweeping, nailing pilot holes and installing cup screws for said lanterns, our center piece lighting and privacy curtains, we finally ended up with this fabulous scene:

I haven't painted the picnic table yet, but hope to in the next month or so. For now, it's a great place to relax with friends. The roses are from our three rose bushes in the front yard, the picnic table as you recall was a recent estate sale find, and the table cloth is a scrap I picked up at the fabric outlet in SoDo.

I hope this before and after inspires you to take something old and make something fabulous!

Out door dining room

We're gonna have in, in our otherwise useless carport (which was SERIOUSLY made for a Model T, I'm not even kidding).

This weekend I'll be taking pictures and transforming our carport from BLAH, to FABULOUS!

Stay tuned for pictures. I'm going to take my estate sale picnic table find (a $22 investment, well worth it) and some estate sale bamboo rolling shades (a $3 gem if I do say so myself) and create some sweet lanterns (also estate sale goodies at $.25 each, and they're realy vintage).

You can see the Seattle skyline from our carport, and we're getting geared up for Emily's 27th birthday party (next weekend, girls only), so it's the perfect time to get it all set up! We're dividing the tasks and tackling the project. I'm in charge of sanding, cleaning and painting the table (might not paint just yet, depends on what's available to me), hanging the shades, making the lanterns, installing screws and hanging lanterns.

Em's in charge of sweeping out the carport, which is my death task, I hate it. With the passion of a thousand winds.

So, stay tuned for another great before and after!

I just got myself a SJP bed. Eat your heart out.

Okay, I have an announcement to make (and it's too early to make it, but I'm going to anyway):

I just scored an SJP modern vintage bed on Craigslist, and am picking it up this weekend. SO STOKED!

Here's a picture of her bed in Elle Decor (thanks Shelterrific!):

And here's the bed I'm getting from Christine on Craigslist:

I can't wait to create a new home for it, since I've never had what I would consider a "Grown Up" bed before, I'm really quite excited! I haven't totally decided exactly what I'm going to do yet in the room, for now I'm just excited to actually get my hands on it! Yay!

Stay tuned for pictures of a before and after of my room!

Road Runner

This is not a design post. It's not a decor post. It's a post about running. And that's what I'm doing.

I've been doing a running program, a series of podcasts (audio file like a song but you can record your voice, for those of you who aren't familiar), where a man, Robert Ullrey, is my personal running trainer and buddy.

The program is 9 weeks long and called "Couch to 5K in 9 weeks." Today I will start week 7, and I'm feeling pretty darn good! So, realizing that the program will be over soon, I thought "I should find a 5K in the near future, so I have some other goal to work towards." See, doing the audio program was the goal in and of itself. And now that I'm almost done with the program, I want to keep going with a goal that will help me keep the pace and continue to get in better shape.

So I found the Irongirl Seattle, which hosts different levels of events, such as a 5K, 10K and marathon. I signed up for the 5K which is at Greenlake, on September 12th.

I already paid, so now I really do have to stick with it, because more than being out of shape, I hate wasting money!

The Irongirl website had it's own 5K prep course running program, and it's 8 weeks long, which is exactly how many weeks I'll have after I finish the current program, before my race.

If any of you are interested, here are the links to all the info (you can click the sentence or see the full link after that, they both go to the same location):

Couch to 5K podcast series: http://www.ullreys.com/robert/Podcasts/podcasts/podcasts.html
Or you can get them straight off of iTunes.
Robert Ullrey (the guy who does the podcasts) website: http://web.mac.com/robert_ullrey/iWeb/Robert/Running%20Blog/Running%20Blog.html
Irongirl Seattle: http://www.irongirl.com/Events/Seattle.htm