Buffet Find!

Hi friends,
I am so excited to share with you the find my husband, kids, and I found today in nearby downtown historic Apex which completes our Eat-in Kitchen Room Make-Over Design Plan:

Isn't she a beauty! She's a painted a off-white color with a distressed finish and blue paint peeking through. She was on sale and I talked the owner into the lowering the price more!

I am having fun staging her with different accessories in our home:

Our Eat-in Kitchen Room Make-Over Design is now complete! I can't believe it! Now that frees us up to start working on the other rooms in our house to decorate. This is our first finished room since moving in April! Yoo hoo! :)

I wanted to share that I will be taking a break from my blog over the next month or so. My family will be traveling to the beach and I will be traveling around the US for my educational consulting job. I will have  Guest Blogger Barb posts on my  Reading & Books tab over the next couple of days. Then you will notice that there won't be much activity on here for me.
I may be inspired to do some posts from the beach in South Carolina! Otherwise I will be back in a few weeks friends and I'm sure I'll have lots to share with you. Thanks everyone for stopping by.

Take care.
Happy decorating & living-
Megan
megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

Trays are it!

Hi friends,
A friend who lives in Texas recently emailed me and asked for help 'staging' her kitchen table. She has young kids with a busy life and wanted an idea to help her kitchen table look more 'put together and organized'. We ALL can identify with this!!!!


I shared with her one of my decorating tips: TRAYS!


Use trays to make any space look more organized and neat. The minute we place a few items on a tray the items instantly take on a cohesive appearance.


Here are some trays from my home:

Here are some cool trays that I found online:

Some tips for working with trays:


-Try putting at least one item from nature on your tray (a dish of small pebbles, a bowl of apples, a plant, flowers in a vase)

-Try to place about 3-4 items on the tray (you don't want to be too cluttered except for maybe a tray like my silver one above in my bathroom that holds my beauty creams)

-Spice it up and change out an item or 2 on your tray at least once a month

-Be creative and have fun! In the fall you could put some acorns in a dish, candy corn in a jar, pine cones in a bowl....




What are you thinking about trays? Do you have any trays in your home? Can you think of some that you could start using? Are you inspired to go out and find a new tray? What will you put on it?


Happy decorating & living-
Megan
megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

Chalkboard find!

Kudos to my husband for checking out Craig's List for a chalkboard. He found one and picked it up last night from a lady who made it herself (she even had this saying already written on it which seemed special):

The size of the chalkboard seems to fit perfectly in this space in our eat in kitchen.

I am digging the shabby chic frame:

The frame on the chalkboard is painted a soft pale mint green. I am not sure about this color- it would be super easy to paint over (maybe white or cream or a different shade of green). Right now I am living with the mint green color- I actually like that it's a different shade of green than the green on the pillow. I don't think colors have to be the exact same. I think it adds more interest in a room to have a couple of shades of a color as long as the tones don't fight each other- they need to live in harmony. Both of the greens are in this room are cool and light.

Still looking for some type of distressed small buffet or cabinet for this area:

Here's the Room Make-Over Design Plan that I created for this room. It's coming along....

Happy decorating & living-
Megan
megan@cottagebluedesigns.com

Updated: My Office Room Make-Over Design Plan

Hi friends,
Thanks for your feedback regarding my too small new light in my home office from yesterday's blog. I completely agree with you, it must find a new home and soon. I've got my eye on this little beauty from Ikea:

It's reasonably priced and with a diameter of 24 inches the size of it will fit the scale of the room much better than this one that I tried so hard to re-use in this room but it's just not cutting it (it's entirely too small):



I've been working on a Updated Room Make-Over Design Plan for my home office. Here's what I have come up with so far:

You might recall that I made a Room Make-Over Design Plan for my office last month but decorating for me is a very ogranic thing- my ideas and inspirations change over time as I live in a space and get new ideas. Here's what I was thinking last month (you can see that some of my ideas have stayed constant while I've been inspired in some other ways- rethinking the light fixture):

Let's break it down:

1. I still love this blue circles rug that I found in a Home Decorators catalogue:

2. I am now really thinking this white basket large light from Ikea will work wonderfully in this space:

3. I recently found these green medallion panel curtains at Ballard Designs and am dying to use them:

Decorating your home is definitely a work in progress. Happy decorating & living to you-
Megan
megan@cottagebluedesign.com