December 15, 2016

2016 Gift Guide for Her

Today I'm sharing a gift guide that includes some bits and baubles for the ladies in your life from stores that should still deliver or you can pick up from in the next 10 days! I hope you enjoy and find it helpful in your shopping!  
1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 // 16 // 17 //18 // 19 // 20 

December 12, 2016

Christmas Tablescape Must-Haves with Hayneedle

 Disclosure: I was given the products mentioned in this post by Hayneedle, but all content is my own and reflects my own style and opinions.  I partnered with Hayneedle because I love their products and want you to enjoy them as much as I do. 

You guys! Christmas is only 13 days away! If you haven't already, it's time to get your Christmas tablescapes put together!  I've teamed up with Hayneedle to create my Christmas dining table and to share with you all of my must-haves for this look that can all still be delivered in time for Christmas!

December 1, 2016

Kitchen Makeover Next Steps



If you missed my post from Tuesday, I finally shared the reveal of our newly painted kitchen cabinets (you can catch up here)!! Now that cabinet painting project is finished, that means that we can continue on with the other projects in this space! We could easily stop here with this kitchen project, but there are only two more aspects that I'm very excited to be changing that I think will really complete the look of this space!  Want to know what those two things are, then keep reading! 

November 29, 2016

How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets


Friends, the day is here! I’m FINALLY sharing the rest of cabinet painting projects as well as revealing how it turned out! I'm sorry that it took me awhile to get it posted but thank you for being patient with me!

 As I’ve vented in the past, when we bought our house I was not all that impressed by our kitchen but I knew that with a little TLC we could make it our own.We don’t have a large budget for refinishing the space, so painting the cabinets has been a GREAT way to update the kitchen without paying a high price tag or replacing all the cabinets. It might have taken quite a bit of time, but if done correctly they will save you a lot of money and should last you for years (or so I’ve been told, I’ll let you know if that is true in a year or soJ )  

November 21, 2016

Last Minute Simple Thanksgiving Tablescape Ideas

I think it's safe to say that if you are reading this blog post that you probably appreciate a pretty tablescape for Thanksgiving, but if you're like me, sometimes you might not have the time or desire to create a lavish spread similar to what you might find in a Pottery Barn magazine. That said, with Thanksgiving in 3 days I thought I would round up some last minute simple Thanksgiving tablescape ideas if you're still in need of some last minute inspiration.  Here are some of my favorite:

{Via}

November 8, 2016

Spray Painting Pumpkins & How to Keep from Rotting


As a blogger, this Fall I completely failed at decorating and doing DIY projects for this season, but I did manage to squeeze in one!   Last year I did the exact same project of spray painting pumpkins (since I love me some white pumpkins) , but they started to rot rather quickly so I never blogged about them. This year, however,  my pumpkins have lasted 2 months so far and since I consider that a success I thought I would share what I did differently this year. 

November 4, 2016

Painting Kitchen Cabinets Part 2: Priming

Happy Thursday, and welcome back to part 2 of my painting my kitchen cabinet series. Two weeks ago I shared the first part of how I prepped the cabinets, so if you missed it you can read about it here. This past Saturday I headed down to Charlotte, NC for my company's yearly national trade show, so my goal was to finish this project and post about it before I left. I was able to finish the project before I left (can we say Hooray!!!) but due to my hectic work schedule, my blog posts are a little behind. Better late than never, right?! Plus, I promise the result will be worth the wait!   Before I just jump into the final result and the painting process, stay tuned for it early next week, I thought I would quickly share with you the next step after prepping which is priming! 

October 17, 2016

Painting Kitchen Cabinets: Part 1 Prepping

Yes you read the title of the blog right, our kitchen cabinets are in the process of being painted! THEY ARE FINALLY GETTTING PAINTED WHITE!! I can’t say that or read that enough. If fact, while sanding the cabinets while my neighbors glanced in curiosity of what I was doing, I wanted to shout and tell them all. Literally, I thought this day was never going to come so it’s surreal that it’s finally here and I’m doing it. It’s happening and there’s no going back now!!

Some of you might be confused because I’ve gone back and forth on this project many times on the blog and you might be thinking,  ‘wait, I swear you wrote a blog post the other month about you keeping the orange maple cabinets!’. To spare you all from my own marital DIY home improvement project drama,  (If you have ever worked on a project around the house with your spouse, you know this is real thing), simply put my husband changed his mind like 10 times of whether he was ok with it and after much begging and reiterating how much better it will look with the rest of our house and the added value it will bring(since he is numbers person) he finally was okay with it. Right when he approval I jumped on it so he wouldn’t have time to change it.  Also, a huge reason why he didn’t want to do the project was because how time consuming it is and he didn’t want to have to do it, so I have signed up to tackle this project on my own! 


OK now that you have the background story let’s start talking getting into the fun project details! I’m going to break this kitchen project up into multiple posts, so today I’m sharing the prepping steps. 

First let me take you on a walk down memory lane of the progress of our kitchen so far. He is what we started with...

September 15, 2016

Dining Room Design Board & Dining Table Must-Haves

The other weekend I was over at my parents house to celebrate my father’s birthday. If any of you know me personally or have been following me on Instagram for a long time, then you might know that my parents were living in OR for the past couple of years. This May, however, they made the decision to move back to Michigan and only be 1 hour away from me. This change has been pretty exciting for me, to say the least. 

Anyways, in my parents new home they have a formal dining room, so when they had everyone over for dinner my mom realized she had no table settings to create a tablescape so she enlisted me to bring some of my own stuff.  which I happily brought. After the fact, though, she decided it was about time to get her own stuff and spruce up the dining room so I was happy to help her out! 

Here is the design board that I created using some of her existing stuff to keep it an easy transformation. It was fun to create because it challenged me to create something beyond my own personal style! 

Sources 



My goal in the design board was to keep it rather simple and something that can last throughout the year. I myself like to change things up regularly, but I can respect those like my Mom that like things more permanent.

Once I started searching for sources for her, I quickly realized that there were so many knockoffs for higher end products. That said, I created a splurge vs. save image and sources for those of you who might not like to invest top dollar in home décor items like my myself:)  I couldn’t believe in some cases the items were exactly the same!
Sources 








Thanks for stopping by! Fall is finally here so I'm SO excited to start my projects again and share them with you! Stay Tuned:) 

August 24, 2016

Portland, Seattle & Vancouver Recap & Travel Guide

Hi there! As I'm sure you've probably noticed (or possibly not), I've taken a lot of time to myself these past few months and haven been pretty MIA on the blog.  Last summer we spent a lot of it working on home projects, so this year we decided to lay off the projects and try to soak up this summer as much as possible. So although us being busy making memories this summer (and me training for a half marathon) has meant me be being MIA on the blog, I feel like I have been re-inspired and I’m excited to begin posting more often and get back to home projects! Before jumping back into home stuff, though, I thought I would share a recap and travel guide to our road trip to the Pacific Northwest that we got back from a week ago!    

On our Pacific Northwest road trip we went to Portland, OR the Oregon coast, Seattle and Vancouver and boy was it beautiful. I had been to all these places before when I was a teenager, except for the Oregon coast, but this was Paul's first time to all these cities so it was exciting exploring the cities with him  as an adult and finding our own favorite spots. 

Keep reading to see what our favorite places were in each city! 

July 22, 2016

Friday Favorites: Beach Must-Haves

Happy Friday!! It’s been a very long time since I’ve done a Friday Favorite’s, in fact I can’t even remember the last time I’ve done one, but I've been to the beach the last couple of weekends and am heading to a pool party this weekend so I thought I'd round up my favorite beach favorites that I currently use and currently love. Check them out!


1   // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5  // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 


July 13, 2016

Kitchen Update and How to Create Visuals



It's been a loong time since I've blogged about my kitchen, so I thought it was about time that I give you an update. 

If you remember, originally my plan was to keep the existing cabinets the same mainly because my husband was completely against me painting them white. Slowly but surely, however, I was able to convince him. 

At first, I wanted to get them done in June, but my husband was NOT happy about tackling a huge project in the middle of the summer, so that's why our kitchen projects have come to a complete halt these last couple of months. We both decided we would rather enjoy the summer than spend it working on our house. So instead of painting our cabinets, we have been thoroughly enjoying going to his parent's cottage, the beach, hanging out with friends, and in a couple of weeks we head to the Pacific Northwest for a 13 day vacation, woot woot! Once we get back from our vacation in Mid-August we are planning to finally start our project so we are in the process of finalizing details!! 

Now if we rewind a little bit, some of you maybe asking, how did you convince your husband to do this project? I can't say that there was just one thing that convinced him, but one thing he struggled with is envisioning how it would look.  So, that said today I'm going to show you my favorite way to create visuals when it comes to painting a space! 

July 7, 2016

Deck Makeover and Sources

Long time no see! I can't believe that it's already July! It's been awhile since I've blogged, but lately I've just been trying to enjoy the summer and this beautiful weather that is so limited here in Michigan, and in the last couple of weeks I've just been very un-inspired when it comes to design so I took a little blogging break. 

BUT.. I'm back and feeling more inspired so today I'm giving you the full details on our deck makeover. I've also included all the sources to the deck at the bottom of the post.

Last month I shared how I stained our deck and also shared a post of some Lowe's products I used to turn our deck into an oasis, but in case you saw neither here is a before and after picture. 

June 16, 2016

Tan Sectional Source



Happy Thursday! One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked on Instagram is, "where is your sectional from?" so I thought today I would share all the details on it as well as at the bottom I've included 14 other tan sectional ideas.

June 7, 2016

Must-Haves to turn Deck into an Outdoor Oasis

*Thanks to Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser for sponsoring today's post. All content is my own and reflects my own style and opinions. #CollectiveBias

 Spring is here and Summer is nearby so it's time to start working on your decks and patios if you haven't already! Last week I shared how I stained our deck, so once it was done it was time to make it a summer outdoor living space we'd enjoy for the rest of the season. If you have a small deck like me, sometimes it can be hard to create your own outdoor living space oasis but today I'm sharing how I created our own using some products from Lowe's to create a summer under the lights look. 

June 3, 2016

Yard Progress



When we moved into our red shuttered home (pictured below) in September 2014, I quickly learned that I had a passion for interior design but when it came to exterior design I was absolutely clueless. Like, the only kinds of flower I could identify at that point was a rose, tulip, and hydrangea because of flower arrangements I had received over the years. I know, pretty sad but my Mom was never into gardening so I never learned and at the time I was 22 so I had no experience of my own . 

June 2, 2016

How to Stain Deck with Behr Weather Proofing Stain

I hope you all are having a wonderful week! Over the past two weekends we have been really busy getting projects done, and today I’m sharing one of the completed ones: staining our deck. We weren't originally planning on working on our deck this summer, but when I was approached with a fun collaboration opportunity, which I will be sharing next week, we decided to shift some of our projects around and finally stain the deck.  It definitely wasn't one of the more "fun" projects we've done so far, but it definitely has made a difference and was well worth the time, sweat and my farmer's tan. 

Here is what the deck looked like before:

May 19, 2016

Basement Makeover Design Plans

If you follow me on Instagram or Snapchat (@grandvillelife), then you may have seen that we've recently started working on our basement. I bet some of you are thinking, "wait... weren't you guys in the middle of re-doing your kitchen"!? Yes, we are, but somehow after we finished installing the backsplash (more on that next week) my husband spontaneously decided that it was time to work on the basement so that he could have a space to hangout while the kitchen is in disarray during the cabinet painting and getting new flooring phase (I don't blame him!). He isn't one to always want to begin projects, so when he was the one to insist on it, I jumped on it right away before he could change his mind. 

I don't think I've ever shown photos of our basement so I've included some down below for you to see. Don't mind the huge elliptical in the middle of the room, I snapped these photos right before we began painting and I had just shifted all the furniture around, as you can probably tell with the random paint spots all over the wall. 


May 11, 2016

2 Month Tuft and Needle Mattress Review



When we bought our house a year and a half ago, we upgraded to a queen size bed from a full size bed that we were using in our one-bedroom apartment. We were newlyweds at the time and trying to conserve money, so we bought a spring mattress during an online sale and without seeing it in person. It was fine and it did it’s job, but neither of us loved it and it didn’t really cater to my husband’s neck and back pains.

April 28, 2016

Easy DIY Custom Art Prints


If you stopped by my living room spring tour that I posted two weeks ago, you may have noticed the new wall art that we hung. What used to be here was the first piece of artwork that Paul and I bought for our apartment a few years back on clearance at Home Goods, and although I still like the piece and it is sentimental,  it just doesn't really go well in the space. That said, when I decided to change it up a few months back I knew I wanted to use the same gallery frames that are in our hallway and I wanted art prints that had blue in green in them that looked abstract. I searched all over on Etsy and other places to find art prints, but I had no luck finding any 8x10 prints that I liked that would fit in the frames. So like every other time when I can't find exactly what I want, I decided to customize my own! 

April 21, 2016

Pendant Light Conversion Kit Kitchen Makeover



We have been making a lot of progress in our kitchen lately, which has been very VERY exciting seeing as I've wanted to update our kitchen since moving in, and now we are finally seeing our ideas come into action is quite exciting. If you follow me on Instagram or Snapchat (@grandvillelife), you may have seen that this past weekend we starting tackling the backsplash, but before I share details about that, today I thought I would share with you a project that we did weeks ago: changing our canned lighting over our sink into a pendant light.

When we started coming up with ideas for this makeover  I knew I wanted to hang a light over the kitchen sink. The only problem with that idea was that we have canned lighting and I didn’t want to hire an electrician, so I thought a pendant light was out of the question.  After doing some research though, I discovered that you can convert a canned light into a pendant light by using a pendant light conversion kit, so we did just that! At the end of the post I have listed out 20 different pendant light conversion kits, but before then I thought I would show you how easy it is to transform a canned light into a pretty hanging pendant!



April 12, 2016

One Room Spring Tour

I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Kathleen from Lindsay Hill Interiors along with  24 bloggers to share a “one room” spring tour.  I, along with 4 other bloggers will be sharing our living rooms today and if you want to check out other rooms on the tour, at the bottom of the post I have all 24 bloggers and their one rooms linked up at the bottom of this post so you can follow along! All of their homes are gorgeous so make sure to check them out!

If you are new on my blog, welcome, I’m so glad to have you here! My husband and I bought our house a year and half ago after getting married, and since then we have been working to make it our own. I hadn’t been loving our living room lately, so I took this spring as an opportunity to freshen things up. I didn’t overly decorate with seasonal décor, but rather stuck with the color palette that runs through the rest of our house: blue and green, my favorite colors and perfect for spring!

Media Cabinet Makeover: How to Paint Laminate


I have an obsession with white furniture, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that this past week I decided to paint our Ikea media cabinet white. What is surprising though, is that my husband suggested that I do it, say what?!?! Paul is not usually one to encourage me to take on projects because he doesn't like change, but it was the first piece of furniture we bought and the laminate was shiny and didn't go with our coffee table and the rest of our furniture that we had since bought, so he suggested I paint it and I ran with that! 

If you recall, I painted the laminate night stands in our guest bedroom last fall and well, it didn't go so well. I tried to do it as cheaply as possible so I used wall primer and wall paint, and in doing so everything bubbled up and it was just a nightmare. 

I'm so happy to tell you though that this time painting laminate was SOOO much better!! With most painting/staining projects the key is to take time to prepare the piece, and this time I gave it extra attention and I think that's what made the biggest difference. Continue reading to get step-by-step instructions. 


April 7, 2016

Update

Hi friends!! Oh how I've missed you all! I feel like I haven't blogged in forever so it feels great to be back on here. I have a lot of blog posts lined up about projects around the home in the next upcoming weeks, so before that I thought I would jump on here and give a quick update about what's been going on in the past few weeks before I jump to all that fun stuff! 

Two weeks ago my hubby and I went on a cruise with my family that stopped in Grand Cayman and Cozumel. We had a great time and it was so nice getting away from Michigan's cold weather and soaking up some sun. I didn't take many pictures during the trip because I like to stay off my phone on vacations these days, but I did snap one while on the catamaran in Grand Cayman and while at dinner in Tampa. 


March 16, 2016

DIY Bentwood Pendant Light


Hi friends!  Today I'm going to be sharing a very exciting project that I recently did in our guest bedroom, which is this DIY pendant light that I made for $40, say what!? If you're stopping by today as part of the #chixwithtools series, then welcome to this little blog of mine, I'm so glad to have you here! As part of the series, I will be both sharing my tutorial but also talking about one of my most favorite (non-power) tools, which is the MITER BOX. It might be small, but it's oh so mighty! 

March 9, 2016

Shiplap Tutorial with Lindsey West


Happy Wednesday everyone! Today I'm switching things up a little and am so excited to be having Lindsey West from @BluffParksDesign on the blog today to share with you an amazing DIY project that she's done in her home as part of our #ChixWithTools series! Take it away Lindsey! 

Hi friends! Thank you so much for stopping by and joining in on this fun little DIY! As we all know shiplap is HUGE in the interior design and decorating world! So what better way to kick start our #ChixWithTools series than with a shiplap tutorial! I'm almost certain I would line the inside of my toilet with this stuff if it would work! I could be a trendsetter right?

Let me start by saying.... I am obsessed with tearing stuff up, pretending like I know what I'm doing and anything DIY! I'm not an expert but I am a perfectionist! I can tell you what works for our home but most importantly what works for our budget! While I dream of the day original shiplap covers every square inch of our home. For now, I will gladly make plywood the next best thing!

March 7, 2016

New Kitchen Sink and Faucet


You guys!! I'm so excited to being sharing with you the latest addition to our house, a new kitchen sink and faucet! I know I'm always saying how excited I am about new things around our house, but this one has me especially excited which wasn't always the case. 

March 4, 2016

20 Barstool Ideas

Happy Friday!! As part of our kitchen redesign, I got to go shopping for new barstools for our breakfast bar area! I have already picked out and bought the ones that I thought would be best for our kitchen (listed below), but I thought I would share with you 20 different barstool ideas in case you are on the hunt for some new ones! Links to products are listed below the image, happy shopping! 


March 2, 2016

Kitchen Countertops and SHIPLAP Half Wall

I have waited so long to say this: the first stage of our kitchen is officially complete!! Last week while I was in Oregon, everything was completed thanks to the hard work of my amazing husband and the kitchen design company we hired to install the countertops and sink. I've been meaning to share this for days, but I'm still recovering from a cold that I got from the lady next to me on the flight home, so it's been a little slow around here:/

In case you forgot, here is what the kitchen looked like before the new sink and countertops: 

February 15, 2016

Weekend Recap


I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! This weekend had some of the coldest days in Michigan so far this winter, so I'm beyond ready for Spring to get here! 


Lately our weekends have been a little busy, so it was nice to have a low key couple of days. On Friday, I stopped by Artvan to drop off some cases of water that they are collecting for the Flint lead water crisis. I decided to look around since I was already there, and I couldn't believe how many great things they had, this shelf, for instance I loved and the price tag was actually very reasonable! When I got home I told Paul that if I didn't feel like I was constantly trying to hide from the sales people while I was there, I'd stop more often. Anyone else hate being bothered constantly when they are shopping? It's a pet peeve of mine and I have anxiety just thinking about it. 

February 11, 2016

Thursday Tips and Tricks: Wallpaper & Milton and King Giveaway

Welcome to this week's Thursday Tips and Tricks, where I share different design ideas and today I'm focussing on wallpaper! For this post, I've also teamed up with Milton & King for a giveaway where one of you will win a roll of their wallpaper or a wall mural of your choice, so head over to my Instagram for more details on how to win.

Wallpaper can be very intimidating task to shop for, commit to and hang. But when the right wallpaper is chosen for a space it can have a HUGE impact, and really makes a room. I currently don't have any wallpaper in our home, but I'm loving the trend of using wallpaper for feature walls as well as in small spaces. Come check out some of my favorite wallpaper ideas and see how to implement it in your own home. 
Source: Milton & King
Can you believe that this is wallpaper, and not tile!? Tile can be really expensive, so wallpaper can give you the custom and ornate look you want but at a more affordable price tag. 

February 5, 2016

Etsy Favorites: Lola Donoghue

Etsy has some really gorgeous and phenomenal pieces, but it can be very overwhelming to search through so when I come across great vendors, I thought I would start sharing them with you. Last weekend I spent several hours on Etsy hunting for art pieces for several spaces in our house, and when I came across Lola Donoghue's Etsy store I fell in love with some of her pieces as well as her prices. Finding  beautiful, affordable artwork, especially large scale ones, can be really hard on Etsy, but this Irish artist sells prints and some originals at  very reasonable prices. I love the colors and feel of her works, especially this first one I'm showing. I'm thinking it maybe the one I get for our kitchen re-design. Here is a selection of some of her work, go check her out! 


February 4, 2016

Thursday's Tips & Tricks: How to Hang Curtains

Before we bought our first house a year and a half ago, I knew very little about design guidelines mostly because I just wasn't very interested in it.  After we moved into our house, though, my passion for design developed overnight and since then, as evident from my blog, I have been using my passion to change our house into a home.  I have given design tips in the past on some blog posts, but I wanted to start sharing these design tips more regularly, so today I'm starting a new series called Thursday's Tips and Tricks where I will be sharing design tips that I have learned in order to help and inspire some of you with your own home designs. 

For this first week of the series I'm focusing on tips on how to hang curtains. Hanging curtains was one of the first tasks we did when moving into our house and was one of the easiest ways to transform a space!

February 2, 2016

Fixer Upper Furniture Season 3

It's Tuesday, which means a new episode of Fixer Upper is on tonight!  Last year I wrote a blog post where I rounded up some furniture pieces from the show, and in celebration of it being one of my favorite days during the week I thought I would round up furniture pieces from the current season!! Every piece might not be 100% exact, but I feel like if they aren't exact they are extremely close. To shop the items, just click on the images or link below the pictures. Enjoy!! 


January 27, 2016

Kitchen Update & Design board




Months ago I blogged about our future plans for our kitchen, but since then our entire design plan has changed so today I'm here to share all the new details and updates with y'all!   

January 25, 2016

Weekend Recap

Last weekend I was in NYC, and when I arrived home Paul unloaded a whole list of projects that he had thought about while I was gone. This was shocking for me, seeing as he usually is the one putting the parking breaks on all of my project ideas, but I love projects so I was very welcome to them! 

January 20, 2016

Modern Farmhouse Design


I have been recently loving the modern farmhouse look filled with clean lines, shiplap, white walls, and industrial pendants. I owe this new found love to designers like Black Bear Design, Studio McGee, and of course JoJo Gaines. My personal style is a little more coastal than the typical modern farmhouse design, but I'm hoping to add some of these features in some of my future home projects, especially in our basement. I have rounded up some of my favorite modern farmhouse designs for your eyes to feast on. Enjoy! 

January 13, 2016

Office Chandelier & Design Board

Today I’m sharing the one space in our house where I have free reigns when it comes to designing, my home office. Now don’t get me wrong, the rest of the house very much reflects my style, but this is the one space that Paul gets no say, as well as since it’s an office I can have fun with it and explore a little beyond my normal style. After all, I spend the majority of my day in here while I work my full-time Marketing job, so it’s important to me that I have a bright and light functional space that also makes me excited to work. Since last sharing my home office, I have shifted the furniture around and have added a new chandelier so come check it out!  

New Sputnik Chandelier in Home Office

January 6, 2016

New Year Activewear

As I mentioned in my blog post on Monday, this year my husband and I have joined a YMCA to get in shape and for me to train for a half marathon and sprint triathlon and him train for a Spartan race. Since we joined the gym, I thought it was the perfect excuse to get some new activewear because cute new gym clothes always give me a little extra motivation.  Here are some of the items I’ve gotten and others I have my eye on in case you too are feeling the whole “get in shape for the new year” thing. On the list includes leggings that keep you warm on the way to the gym while also being comfortable while working out to tops and bras that are breathable and give you different levels of support. Also best part, most of these items are currently on sale, including my all time favorite running shoes that are currently 50% off (see #5)! 
1. // 2. // 3. // 4. // 5.  // 6. // 7. // 8. // 9. // 10. // 11. // 12. // 13. // 14. 

Want to stay up to date with more of my home decor, DIY, lifestyle and other posts?  Then follow me along on any of the following so you won't miss out:)