Loving the soft gray fireplace wall, and the beads hanging off the horns.  I want something similar for my black bathroom wall.  I did want a skull but perhaps horns are less confronting.

The tree trunk coffee table on casters is genius!  I will be keeping my eyes peeled for a tree that has been blown over or is being taken down.   It will be a great excuse for The Voice of Reason to get out his chainsaw.

I am heading for my bed, the warmest place in our house by far!!   Do you have a fire to cosy up too?  Wish we could have been sitting beside a fire tonight, and no ethanol would not have done.

via Home Design Catalogues

What I really want is that amazing lamp!!!  Where can I find one?!

Rustic perfection via Homedit

Hello blog friends! I took an inadvertent break from blogging to catch up on some DIY wedding projects and to enjoy some pre-wedding festivities, like my second bachelorette party and wedding shower (I'm a lucky girl, I know).

I managed to slip in a few home improvement projects, including this mantle update:

A cute start, right? I used heavy-duty double-sided tape to hang the mirrors, since I didn't want to mess with drilling or nailing into brick (to make it look like the mirrors were hanging from the ribbon, I hot-glued small nails to the ribbon and used tiny pieces of double-sided tape to attach it to the brick).

Apparently the tape wasn't heavy-duty enough, since hours later I heard a smash when one of the mirrors fell to the floor. Oops.

One of the most dramatic transformations we've made since we moved into our new house is the chimney/fireplace, which started out as a giant, red monolith in our living room. We decided to paint it white, hoping it would make the room feel lighter, brighter and just a little bit bigger.

So as soon as our lawyer handed us the keys, I removed the fireplace grate, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and scrubbed those bricks with a mixture of TSP (trisodium phosphate - a strong cleaner) and water. Using a roller, I covered the surface of the bricks with Sico semi-gloss paint in "cotton rag paper" (paint colours have the strangest names). That was the easy part. The cracks on the other hand...I painted with a small brush. One by one.

It took forever. And luckily, it was well worth it:

It took around three coats and three-quarters of a gallon of paint to cover three sides of the chimney (we left the exposed side in the kitchen untouched). I painted the cracks only once, because I was sure doing it more than once would have driven me into insanity.

I love the way it turned out - the room definitely feels lighter and brighter, and the texture of the bricks still shows through the paint, which I also love. Now I just have to figure out how to decorate that mantle...