Entertaining – Keeps on Ringing

So the funny thing about buying a 4 bedroom house when there are just two of you is that you have a lot of empty rooms. For the first year of our home ownership we barely touched any of the rooms except the office and then our bedroom.

As I mentioned once or twice, some dear friends moved away this summer. SO sad. But the good news is they still will come back to visit. And sometimes when they do they’ll stay with us! In fact they are coming this weekend. With that in mind Andy and I decided to spend some of August getting the guest room guest ready.

Last year we painted the room perfect greige. Other than that we didn’t do much. When Andy built our new bed frame we moved our sleigh bed into the guest room.

I tried to think it was okay. But it wasn’t. It was too big and bulky. So I maybe whined a lot and finally convinced Andy it had to go. Maybe.

We ordered a new bed frame and that got things started. A mirror, some curtain rods, new linens and pillows later, we had this:

While Andy and I both really like color we decided we wanted the guest bedroom to be soothing. Lots of neutrals and just create interest with patterns and textures. I am really happy with how it came together.

This TJMaxx mirror is amazing. When we first hung it a few weeks ago I would stop and peek at it every time I walked by the guest room.

The bedframe is an inexpensive one from overstock.com. It has a tweed texture to the chocolate brown fabric. i really like it although I don’t think it’s quite sturdy enough for a master bedroom. The comforter and patterned shams are from Target, the color is a taupe. The rosette pillow is from HomeGoods and is soft like butter. The quilted gray one is from Target I think.

Keeping with the “neutral” theme I wanted to do simple white curtains. I had heard great things about IKEA’s and I picked up a two pack for $10! I la-la-love how they pool on the floor.

Andy and I had some extra 16×20 frames from a big order we did a year ago. We decided to print one picture – hard to see because of the glare but it’s a farm/windmill scene and essentially put it in three frames. It’s cool and something i could see working really well with different looks.

Side tables. Ugh. I love side tables but I never seem to find the right one when I’m actually looking. Finally I got this one from Target. Honestly it was not exactly what i was hoping for [I was feeling something more industrial, with open shelves] but it works. I was surprised how neutral the red is in this room.

I couldn’t find a lamp I liked so I moved one from our behind the couch shelf. I also added a pretty candle from Anthropologie and a soap dish I thought would be nice to use to hold the matches for the candle and rings, earrings, anything a guest might want to corral. I’m working on loading up the drawers with useful things. So far I have body lotion. Ha. What do you recommend putting in a guest room night stand?

Finally. The piece de resistance of this guest room. The chandelier.

Guys I love it so much. It is glamorous. We ordered it on, duh, overstock.com. For realz team. We love that site. Fast, free shipping. Lots of reviews so we can go with mass opinion. I can’t think of one thing we ordered from there that wasn’t better than we expected it to be. And this chandie topped them all.

It has been so cloudy and the guest room is already kind of dark so getting a good picture was hard. Here is a picture from the web site.

Andy Everding thought you'd like this item!

It gives off a ton of light and adds that perfect layer of “you are someone really special” to the guest room. I am so happy we pulled the trigger to get it.

Let’s just all hold hands for a second and gaze at this grainy photo of the chandelier.

Guest.room.done.

I met my friend Michelle as a freshman in high school. I can’t say I’ve had many “immediate BFFs” in my life, but Michelle was one of them. When we met during our spring break trip freshman year we immediately clicked and were close all through high school. Our senior year we realized we were applying to many of the same schools for college and laughed at how it’d be fun to room together if we went to the same one. We ended up both choosing the same school and roomed together for two years. After college we stayed in touch but I got married and she moved away for a time, so not as close.

But then….

Michelle moved back “home.”

And met someone.

And fell in love.

And now…

A few weeks ago I had the privilege to throw Michelle a bridal shower. I had a blast baking and decorating and working with the other bridesmaids.

I decided to experiment with using ribbon as the basis of my decor scheme here and it worked out well. I made a So Happy Together banner to go over the buffet and cut ribbon in my color scheme in different lengths to hang from the chandelier. It was simple, and pretty!

I cut out little hearts in the same colors and attached them to twine from the staircase.

The night before the shower I tied the same ribbon to strands of twine and hung it over the picture window and in other places. I loved how it looked on its own, but one of the bridesmaids printed a bunch of black and white photos of the bride and groom and clipped them on the ribbon banners. Amazing!

The menu for this shower was one of my favorite ever. I made so many fun things! One of the cutest was these little individual chocolate mousse pies. So easy, so yum. Just make your normal pie crust [I swear by this “no fail” recipe] and bake the shells in little tart pans. Then the day of the party mix up some chocolate mousse [this recipe was literally cool whip and melted chocolate] and spoon it all pretty-like in the shells. I tossed on strawberries at the last moment.

I also made sugar cookies with a homemade strawberry icing. Although I told the guests the secret ingredient was love and sunshine, really it was just fresh strawberries. Make your normal frosting recipe but go easy on the milk. Then puree strawberries and mix it right in. I think it’s nice to leave tiny little strawberry chunks of goodness, just so people know this is the real deal. Super yum.

Michelle told me her favorite cookies were oatmeal chocolate chip [mine too!] and his were white chocolate macadamia. So I made a batch of each and bagged them up, closed with a little pretty washi tape. Insta-favors. Most of the ladies said they’d give them to their hubbies, which I thought was a tragedy. Winter is coming ladies, you need a little fat to keep you warm.

The effervescent Emma [who took all these amazing photos] had me pose with the favors basket.

We also did fruit, veggies, spinach dip and lots of other munchies. I decided to use my china and borrowed another set from my mom so that I’d have enough. It was worth the hand washing. I really did not want to use plastic silverware but I don’t have enough real. Target has a very nice set of plastic silverware that looks like metal! I highly recommend.

I mentioned it before, but I use Ball jars all the time for showers. This time I spray painted them gold to go with the color theme.