Our New Bathroom Sink Faucets & Fixtures

Hello and happy Tuesday! One of the biggest projects we've been working on in our new house has been our main bathroom. As you know from this post, we did some serious work on it! 
Today I'm excited to show you our new bathroom fixtures! Since we ripped out the old vanity, we needed new sink faucets. Look at the ones that were there before. #yikes They were so old and needed an upgrade! This is actually a great way to update an older bathroom-- you'd be surprised what you can find at decent price points to make impactful changes like this.
BEFORE:

AFTER: 
I wanted something classic, traditional, but that leaned a little vintage. I found this fixture and I knew I was DONE for. It was so beautiful!! I couldn't picture anything else for the space. I loved the slight detail to it and that curved faucet head had me swooning. I've used Pfister fixtures before and I've always loved them, so I knew I'd love this.

When we changed that, we also had to update the towel bar, toilet paper holder, towel ring and we needed a hook to put near the shower for easy access to our towel while showering. Thankfully the sink faucets I chose had a whole collection of all the things we needed, so I went with all the accessories from the Marielle line in brushed nickel.

I never knew I could love a toilet paper holder so much, you guys!! This one is SO easy-- it just lifts up instead of having to toggle it in between the two end pieces. Then when you've changed it, it goes right back down and hooks into place.

You might remember our lighting is a brass/gold finish, so this brushed nickel finish on the faucets might surprise you, but don't worry! You can totally mix metals in a beautiful, classic way. I'll be sure to explain this more in my full reveal coming soon. Hint: 

faucets / hand towel bar / towel bar / hook / toilet paper holder
Thanks for following along our home progress! I'm hoping to have our living room bookshelf reveal done next week. Do you have any questions about styling bookshelves? If so, drop them in the comments so I can address them in that post! What would be MOST helpful for you when learning how to style your shelves?
In case you missed it...
Bathroom Renovation Posts:
Design Plan Large Mirror Frame Solution

Have a great day!
xoxo
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PS. This post is in partnership with Pfister, who graciously provided our fixtures. All opinions and thoughts are honest and 100% my own. I only partner with brands I love and use in my clients or my own home. Thank you for supporting brands that keep MND doors open!

September 2019 Goals

I hope you all had a really wonderful Labor Day weekend! My mom and grandma were here this weekend visiting because my grandma's sister who lives in Detroit passed away (she was 94) last week and they came for the funeral. It was a really beautiful service and I'm glad they were able to come for it and spend a couple extra days with us.
Well, somehow it's September! I am going to get back into sharing my goals here on the blog with you each month (hopefully). 

- It's our Anniversary month! September 18th will mark 3 years of marriage for us, which is so surreal to me! I want to focus on being more selfless and serving my husband more-- this month especially. We want to do something fun and special around our anniversary. We haven't planned it yet (and it won't be anything crazy, probably dinner and an activity of some sort) but we're excited! - With our anniversary, I think we'll do a Q&A on instagram stories. Let me know if you have any questions for us!
- A huge goal this month is to get our backyard ready for our landscaper to seed it the last week of September. I cannot WAIT! Finally we'll have a backyard...right in time for winter and snow ;) ha! You guys all let me know Fall was the best time to plant seed and the landscaper agreed, so that's what we're doing. 
- After the yard is graded and seeded, my husband needs to finish the last wall of fence, then it'll be complete!
- I've had a goal of blogging about our moving and adjusting to our new house process for months, so this month it's on the calendar!
- Another business related goal is to sell out of our Bloom Bash Dallas workshop tickets. We're almost there! I can't wait for our workshop in Texas in November. We've been to this venue before and it's my favorite of all time. I'm thrilled we're going back and can't wait to meet everyone!
- Go to my favorite Farmer's Market and get the big, beautiful dahlias! September is their season. - I'm hosting a Beautycounter pop up on the 13th this month and so my goal here to order the samples I need for the party and then make it a really fun night for the ladies coming. If you're local and want to join, let me know! It'll be in Rockford, MI.
- I need to get back into my routine of doing a workout video every day. I take the dog on long walks, so I'm getting that in, but without a gym I want to be more dedicated to using my weights and working other muscles! We're planning to join a gym this winter which I'm super excited about.
- If you know me you know that while I do love fall, it also scares me because it means winter is soon around the corner. Ah!! I can't even fathom that, haha! I don't decorate or do anything fall-like until the last week of September, but then my goal is to decorate my front porch (I always do that first) and get a new door mat. 
- Have my husband's grandparents over for dinner to our house. I already know what I want to make. This recipe is SO good! 
- Get a new fall jacket. I've had the same one for years and it's too short in the arms now. I'm thinking something like this, this or this. If you see any cute fall jackets, send them my way!!

What are some of your goals for the month? xoxo

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New House Kitchen Reveal

When we bought our house back in March, it had a couple of major things we knew we'd want to renovate. You can see our bathroom progress in this post, but today I'm showing you our kitchen! I knew I wanted the cabinets to be white, so we picked the same white as our trim color so it would all blend seamlessly. This is the only project we hired out, as I wanted it to look REALLY good and didn't feel confident we could do a good job ourselves. The painter did a great job and it drastically changed the look of our kitchen. I love it so much more now! 
I don't love the countertop (cement with a shiny seal on it...had they left off the seal I probably would like it a lot more) and I don't love that the backsplash was grouted in dark grout (I would have done white or a light greige, but it's not worth it to change at this point...), but sometimes we have to make financial decisions instead of design decisions. Ha! I know we won't be here for more than a couple of years and neither of these things are really offensive, so they'll stay! Painting the cabinets made a huge difference I think everyone will really like.
The other thing we did was take out some of the open shelving on the left side of the kitchen sink and replace it with upper cabinets. There were just SO many open shelves (not my style to begin with, but again! Can't change it all), I didn't know where I'd put my bowls and plates. We added two cabinets there and it makes a huge difference in storage and I like how it looks much, much better. What do you think?!
BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE: (try to ignore the weird bulkhead above the cabinets...we're not sure why it's there, but aren't planning to do anything about it since this isn't our "forever home")

AFTER: (even the bulkhead is a little less noticeable now)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

If I had it my way, I wouldn't have open shelving because I'm just not a huge fan of it. It seems so cluttered to me, but I tried to decorate them pretty simply.

 water mister / recipe box

Adding pulls or knobs to your cabinets is one way to really make a big difference in your kitchen. Even if you can't paint the cabinets, adding hardware is both practical and makes it look much more elevated. I love our pulls from Rejuvenation. I decided on all pulls because they are easier to handle usually! This is the ORB finish.

Another huge update is our lighting in the kitchen. We got this one from Hudson Valley Lighting and are so happy with it. The house was built in the 60's so it has some vintage touches to it, which I wanted to bring out. This milk glass light is so charming-- I'm so happy with it! We put it in the front and back entry of the house, too. If you scroll up you can see the original light which was much too small for the kitchen. The color of the base ties right in with the color of our dining chandelier and our hardware on the cabinets.

I can't wait to show you all of our lighting which we partnered with Hudson Valley Lighting for. It's amazing what it does for the house!

Kitchen rug 

What do you think of the updates?! Thanks for following along with our house reno projects here!! It means so much to me that you keep up with my life and want to see the updates to our first house!
xoxo

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Flowers for Your Home: August

Hi friends! I took a blog and instagram break last week and it was really lovely. I didn't sign on to the Instagram app even once (so if you messaged me, I'll reply shortly!) and it was a needed refresher. I also learned a couple things about myself in regards to the app. Maybe I'll share soon.

I'm so excited to be back today with my favorite series-- Flowers for Your Home. This is where I show you how I take grocery store flowers and make a beautiful arrangement for your house. It's no secret I love flowers! I think they really brighten up our home and provide me with some joy as I work or as we eat dinner at the table. 

It was really fun to create this arrangement along with a couple small hydrangeas from our front yard. I love that I can do this now that they're blooming! I also got the following from Trader Joe's:

- White Roses

- Flowering Stock (smells amazing!)

- Lavender Scabiosa 

*Altogether this cost about $15 and I got 4 arrangements out of it.

I started by putting two hydrangea stems in on opposite sides to create some height and structure at the base of the vase (criss-crossing the stems makes for a nice base to then wedge in other stems and keep them in place).

Something I learned from my grandma is that anything with stems that are wood-like, like hydrangeas, can have their stem split at the end a little so that it lets up more water. Hydrangeas are one of the most thirsty plants!

Next, I added in 3 tall sprigs of stock near the hydrangeas. The stock acted as my greenery for this bouquet, which is normally what I start with to help create a base.

Next up were the roses. I learned from lots of florist friends that it's appealing to create levels in your arrangements. So rather than all the roses being cut at one length, vary the length making some flowers sit deeper into the bouquet and some poking out at a longer length. This offers dimension. You can see I sat one really low in the arrangement there in the middle! 

Tip: blow on your roses before adding them to your arrangement to get them to open their petals a bit. It makes them take up more surface space!

Lastly, I added the scabiosa (such a funny name for a flower that is so pretty! ha!). I just let two of these poke up a little higher than the rest and nuzzled the third down into the arrangement. Our eyes always sees things best and most pleasing in odd numbers, so 3 is a great number!

I ended up having so many flowers, I made four arrangements. Two were really petite, but I love setting budvases in the bathroom and by the kitchen sink! Flowering stock is a great flower to get the biggest bang for your buck. Even though the bouquet comes with maybe 5-6 stems, they have tons of "breaks" where you can clip them off, giving you more like 20 stems. I had stock EVERYWHERE in our house- ha! It smells amazing.

Here's how they all turned out:

I hope this inspires you to pick up some grocery store flowers and try your hand at arranging! Practicing the art of arranging flowers never gets old to me :) Happy Monday! interior design website / services / portfolio