perhaps...

IF this were not the way i wake up most mornings


THEN my allergies would be less inflamed.

captain fantastic is one of those ridiculous "morning people" who gets up early to do things like exercise and read the paper. not i. sterling promptly assumes his position after he's gone. these pictures are grainy because he learned very quickly that turning on lights at 6:00 am does not a happy wife make. no siree.


please note that their father has been awake for over an hour, yet both mutthounds are patiently waiting for ME to get up and feed them. they don't even consider bugging him. they prefer to stand vigil over my sleeping body, staring at me, until my alarm rings. tgif, people!

an appology and a makeover

dear collierville, tennessee,

i'm sorry that i stereotyped you as the suburban land of tacky mcmansions, children with "y" in the place of "e/i" in their names and kate gosslein hair. please forgive me. i did not realize how quaint and adorable your town square is

tripadvisor.com

or, more importantly, how RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME your sheffield antiques mall is


without you, i wouldn't have scored this pair of fabulously carved chairs for an absolute STEAL (those claw feet!! i die!!)



or this pair of side tables with excellent potential (how adorable are those corners and the tiny little feet?!)



all for, quite literally, less than i'd pay for a single chair (with far less character) at a retail store. these babies just need some new fabric and a little paint. i've already been to sheffield's twice this week, and i almost bought like 25 more things, no lie. obsessed. if you live around here, you need to go. immediately.

scratch that. don't go. leave everything for me.

so, collierville, i'm sorry. can we be friends?

xoxo la

p.s. you may have noticed something lurking behind the side table all majestic-like in the second to last picture up there. one of the items passed from parents to daughter in the Great Move of '09 (happening this week) was the baby grand baldwin piano on which i learned to play as a child. it arrived chez stone yesterday with great pomp and fanfare. because answer me this: who needs a dining room when you can have a Grand Piano Parlor?

certainly not us.

ok, i lied. we do. we're currently in the process of making our little den into the dining room and the guest room into the den/office. we really think it'll work out better this way. and before we move everything around, we're going to move everything out and pull up the carpet in the den/two bedrooms/hallway to refinish the hardwoods underneath. so good thing i don't mind living in chaos. NOOOOOOOOT. (flashback to 1992)

in closing, please note what i am using as an occasional table between the chairs:


my great-grandma's piano stool! i was thinking of painting it, but it already has such a great (and real) age to it. once i get a nice, neutral seagrass rug in there, i think the black will really pop.

blast from the (not so distant) past

come, let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? here we go waaaaay back to mid-september when i posted about transforming these bad boys:


into these lovely ladies:


(can you tell that i got a new camera between the before and after? don't answer that. user error.)

a month later, they are still looking fab flanking my console table. rather, flanking the place where my console stood before i hauled it to the other room for a major makeover (see today's previous post). i'm re-posting the chairs and linking up to furniture feature friday at an awesomely inspiring blog i recently found, mustard seed creations. miss mustard seed has officially made the list of "people i want to be when i grow up slash immediately." wanna see more? here's the original post in all her detailed furniture-refinishing-newbie glory.

busy bee

where have i been? kind of you to be concerned. i'm running a big work event this weekend, so i've been spazzing over that all week. free time has been busied with things like going out to dinner in celebration of our four-monthiversary, figuring out where in the holy heck we're going to put the baby grand piano my parents are passing on to us, and painting. lots of painting. good painting. happy painting. furniture painting. wish-this-were-my-day-job painting. painting that is not nearly finished. why? because i am taking my boring old brown console table from something kinda like this:

to something inspired by this:

from wisteria

except grayish blue. with less drawers. and embellished with paint instead of inlaid mother of pearl. but, you know, inspired. isn't it FABULOUS?!

i am DYING to share my progress, but i think i'll wait until i'm totally finished. which will hopefully be before my unborn children graduate from college.

for sale. you want?

eventually i'll post something decor/diy/project-related again...but not yet.

my parents are selling the house in which they've lived for almost 30 years. am i depressed? yes, yes i am. but let's not talk about that. let's drown our sorrows in material things, like, for example, all the FREE STUFF i'm getting as they downsize. woohoo!

and lo, you too can benefit from the move by coming to 69 st. albans fairway tomorrow morning (saturday 10/17) for their big blowout garage sale! woohoo again! they'll be selling several decades-worth of clothes, toys, holiday decorations, tools, baskets (like a gazillion), home decor, artwork, etc and so forth. everything must go, so ven comigo baby!

i don't have any pictures on this computer of the house or anything they're going to sell, but i do have a few pictures from INSIDE the house. like this one, in front of our living room mantel circa 1987, when my bangs were too short:


and this one, in front of our den mantel circa 2007, when my bangs were too long:


and this one, circa 2009 when i'd scrapped bangs altogether but still carried scars from the drunk-roommate-haircutting incident of sophomore year that is forever preserved in that heinous and cheestastic hand-holding sibling portrait on the wall:


if you look reeeeeeal hard in that last picture, you can see a basket of festive papier maché fruit resting atop the kitchen cabinet. you can't buy that, because it now lives with me, but you CAN buy some of it's antique kitchen appliance friends that were displayed atop the other cabinets, like two old steam irons, a big clay jar and a wire rug-beater. intrigued? come to my house. bring dollars. buy things.

tomorrow, then? excellent.

e at the end, not in the middle

today is an important day. on this day, an unspecified but milestone-type number of years ago, my wonderful grama gave birth to my wonderful mama, rosanne. i titled this post in honor of an unspecified but milestone-type number of years-worth of spelling mistakes made by people trying to write my mother's name. please take note and spell accordingly in the future.

moving on

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!!!! to the type of mom who still makes me want to call her mommy and curl up in her lap. who spent countless hours making elaborate halloween costumes and birthday cakes and doll houses from scratch. who shuttled carpools, attended recitals, hosted parties, french-braided hair, packed lunches and did laundry. who provided two kids with the best childhood two kids could have ever had. who taught those kids the value of family, the importance of kindness and the meaning of unconditional love. who continues to be my biggest supporter and my most constructive critic at once (and i admit, she's usually right). who is my favorite lady and bestest friend.

thank you for bringing me into this world and into such a wonderful and loving family


thank you for always being there for me, no matter what


oh yes i DID just post a picture of you in a bathing suit and no makeup! too bad, i think it's cute. and it proves the aforementioned point: you still love me, don't you? thought so.

thank you for falling in love with my daddy (and for putting up with him for 35 years and counting...)


thank you for teaching me that true beauty is more than skin deep (and for passing on plenty of the shallow kind too, pretty lady)


thank you for accepting the man i chose to marry, and loving him like your own (like, for example, hemming his pants in the middle of the night on our family beach vacation)


thank you for selflessly providing me with the best of everything - best education, best activities, best wedding - a girl could ever want or need




thank you for making it really hard to write a post about why i'm thankful for you, because you're so awesome that it can't even be expressed


most of all, thank you for your love. i know i can always count on you to be there for me, whether i'm celebrating the love of my life or just trying to stave off road rage on my commute. i want to be just like you when i grow up. I LOVE YOU, MOMMY!!!!

(crappy photos from my personal archives, save the last and only good one from jmalahy photography)
at times like this, i wish i had a scanner so i could share some old gems instead of just what facebook has to offer...

sigh.

t'was not to be. by the time my sister-in-law and i arrived at worlds away on saturday, they were closed. at 2pm. or they were hiding in the back ignoring us. either way, i almost cried in the street. but i didn't. because look what was just across the way (and open):


south front antiques! more like south front awesome. or south front i-want-to-buy-it-all. seriously, they have so many fabulous things of the architectural-salvage variety. like...

old doors and windows (including tudor-style harlequin panes like this, which i severely, sinfully covet for my household)


bins and buckets full of old hardware, knobs, building stars, hinges and the like


old mantels (if only i had a fireplace! or the space to install one as a faux fireplace!)


intricate random ironwork and old stair railings


decorative pediments and columns and finials and corbels and other delightful accents from old buildings


chandys and sconces and lamps and lanterns

cast iron tubs


...among myriad other neat old stuff. they also have a bunch of art and prints and frames and mirrors and other accessories. like african carved masks and mounted animal head trophies...if that's your thang.

THEREFORE

IF you happen to be in downtown memphis on front street (or even if you're not), THEN you should go to south front antiques and scope it out. fo sho.

all images from www.southfrontantiques.com

i hope, i hope, i hope

...that i will finally make it to worlds away this weekend. several people have suggested that i would love what they have to offer, and based on frequent drooly perusals of their website, i have to agree. they are designer wholesale to the trade, BUT their main digs are in downtown memphis (for freaking once), and regular people (me!) can visit to scope out an outlet-style setup. so i hear.

i mean i only need EVERY LAST ITEM on their website, but i'll narrow it down and share a few of my favorites:










to quote my new fave reality television personality, rachel zoe, "i. LITrally. die." and if i don't get there tomorrow, i might. also if i do get there tomorrow, i might. either way, worlds away is likely going to end me this weekend. it's been swell, kids.

scarves and stars

two things i am currently digging:

first, something decor-unrelated (as far as my house is concerned, at least). for the past several weeks, i have not left the house without my current fave accessory, the scarf, styled thusly:

via here

i have a variety of plain and patterned scarves like the above pictured that are light-weight enough to allow me to celebrate the beginnings of fall without suffocating in the bipolar-weather-disorder south. and i am ALL OVER IT. i've been sporting some of my larger, more festive earrings with the scarves, since they eliminate the age-old "i can't wear a necklace with these ginormous earrings, but my clavicle feels so naked" dilemma. or is that just a personal problem?

additionally, i'm superstoked to have discovered this light fixture today:

via shades of light

i have been obsessed with similar star lanterns for years, but most of the ones i've seen have been so...pendanty. you know? this one is so much more light-fixturey. which seems more functional. to me. for my space. personally. our future bestriped hallway can totally rock this beyotch, no?

a tribute

yesterday was captain fantastic's 27th birthday. thus ends my month-long reign as The Older Woman...until next september. however, i still hold the title of Wiser. also Less Messy. but this is a tribute, so i digress.

behold, a list and photo montage of ten random things that make my husband awesome:

1) his birthday marks the beginning of the Annual Seasonal Beard. he is pretty handsome with a beard.


2) he makes me delicious food all of the time AND does the dishes afterwards. (i can't believe this is the only photo i could find of him cooking...he cooks every night and at almost every social gathering, even if we're not at our house, like below)


3) i TOTALLY would have had a crush on him in middle school, which makes the past me really excited for the present me (note the multiple hemp necklaces in combination with the velcro watch band - swoon. and the baby. gotta love a guy who's not afraid to hold a baby.)


4) he can host a bbq and drink whiskey until 2am, then place 7th in a 5k at 8am the next morning, among other super-human physical feats.


5) he loves our big dogs and always talks to them in a ridiculous voice, which never fails to make me smile.


6) he worked on a trail crew in montana after college, which is H.O.T.T. (he's the one in the middle with the yellow hardhat and general badassness)


7) he makes me do fun stuff all the time, even when i'm lazy or grumpy, and forces me to enjoy myself because he's so durn silly and adorable and optimistic.


8) he thinks everything that happens is the MOST EXCITING THING EVER. and his enthusiasm is contagious.


9) he loves my family and is always willing to humor us. he also brought me into his wonderful family, and i couldn't be happier to be a part of it.


10) he loves me unconditionally, all the time, no matter what, and he tells me so every day. i'm the luckiest girl in the world! I LOVE YOU, MR. STONE!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

all photos from facebook, save the good-looking ones with the jm in the corner - those are courtesy of our fabulous wedding photographer, josh malahy