Drawing: Way Cool Trip

My most recent artistic endeavor: A portrait of Trip who belongs to my high school friend Amie. So much is lost in the photograph. My work gets more and more three dimensional as time passes. This one was just a lot of fun.

Home Improvement: Laminate vs. Hardwood

So after less than 6 months, my husband and I have relocated here in Sealy. We really like the town and the area and hope to stay here, but we were less than in love with our first house here. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful house in a neighborhood full of really nice people, but like many houses in the US, our American Dream quickly turned into an HOA nightmare. My husband is a woodworker and wanted to build a shop. Our covenant clearly stated that we could do so, and our neighborhood was filled with various kinds of hobby shops, but we quickly discovered that the president of the HOA had no intention of allowing us to build a shop and had already drug another couple into a lengthy lawsuit. Thus, we began a search for a house that already had a shop and DID NOT have an HOA. Whether by chance of design, we quickly found a lovely home with a large shop in a beautiful mature neighborhood just a few miles down the road. While I am fairly certain that it is a mark of insanity to move after just a few months, the new house meets our criteria for a retirement home almost to a T. The only change we felt we needed to make was taking out the carpet and installing new floors.
Thus began the great debate between hardwood and laminate. My husband, of course, loves hardwood because he is a wood worker and prefers real wood. I prefer laminate because it is bullet proof and easy to clean. We put real maple in our last house and quickly discovered that it is seriously high maintenance flooring. Since I am not redoing this house with resale in mind, I held firm and got my laminate. It is Pergo Max and in my opinion, it is gorgeous. It may seem even more beautiful to me because it is so easy to clean and because I can slide the furniture around on it, let the cats tear our on it, and if I want throw a screaming, stomping fit on it--and it will all be just fine!

Color: Orange Oak Cabinets

Master bathroom before

Inspiration from House Beautiful

After

Parma Gray from Farrow and Ball

Unlike most modern decorators, I am not hating on oak. Our house in Houma had beautiful, high grade oak cabinets that fit beautifully in our Southern country home. Our new house also has oak cabinets, but unfortunately, they are builder grade plywood that is not all that attractive and does look extremely dated. High gloss varnish has turned them orange.
I've always loved the look of painted cabinets--probably because I grew up in a house full of them. Lately, I find myself more and more drawn to them. With the right color choice, you can simultaneously take ten years off your room while making the cabinets look like they are 100 years old and a custom feature. I look to HGTV and decorating magazines for inspiration and found the look I wanted to mimic in my master bath in House Beautiful.

Decorating: Faux Frosting

These weird little curtains on the sidelights weren't moving me, so I decided to stencil the glass. I just used exterior latex in case I change my mind about the pattern in the future or something. John will be happy because it lets in more light. I'm happy because I can see out, but still have the illusion of privacy.