Tag Archives: Yellow door

A Tisket A Tasket–A Less Expensive Basket

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We’ve moved into the house and now comes time for decorating and organizing and getting things in their respective places. So. Much. Fun.

We went from having ample storage space in our kitchen and bathrooms in our West Pond house to having very little in our Twins Court twin house. As such, we had to get quite creative using strategically placed dressers and covered baskets for things like towels and toiletries. It worked and we adapted but boy, oh boy, am I loving
more drawers in each of the bathrooms, and having two linen closets in our master bath and another in the hallway.

I like to compartmentalize items in little tubs for things like nail polish, extra supplies, lotions, perfumes, etc., and for the longest time I’ve managed with a myriad of sizes and colors. This time around though I wanted to be extra organized and consistent in closets for a streamlined look.

If you’ve ever shopped the toiletry aisles for things like this, you’ve likely noticed that retailers tend to gouge you on the prices. Logan and I went to Target tonight and found a few standard white bins for $9.99. Yikes! A few aisles down I found something even better–and the same size for $2.99. Plus, they were white with gray. Perfect! I bought them out of both the small and medium sizes and instead of paying $74 paid $27. Benji couldn’t fault me for that purchase. (And it saved a trip to Homegoods.)

It pays to look in different departments for as the saying goes, a tisket, a tasket, you’ll likely find less expensive baskets.

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Hello. Yellow.

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It’s officially a Yellow Door World for us as today the house we built officially became ours. (Well, and the bank too, I suppose).

We had our “House Acceptance” meeting at 10am and the closing at 11am. After some waiting around for the money to be wired and the final difference payment from the lender to the title company, we picked up the keys at 4:55pm.

The yellow door makes this house for us and completely embodies the idea of a “yellow door world.”

The idea of a yellow door hit me like a ton of bricks back in March (I might have shared that previously) and as probably also noted in an earlier post the color we chose was Decisive Yellow. The color name itself pretty much sealed the deal but it wasn’t until last night (Monday) that we got to see it on the door.

As it relates to the door itself, we wanted something a little different than the standard options in that the glass would have a grid in it vs just a straight sheet of glass. This didn’t surprise our builder after the other unique requests we’d made. Thankfully, they were open to accommodating us, for a price, but even still it wasn’t easy to get.

For weeks and weeks the house had a temporary front door while everyone else’s door was placed early on in the process. It actually started to seem like they forgot to order it but it turns out it was on back order.

The unpainted door arrived on Thursday and it was just what I’d hoped for with the grid but I knew the color would make or break the house. Peter was hoping for it to be painted Friday but as luck would have it we had to wait out the weekend.

Last night the boys and I drove to the house while Ben was at his Master’s class and I could hardly contain myself. One look at that door and I smiled and said, “Hello, Yellow.”

It’s perfect. It makes us smile. It’s cheerful and it’s exactly what we hoped for.

Next up: moving day comes Thursday and we expect to feel pretty settled by Sunday minus our bed which won’t arrive until next week.

Welcome to our yellow door world!

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Home Goods at Home Goods

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My family has a mad love affair with TJMaxx and Homegoods–it must be hereditary. My Mom and sis Amanda, aunt Caryl and cousin Christine, Stepmom and step sis Kristen, Ben’s sisters, his Aunt Mary Gaye and while she was here, his Mom Debbie was a real purveyor of the place.

It’s really a magical experience to go in not knowing what you’ll find and then spotting the most perfect item that can either inspire a room or complete a look. It’s rare for me to not go in and find something and frankly, I’m disappointed when I don’t (though I know Ben is relieved).

As it relates to the new house, Ben and I have had a vision of the look we’re going for a while and have been finding things here and there for months, steadily filling the front room of the house.

Between the pillow collection I’ve gathered as well as a bench, artwork, wall hangings, yellow planters, bedding, and other home furnishings, we’ve acquired a plethora of items that may not have a specific designated place but we know they’ll fit together perfectly.

Tonight’s trip was no exception. Item one was a set of photos perfect for the powder room. I have an idea of putting a black ladder in there for the towel rack and the images are black, yellow and white. Adorable. Next item was a gray mirror/cubbie drawer that we purchased in May for $79 but they had the same one “As Is” for $49. It merely had a few small chips that weren’t even noticeable. We’ll take the other back and save $30. Perfect. Last, item three was a club chair in yellow, gray and cream with grommets. It’s as if it was just there waiting for us to find it. Those pillows I wrote about on a previous post could be a fabulous compliment whether we decide to use the chair in the Gathering Room to go along with our new sofa and love seat or it could go in our master bedroom if we decide to use bedding option two instead of bedding option one. Either way, divine.

Oh, and not to be missed are the other two yellow pictures purchased in April for the kitchen. Appears they may be multi-purpose too seeing how great they look with the chair.

Our house is coming together with home goods from Homegoods and it’s all going to make our home good–or should we say great!

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Pillow Talk

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Let’s talk about pillows…I love pillows. Pillows are perfect and powerful. It’s amazing the inspiration I can get from one small pillow.

When I got my very first office in 2004, I was at Marshall Field’s and lucky enough to have Bill Payne, design guru extraordinaire, come in and ask how I wanted it to feel. At the time, the boys weren’t quite one so life at home was was chaotic. I told him, “calm, clean and serene” because outside of work was anything but. The next thing I knew he brought in some pillows and artwork that hit the mark perfectly. Citrus colors of yellow, green and orange mixed with shiny silver. Oh how I loved that office. I left Field’s/Macy’s in 2009 but was able to keep what was purchased for me and bring it to my next office at MSP. I knew I wanted to bring those colors into our new home office too.

Fast forward to November and I was at my fav store Homegoods and there before my eyes were two pillows I knew would be perfect accents for our new home office…even though we didn’t yet know where we were moving or what a house would look like. The power of pillows.

In December we went through a Homes by Tradition model home. They are the sister company to Robert Thomas Homes who are our builders but do true custom homes. We actually met with them last Aug/Sept with the plan of building with them but they didn’t have approval on their development in Inver Grove then, nor do they yet.

Any case, the master bedroom of that model was the pillow of my dreams–that one small pillow captured the look I knew I wanted in a new house…again though, we still had no idea what or where that might be. I hunted for that pillow with no luck. We even went to the staging company’s annual sample sale to see if it might be there but to no avail.

Fast forward to June when Ben and I went on a date that ended early. He suggested we go to TJMaxx/ Homegoods (since it wasn’t even 9:30) so I willingly obliged. So happened the merchandise assortment that night had a number of things we liked so I was feeling giddy and then…there it was…the pillow from the model. It may sound corny but it stopped me in my tracks and I just couldn’t believe it. Clearly, it was meant to be. I quickly grabbed the only two pillows they had and then saw them in green too. I had previously purchased some new bedding and thought these would march perfectly (they did) so I bought those too.

I love pillows. And i cant wait to see how the pillows we’ve got tie our rooms together. Pretty sure there will be a lot of pillow talk about it.

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Jutebox Hero

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Aside from the office, we’ve got hardwood on the entire first floor so we knew we’d need a few rugs in key places. We love rugs with great patterns and color and I particularly like chevron at the moment. But for the Gathering Room we wanted something solid and simple like a sisal or jute rug with texture to work with our wood floors. Finding this rug at an affordable price wasn’t so easy but when we stopped in to Cost Plus a few weeks ago, there it was–and a perfect 6×9 size and for under $200. We decided its our jute box hero.

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