House Tour // The Living Room

It took a while but I am finally sharing photos of our living room! 

A few months ago we put in hardwood floors and it made such a difference! We hung some art, I made some pillows, we bought some rugs and added a split-leaf tree (It's amazing how much indoor plants bring to your house!) and it's almost done! We still have finishing touches, like paint touch ups, hanging more art and adding molding to some spots in the floor, but overall this room is done. 

We are so happy with how it turned out!

The view from the front door. Photo bombed by Frankie, our monster of a cat. 

To the left is part of the kitchen/dining nook.

This area is where we store all Raegan's toys and books. It has turned into her playroom. 

Frankie and Sadie love our new rugs. 

And here are a couple before photos when we had carpet. 

Next up, we're going to be working on Raegan's big girl room and baby girl's nursery! 

4 Tips to Create a Great Kiddo Space

Now that I have kids I love designing spaces for them. Here are 4 easy tips that might help you when designing kiddo spaces.

1. Go Bold! Kid spaces need to be bright and full of energy to encourage play. That's why they are perfect areas to use more patterns and colors than you might typically use throughout your home. I would still use a fairly neutral wall color, but create a striped or polka dot accent wall using bolder, more intense colors.

 

 

2. Create your own artwork. Artwork can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. If you don't have the time or resources to create your own artwork, I would recommend purchasing from etsy.com or storenvy.com to get a more personalized feel. Not only is homemade artwork more personal it is also an inexpensive way to dress up you walls. The simplest way to create artwork is by using words and numbers, which can be done on almost any computer program. Here is some artwork I have created.

 

 

 

 

3. Use multi-purpose furniture. When I was designing Jena's nursery I did not purchase a single thing that served one purpose, even the crib can be turned into a double bed. Besides the crib the only furniture I bought was the table that serves as the changing table. If you can, use your existing furniture, it's cheaper and can be used later in other parts of your home when your kiddo outgrows it. Here are some alternative ideas to think about.

• Instead of purchasing a specific changing table, use a dresser or a tall table. I purchased a commercial stainless steel table.
• Instead of purchasing a glider, ask your parents if they have a rocking chair or a wingback chair you could use for a while. I used a chair that was my grandmothers and I get so many compliments on it.

 

 

 

4. Design with yourself in mind. Even though you are creating a kiddo space you will be spending a lot of time in there, so create a space you love. I love spending time in my girls rooms, because they are as much adult as they are kid. If you make the space too childish, you may not enjoy the space as much as you could. I would also not recommend using a theme when designing your kiddo space, one minute they are into it, the next they are not. Keep it classic so you don't have to waist time and money changing it all the time. If you do want to design with a theme, bring it in through the artwork and accessories, which is easily changed.

 

2 Ways to Style a Room with a Hot Pink Stripe Pillow

Pink is kind of a tricky color to add to a room. Especially hot pink. It's a bold color that definitely makes a statement. A lot of men shy away from it, thinking it's too girly, and some women are also hesitant to add it to a space for similar reasons. 

Girly is probably the last word I would use to describe my design style, but I love this Hot Pink Stripe Pillow! It's bright and fun and perfect for spring and summer time. (Plus it could work as an outdoor pillow as well — just email us if you're interested in an outdoor version!)

Lindsey & I thought it would be fun to come up with two different ways to style a room with this pillow. We each took the same pillow and used it as a jumping off point to design a room. 

I chose to design a living room with a comfy casual beachy theme. I picked neutral colors for the large pieces in the room — the furniture, curtains and lamp — and picked bolder and brighter patterns and colors for the pillows and art to really make them pop. Here's my design:

I really like how everything came together in a fun way. 

Some of these items I love so much I may even use in my own home! I've been loving Gray Malin's from-the-air photographs, especially from his Australia collection. I also recently ordered some of the palm fabric to make some pillows for my house. I can't wait! And the banana art is so fun I couldn't resist. The "all you need is love" chalkboard print is from one of my favorite bloggers Jessica of Little Baby Garvin. 

Here are all of the living room sources: 

All You Need is Love chalkboard print // Banana photograph // Gray Malin Australia photograph // Floor lamp // Leather Loveseat // Curtains // White Chair // Coffee table // Skinny Chevron Pillow in Navy // Pink Floral Pillow // Hot Pink Stripe Pillow // Palm Pillow // Grey & yellow stripe pillow

And from Lindsey: 

Ever since we made the decision to move closer to Jeff's work, I have been obsessed with the idea of a playroom. It could be a converted dinning room, loft space or an extra bedroom, but it cannot be in the same space as the family room. It seems a bit ridiculous because we haven't even started looking, but this is the one thing I told our Realtor I will not budge on.

Because of this new-found obsession I chose to design a playroom. I love designing kids spaces because you can be a bit more bold with your color and pattern choices. 

Here are some ideas I've been thinking about doing in my playroom:

Here are all of the playroom sources :

Zebra Pull Toy // Be Unique Artwork // World Map Wall Mural // Slide // Daybed // Hot Pink Stripe Pillow // Skinny Chevron Pillow in Navy // Giraffe Lamp // Swinging Chair // Moose Plush // Area Rug // Art Easel // Table and Chair Set

How would you style a hot pink stripe pillow? 

Random Loves: Fun Interior Design Links & Ideas

I came across a few fun design links and ideas that are too good not to share! 

[via 6th Street Design School blog]

One of my favorite bloggers, at 6th Street Design School, has a series this week that tells the story of a room. She’s an interior designer and is sharing the whole process from start to finish of what it takes to transform a room based on what her client wants and needs. It’s a really cool process, so many choices to make along the way — everything from fabrics and pillows to lamps, furniture and rugs — and I love seeing the finished product. You can start this week’s design series here and at the end of the week, Kirstin will share the reveal! You can check out her last design series here. Isn’t her design just gorgeous?! I love her style!

[via]

Anyone else watching American Dream Builders? I could do without some of the drama between the designers, but love seeing how each team creates a completely new home from top to bottom. The latest episode was filmed in Palm Springs and featured two mid-century modern homes. Mid-century modern is not my favorite design style, but I can definitely appreciate it. My favorite house was the red team’s white and bright living room, kitchen and the backyard was gorgeous. Which house/room was your favorite?!

I've been loving botanical prints lately because they are a simple way to add some colorful art to your wall. A little while ago I came across this flickr site with tons of free botanical prints available! Birds, plants, fruit, animals, butterflies — there are so many! I found a couple monkey prints, above, that I printed, framed and hung in our living room. I love them! Here are a couple ways others are showing off botanical prints too:

[via Lauren Liess website]

[via Dimples and Tangles blog]

The other day I was searching around online for some pillows and somehow came across Zara Home. Did you know Zara had a home collection?! I didn't, and was so pleasantly surprised with their fun selection! Some of the things are a little pricey, but mixed in are some affordable accessories. Here are a few of my favorites: 

Ikat throw // Geometric lamp // Pompom towel // Herringbone doormat // Slate coasters // Multicolored tablecloth

Pillow Love!

When we first launched our pillow store a couple weeks ago, we didn't have photos of the actual pillows to share yet. I'm happy to say that now we do! 

We have updated our store with photos of all 10 of our fun pillows! We also included a few photos of different pillows grouped together to show their versatility. It is so fun seeing how well our pillows work with each other. 

Here are a few photos:

Which one is your favorite? Please tell us! We'd love to know! 

All of our pillows are available online here. Thank you for supporting us! 

Our Pillow Store is Now Open!

We are so excited to share that our Home Style Love online store is now open! You can check out our launch line here! 

Our first round of pillows includes 10 fun patterns, many of them perfect for springtime! We will be updating our store with photos of the pillows very soon, but for now you can check out photos of the fabric. (If you'd like to place an order and would like additional photos, just send us an email at homestylenlove@gmail.com.)

We both fell in love with these fabrics when we saw them in person and hope you do too! 

All of our pillows are $30 or under, are 18"X18" and ship for free (if you live in the U.S.)!

To learn more about how Lindsey & I got the idea for our pillow business, you can read about that here.  

You can check out our pillows here and let us know what you think! If you have any questions, you can send us an email at homestylenlove@gmail.com.

A BIG thank you for supporting our baby of a business!
Lindsey & Lauren  |  Home Style Love

We're Launching a Pillow Business!

We are so excited/nervous/happy/scared to share with you all something that we have been working on for a while now — We will be launching a pillow business! Yikes! We’re working hard on getting our first pillow line out within the month and can’t wait to see what you guys think! 

We have picked out some really fun, colorful, modern fabrics that we LOVE and hope you will too! Here’s a peek at some of the fabrics:

I love finding and supporting small businesses, learning about them and how they got started. So here, goes, here’s our story:

Lindsey and I both love interior design (we actually both majored in interior design in college), love mixing and matching fabrics and getting creative with our living spaces. We’re both stay-at-home mamas (Lindsey also goes to school part-time) and both have been antsy to do something creative while taking care of our kiddos. We brainstormed and came up with the idea of putting our creativity, design background, and sewing skills to good use by making pillows.

A few things that I noticed while looking for pillows online for my own home, is that there aren’t a lot of affordable & fun pillows out there. There are a ton of fun, trendy, bright pillows that I would love to take home with me, but there’s no way I could justify spending $50+ on one pillow cover. So, we decided that our pillows have to be affordable. We want people who are on tighter budgets (like we are!) to be able to afford our pillows.

Both our husbands always laugh at us because we are always saying “fun pillows.” We both agree that rooms can be spruced up with some fun pillows. To us, fun pillows can be a pattern, a bright color, a shape, just something that makes a pop on a bed, couch, chair, outside or even on the floor.

We also want our pillows to be versatile. Many of our pillows in our launch line (!) work well together. That was important to us, since sometimes people love one pillow pattern but have a hard time visualizing how it might work with other patterns or colors. We love mixing and matching patterns and colors and had so much fun coming up with this first pillow lineup!

That’s our Home Style Love pillow business, in a nutshell. If you have any other questions about us or our pillows, please let us know and we’ll be happy to answer! We hope to have our first line of pillows available VERY soon, so stay tuned! 

Raegan's Big Girl Room Planning

I can't believe I'm already thinking about Raegan's big girl room! It seems like I woke up one day and she was no longer my baby, but my little girl! 

Since baby #2 gets here at the end of summer, Alex and I will be busy getting Raegan's big girl room and baby #2's nursery all set up. Since we don't find out if baby #2 is a boy or girl until next month, I've been mostly gathering ideas and planning Raegan's room and I am having so much fun! 

A few things that we're planning/are must-haves for Raegan's big girl room:

• A new bed (we'll be transitioning her over the summer! Yikes! Anyone have any tips?)
• A chalkboard wall. She loves her chalkboard-top table and I just know she'll have fun getting creative on a wall. Plus I'm sure we'll have tons of fun teaching Raegan that the other walls are off-limits with chalk! ;)
• Storage for small things like chalk, crayons, markers, etc. 
• Floor pillows for her reading nook. 
• She loves animals, so I'd love to incorporate animals into her room design. 
• I will frame a card from my mom and dad at Raegan's baby shower. It has a giraffe, a pink hippo and other colorful animals on it, so it will be a fun pop of color, but also something sentimental. 

My vision for R's room is white walls and I'll bring in some pops of color through art, pillows (on the floor and on her bed), sheets, books and through some of the storage. I like the idea of neutral walls so that things will be easy to transition again once she gets older. 

Here are some rooms/ideas I'm loving and may incorporate into R's room:

I love the DIY animal tops to these mason jars. [Photo via Design Sponge]. I could definitely use these to store her chalk, crayons, markers and other goodies.

I'm not sure why, but I've been in love with incorporating flamingos into Raegan's room somehow. [Photo via Design Sponge] Not sure if I will do it through art or in another way. 

Raegan already loves her reading area so I'd love to add some floor pillows and a rug to make it super cozy. [Photo via Mommo Design]

I'm planning to do a small-scale chalk wall for Raegan. I think it will be a great space to practice her writing and numbers. {Photo via Mokkasin}

Since Alex is not a fan of florals, I would love to include floral prints into Raegan's room. I think it's totally possible to use florals in a fun kid-friendly way that doesn't look like grandma's outdated room! {Photo via 6th Street Design School, designer Kirsten Krason's house tour}

I'm also trying to anticipate how Raegan will use her room in the next few years. Right now, it's mostly for sleeping and diaper changes, and occasionally playing in there, especially as we get her bath ready. I'm sure we'll be tweaking as she gets older too, but if any of you mamas have any advice for things that are worthwhile/not worthwhile in a big kiddo's room, I'd love to hear it! 

A Mini House Tour // A Few Favorite Areas of Our Home

Yesterday the house was clean and I had a few minutes to light a candle, read a magazine and relax on the couch with a blanket while Raegan was with her grandma for the day. It was amazing! When the house is clean and toys are put away, I really love our home. In the last six months we have really turned this house into a home and both Alex and I really love how it's looking and feeling. 

I haven't shared photos of our living room since this post before we put the hardwood floors in and I'm not ready to share the whole room just yet (!) (we're still waiting on some art pieces and I'll be making some pillows) but here are some areas of the house that currently make me smile, especially when they're clean, until Hurricane Raegan comes through. ;)

This is Raegan's creative area with her Ikea chalkboard table and some of her artwork on display. We have a little Picasso on our hands! ;)

 

Our (huge) cat being lazy on our new Turkish kilim rug.

 

I am in love with these monkey prints. They're so fun!

A desk my grandpa made and guitars on the wall. :)

A bunch of my favorite cookbooks.

 Our master bedroom. I am loving the colors and patterns going on in here. I can't wait to work on this room. Plus there's just something about a made bed. I think I'm more productive on mornings when I make the bed!

 Hope you liked this mini tour of our house. I will be sharing more soon!

10 Spring Home Decor Accessories Under $30

 

Even though it doesn't feel like spring just yet, it's not too early to bring some spring decor into your home! Lindsey & I searched around for some fun spring-like accessories, and the best part is that everything is under $30! It is possible to switch around your decor every once in a while even on a budget. 

We didn't plan for all of the items to coordinate, but don't they all look great together? I would snatch up all of these in a heartbeat if I could! My favorites are #3 — a rug from Urban Outfitters that I've been eyeballing for a while now, #2 — cute little birds from West Elm, and #7 — a mint throw from Land's End (did you know they sell home decor?!)

Here's a closer look at everything:

[via Cost Plus World Market]

1. Marie Kitchen Towel from Cost Plus World Market // $5.99 // A new kitchen towel is a really inexpensive way to switch things up in your kitchen. Plus it's useful and cute!

[via West Elm]

2. Seedpod Birds from West Elm (flamingo & guinea hen shown) // $9 // Lindsey found these little guys, just a few inches tall, that would be so fun on a shelf, near indoor plants or in a shadow box on the wall. There are four other birds as well including an ostrich and stork.

[via Urban Outfitters]

3. Right Angles Woven Rug from Urban Outfitters // $24 // You might see this rug pop up in photos of my home very soon! I've been thinking of buying this for our entryway to add some color to our home. This would also work in a kitchen or near a back door. 

[via Target]

4. Threshold Peony Pillow in purple from Target // $18.74 // Switching out pillows on your couch, chairs and floor pillows is one of my favorite ways to spruce up a space. Just be adding or swapping out a couple pillows can make a huge different in a room. 

[via Target]

5. Threshold Wood Inlay Frame from Target // $11.99 // Frames are also an easy and inexpensive way to change out decor every once in a while. I like how neutral this one is, it would go with almost any decor style. 

[via Urban Outfitters]

6. Hartland Brooklyn Pineapple Card from Urban Outfitters // $5.25 // This greeting card would look fun framed and propped on a shelf or hung on a wall. Plus pineapples just scream vacation and warmer weather to me, so why not add it to your house?!

[via Land's End]

7. Woven Lattice Thrown in evermint from Land's End // $29.50 // This is the most expensive thing on our roundup, but I thought it was too good to pass up. I love the mint color, especially for springtime. A throw is also a fairly inexpensive way to add color and change to a room. Plus it also comes in handy when you have windows open, a cool breeze blowing in and could use a little warmth, or for cozying up while you enjoy a cocktail on the patio! ;)

[via Target]

8. Threshold Dot Decorative Pillow from Target // $18.74 // I really like the pink dots with the colored trim on these pillows. 

[via Anthropologie]

9. Mini Capri Blue Candle in volcano from Anthropologie // $12 // This is hands down my absolute favorite scented candle. It's a mix of citrus and tropical scents that makes me feel like I'm in Hawaii. For me, this is a splurge candle, but I love it. A little tip — if you have a Scentsy, you can scrape the extra wax that's left after the candle has burned down into your Scentsy & the smell fills the room! It's a great way to use that extra wax instead of tossing it out. 

[via West Elm]

10. Hive Vases, Wide, Short in mint from West Elm // $24 // Lindsey found these and I love the honeycomb pattern. Would be pretty filled with flowers or on its own on a shelf or table. 

Would you add any of these to your home? Which one is your favorite?