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Decorating

All Things Home

sewing room walls & a cabinet

I finished hanging the fabric in the sewing room late last week.  I have enjoyed taking a more relaxed approach to projects…bouncing from one to the other, working on each in small pieces, but that did mean that it felt like I’ve been working on this sewing room for an eternity!  I made a final push and hung the remaining panels, so I could be done with it! A few panels in, there was a part of me that was a little nervous that the toile would be too dowdy and old fashioned, but that is not the case at all.  It looks sharp against the bright white trim and picture frame molding and it’s just perfect for a sewing room.  I have slowly started putting the room back together again and that included hanging this antique medicine cabinet above the sewing desk.  I had a Chippendale-style mirror hanging there,

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All Things Home

hardwood floors in the living room

A couple of weeks ago, a stack of hardwood flooring was delivered to our house to acclimate before it’s installed in our living room! I have been wanting to replace this carpet with hardwood floors from the time we moved in, but I was in the minority.  Jeff and the boys like that it’s comfy underfoot and good for wrestling.  I have always disliked carpet simply because it’s difficult to keep clean.  And a cream carpet in a major traffic path is even harder to keep clean.  It doesn’t look bad in the pictures, but I’m not focusing on the carpet… We do take our shoes off and we clean it with a carpet cleaner a few times a year, but there are still stains and a discolored path from over 15 years of use.  The staining is much more evident when I focus the camera on it… Oh, I

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All Things Home

Toni’s beautiful but boring dining room | Decorating Dilemmas

This post has been in my drafts for mooooooonths.  That means a long time!  For some reason, I just kept feeling like it wasn’t enough.  I needed to put together a cohesive and completed design before this would be ready to post and that’s just not the case!  These Decorating Dilemma posts aren’t about me working as an interior designer for a client, but rather giving a reader some opinions and ideas about their space.  When I frame it in those terms, I don’t have to have any answers, but just a few suggestions.  And I certainly have that for this dining room; at least enough to get this post out of draft purgatory. So, here we go… “This is my boring dining room. I love my custom farmhouse table and Ethan Allen buffet but the room is blah.  There is not much natural light (windows have plastic on outside

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All Things Home

gold leaf frame & office details

I was supposed to be cleaning.  Let me say that right upfront.  It was a self-imposed task, but my home projects have distracted me from basic housekeeping.  I gave the kitchen a quick cleaning – wiping down the counters and the stove, emptying the dishwasher, vacuuming.  I even got as far as cleaning the toilet in the 1/2 bathroom and running the vacuum in the living room, but the cleaning stopped there.  The rabbit trail started with hanging a picture light over my Manet study and it turned into reclaiming my office, rearranging furniture, and gold leafing my inspiration board frame.  It wasn’t what I should’ve done, but it’s what I needed to do.  I’ve learned that when inspiration strikes, I just need to roll with it and the cleaning can wait. Jeff has been inhabiting my office since March, but he’s working at the church more often and, when

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All Things Home

making progress in the sewing room

Well, I’ve been making slow and steady progress in the sewing room over the past couple of weeks.  In the afternoons, when I’m done with my work-work, I’ll head upstairs and work on it for about an hour.  My tendency is to plow through a project and get it finished as soon as possible, but I’ve learned in recent years that projects are more enjoyable when they are spread out and done in a leisurely way.  Fewer mistakes are made when I don’t rush.  I have to fight my propensity to rush, though, because I love productivity and crossing stuff off the list! But, the sewing room is a little easier to work on in pieces, because it’s not one I’m in a lot.  Out of sight, out of mind.  If I was sitting in the middle of it all day, it would probably feel more urgent. I decided to

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All Things Home

Patio Makeover Reveal

Disclosure: This patio makeover post is sponsored by .  As always, all opinions and words are honest and my own. Welcome to a typical suburban patio makeover!  These are scattered all over suburbia…the concrete pad just off the walk-out basement sliding door, shaded by the deck.  It’s the builder-grade default. We’ve seen our neighbors do some beautiful things with this space…resurface the concrete, extend the patio out beyond the deck, use it as a pad for a hot tub, etc.  Ours was a sad, neglected dumping ground.  It was where we dumped rocks that we removed from the front garden beds.  There was a burn pile, wood from a sectional that was delivered a few weeks after we moved in, wires and cinder blocks that were left by the previous owners, and lots of weeds.  Even as I look at it now, it’s just sad.  I’ve said many times on

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All Things Home

Edging & Painting the Concrete Patio

Last Thursday, the weather was lovely.  It was sunny, wasn’t too hot, and there was a light breeze.  It was the perfect day to get the patio under our deck painted.  Oh, this patio was so sad and neglected.  It felt so good to finally give it some attention! Before we could paint, we had to get it all cleaned up.  We did the majority of that during one of our family workdays.  We burned the sticks, bagged the trash, put things in the garage that we wanted to keep (like the cinderblocks) and power washed the dirt and debris off. It looked so much better after a good cleaning, but the power washer (we have ) did not remove the paint splatters from when the previous owners painted the deck.  The best option was to prime and paint to achieve a nice, clean surface. I started by edging around

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a slice of life

family work day

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, this is the year we get our yard looking more presentable.  Not only were the beds overrun with weeds and filled with plants I had no affection for, but things were just looking messy and untidy.  The black plastic borders were popping up, grass was creeping into the beds, certain spots along the hills were eroding, 15-year-old landscape fabric was ineffective and exposed, bushes and trees needed to be pruned, and the area under the deck was a dumping ground.  I have been largely avoiding all of it for the better part of almost three years.  It just all seemed like too big of a project. My renewed energy from a mostly-healed shoulder and our collective cabin fever from being under stay-at-home orders since March became the perfect recipe to get our whole family out in the yard and working together. In

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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