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Congratulations to my Cousin!!

This morning I got an email in my Blackberry from my dad saying that my cousin Chris was in an article in the Home Section of the Chicago Sun-Times. I was really surprised because he & I had just spoken a couple of weeks ago about his needeing my decorating help on his new place & how much of a "bachelor pad" it was. I wasn't able to open the article quickly in my Blackberry (they can be slow!!) and so I had time to guess about what it might be. I came to the conclusion that it would be about him having gotten a really great price on his new condo, because he looked long & hard and is such a saver. And... I was right!!

Anyway, Chris got an awesome deal & I'm so excited for him so I had to share!! He's such a great guy & deserves this & as we start to decorate his new place, I'll be sure to share pictures!! (ps- He's 25 & single to all the Chicago-area single ladies!! :) --- he'd kill me for saying this though!! hahahha

xoxo,

lauren

Blogger Tags: 6 Things about Me & Splash Awards

I've been tagged by Sherri of Just the Five of Us and Alice of Searching for Style to do a post on 6 uninteresting things about myself and tag 6 other bloggers to do the same. Also, Copy Cat Chic tagged me in the "Splash Awards" where you list a bunch of blogs that you love and tag them. I'm honestly not much of a tagger because it's so hard for me to pick only a few blogs that I love, so I'm tagging everyone who wants to join in to post a link on either of these in the comments section.

1) I agree with people when they say "time is money" but I'd rather get paid in time. My husband and I have made some decisions & life choices that have left us with less money & more time. At times it can be a little tough (we'd love to travel more and furnish the whole house right away!!!) but in the end we're always happy with the choices we've made. Time with each other and our son is what's most important to us. My husband's a teacher & is about to have the whole summer off starting next week & I'm so excited!!!!

2) I love taking pictures of my finished work. When I take a picture of a finished project in a client or friend's home, I feel totally content. Almost like it's mine. Haha I know how weird & creepy that sounds but it's almost like I don't need that gorgeous lamp in my house because it's in so-and-so's house. Living vicariously I guess??

3) Every 5 years of my life, I've cut my hair really short. (chin length) it's very weird & I never realized it until the last time I did it, but literally at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 I've gotten the "chop!"

4) Almost every day (when the weather's nice enough) my toddler & I go outside & I lay out a blanket in the grass and we read & eat snacks & play in the yard. It's one of my favorite times.

5)My toddler is watching Teletubbies right at this minute so I can finish this post (and I'm feeling guilty, so must run!!!) eeeeek bad mama!!

6) I'm pregnant!!! (I'm almost finished with first trimester (cannot wait for that!!) and now can tell you that I have been SO SLEEPY for the past few months and was a pretty worthless helper getting things done efficiently with the move!!!) I'm also showing way sooner (I guess they say this is normal the second time around??) and am wondering how big I'll get this time?!!! :) (The pic below is a little over 4 months during my first pregnancy and I'm almost that size right now) We're so excited & the baby's due around Christmas- New Years!!

so, whoever would liek to participate in the game of tag, just post a link in the comments section!!
xoxo,

lauren

Turning Your More than 5-10 minutes problems into Marital Bliss

This is actually an unauthorized guest blog by Lauren's husband, David. Hello. She is sleeping right now and I wanted to suprise her with her a new closet. She's been dealing with a lot of change lately and has had too much on her plate, running an outrageously successful business, raising the ironically-named Christian and still dealing with the after effects or a flood/ move/ renovations. I read her blog about the 5-10 minute rule, I'm going to fix this... the closet.

I'm going to give you tips on how to do this yourself on the cheap. I'm also going to ramble on philosophically about life and marriage and maybe even, God help me, design. I teach English Literature by day, and am only the master craftsman by night (check the post time, going be well around midnight) so here are my thoughts and some bad jokes, but its all for a good cause.

The only tools I used tonight were, drumroll please

And my little ryobi drill.

So the first thing to do is plan out your closet. Lauren showed me how to do this in our townhouse. She says the most important thing about custom closets are the getting the different levels and spaces to stay organized. Figure out if you need lots of room- tall rods for hanging suits or long dresses, or if you have an inordinate amount of shoes maybe you need little cubbie holes. I know, I know all that sounds custom and expensive, but this is how were going to get around that.

It may not look like much, but this little baby is versatile. we spend 10 dollars on five of these things and ten dollars on closets rods. If you knew how little money I gave Lauren to spend on decorating you be so amazed, but they you wouldn't like me as much. So, first things first, lay out your closet. Lauren had already planned this out before we moved into the house (I know, I know) so I'm kind of cheating, but I did some of it on my own. We have your typical closet. Rods hung at 5 and some odd feet.

Wasted space below and above. We need levels. Lauren fixed this problem at the townhouse. In my closet we took a shirt and a pair of pants on hangers and held them up to see how much room they needed. Wow, if you hang a shirt at six feet and change and then hang the pants at three feet and change, problem solved. You still get a shelf above and room for a pair of shoes below.

So let's move the rod. We had one of these, which makes it more difficult. If you just have a rod resting against the wall in a socket, just remove the rod and unscrew the socket and ignore the rest, unless of course your enjoying the witty prose.

You have to remove the shelf, remove the rod and then pry off the wood molding (I use that term as loosely as possible, it is just a piece of 5/4 x 4).

I remove the old nails and use the same wood, waste not. I make my mark based on where I want my top closet rod to be and nail in the pieces of wood. Important- pieces of wood will sometimes overlap, so the pieces on the outside have to come out first and go in last.
See how the piece of wood on the right extends all the way to the wall and the piece on the left runs into it? Well that means the piece on the left is coming out first. So pull them out, put pressure on the corners and where the nails are or you might pop through your drywall.

Oops. But hey it's a closet and that will be covered up by shirts. Select the height you want your top rod to be and then start putting the boards back up. Use the original nail holes, but fresh nails, because they will line up perfectly with the studs, and will just go in more easily. (to any colleagues reading- sorry about the split infinitives but this is hard work) Now I've always wanted one of these suit valets:

The finish is wrong anyway. So I put the next rod in with one of these beauties and a few wood screws. Make sure to use wood screws.

The key to these thing is to put them into studs. I know the man at home depot will tell you that sinkers will work. The actual packages of the mollies, or sinkers, or whatever new name they have, claim outrageous holding capacities, 50, 60, even 100 lbs in 3/8" drywall. Far more than your clothes would ever weigh, right? I've been there, these are just a few of my bad memories:

I've tried them all. They don't work. They will never work, and if you used them before for other things and they worked, you got lucky but trust me, they won't work here. You need to put them into studs. Use this little machine, wait for him to beep. Then he is happy and you will be too. (look again at the picture above, I've shamelessly put the dreaded sinkers on an end table I built) Anway, I set the height on my bottom rod to accomodate a some pants on one side and a dresser on the other.

Well not exactly, you can get into a philosophical style debate on dressers but Lauren had this elfa thing from the container store. (lauren's into these right now)

And I said I want to keep my clothes in one of those things in the closet. That way all of my clothes live together like a happy family, and I don't change locations when my socks don't match. Its all right there now. We purchased one of those thing for me.
Now these things take up space and I sacrficed most of my lower side to house it. You'll see later what Lauren had to sacrifice.

I also got different size mesh baskets because while I have less clothes, I'm larger than Lauren and my clothes physically take up more space. So she has lots of little baskets and I have a few big ones. Here they are together:

I love this thing. Say bad things about dressers in closets, say bad things about Hemingway, but don't say bad things about this elfa closet organizer, I love it.

So Lauren's side only has half of a rod on the bottom because she has long, pretty dresses that go on the other. Very custom. It took me two minutes to measure the pole length and then three minutes to saw the pole to size. If they have the nice poles that have rubbers caps on the end then buy those so you don't have a sawed edge. If they don't put the sawed edge against the wall so the factory edge stick outs.

In my travels overseas I learned an ancient Chinese secret about getting good photoshoots of closets. Matching hangers with sufficient space in between, even if you have to remove clothes and hide them elsewhere.

Try to ignore the racing stripes, that's where the old board used to be. I will fix that later, remember what's important here is not the nailheads uncovered, I'll get to that later as well. What's important is that as we speak sleepy lauren just stumbled into the room and said "oh my gosh, so much better."

She will wake up in the morning and eat breakfast feeling a less stressed, she'll be singing a song, probably some terrible Cobie Calliet (sp?). After breakfast she will bring a bunch of toys into the bedroom and Christian will make and destroy buildings, in that order, while she organizes her clothes.

While most people see piles of clothes and empty hangers, Lauren sees what was an umanageable nightmare turning into a 5-10 minute mess. Maybe they'll be organized by occassion, season, I can't begin to understand the synesthete's mind, but I can observe its patterns. And I know marital bliss is not found in organizing closets, but I have found doing something nice that you know the other person will like always goes a long way. Now whether or not Lauren is pleased I stole her blog to post on a half-finished closet we've yet to see.

Industial Chic Before & After: The Basement

Well, we really changed things up in our basement last night & I wanted to share with you. First are the before photos, which I was actually pretty happy with. This first one (below) was taken at Christmas time:

And here is my office before. (below) I was really in the mood for something a little more "industrial chic" since it's just everywhere right now, so I think you'll be really surprised at the changes!!

And below is what it looks like now, "after." With the exposed pipes & electrical in the ceiling it really gives the cool vintage-warehouse feel we were going for. Much less cottage, much more modern. ;) ;)

The wood laminate floors were torn up to expose ORIGINAL CEMENT FLOORING!!!

So really what happened, was my parent's washing machine kirked out in the middle of the night. (We are living in my parents' basement for 2 more weeks until we close on our house) The washing machine is a stackable on the floor above us. Well, sometime in the mioddle of the night it decided to just start pumping us with water. And I mean water.

My husband & I slept through it until we heard my mom running down the stairs yelling at us to wake up at 4 AM. I got out of bed & went into the main area & it was literally like a RAIN STORM. The ceiling was falling down on us & thank God Christian (our toddler) was okay in his bedroom (Some ceiling fell down in there but not over the crib.)

I'm usually really amazing in crisis situations but this time, once Christian was upstairs & I went back down stairs to try to save stuff, I was just so overwhelmed. I didn't know what to save!! laptops, printer, phones, all electronics were DONE... I immediately grabbed a sentimental photo & ran it to our room where it was dry. and oh hahaha the next thing I saved were my Style Files. ( But how sad is it that all of the pages I'd clipped out to go into the files for like the past 8 months (I'm so behind) got soaked.?! ) Then it was my chairs. Then I sort of wandered a bit just shaking my head (My SOAKING wet head.) in ANKLE DEEP water.

SO... a lot of our furniture is ruined and so much work was lost, but we're all safe & sound. It's been a crazy day but I just have to thank God that my little guy is safe & sound. As much as I love my pretty things (and you know I do!!!) it really is just stuff and can be replaced. (Maybe I'm overtired & delusional right now & will cry or be angry later?!!) But I don't think so. We'll be sleeping in the kitchen for two more weeks & then we're moving to our new house so we got a jump strart on our decluttering & packing.

My laptop's dead (this is my mom's computer) so I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging/ reading but it's tough to stay away for you all for long!!

xoxo, (from a slap happy & silly)
lauren

Need to Clear My Head

Well, my husband & I have been doing some budgeting & are trying to save up for a house & have done the math & are looking at a little over a year from now. But this is at practically breakneck pace & only if the market keeps doing what it's doing. So many things need to align & we've just created this insanely packed & strict schedule to get it all done & my head's spinning so I need to relax. Hence, the photos of relaxing rooms. :) (from Domino)

We just sold our townhome this summer & have moved with our toddler into my parents' house. It was a tough choice for us but one we felt we had to make. We love to relax at home, do projects, entertain, have houseguests, etc. & we've had to give a lot of that up.

My parents are great but it's still a tough situation. It's going better than I thought it would though, and in the past 4 months (we moved in July) I've gotten my interior design business to a point I thought I wouldn't reach for years. Career-wise it's been amazing for us. It's also a really humbling experience. In the design industry, at first I almost wanted to hide the fact that I live in my parents' basement because I'm definitely slightly embarrassed about it, but I've realized that we all have to get started somehow, so I'm out! :)

By nature, both my husband & I are doers. We make our decisions & then execute them right away. We purchased our townhome weeks before our wedding in 2005 & spent the week before our wedding moving. Our parents warned us that the market was too high but we didn't care. We had a plan that we could ride it for 5-7 years in that house.

Enter baby. Unexpected baby. Well, that really moved our timeline up a bit. We figured out that we wanted the house & the yard & all of that & that if we stayed in our townhome, we'd never save up for it quickly enough. My parents have a walkout basement with 2 bedrooms, a living room & an office... so, we sold our townhouse, taking a huge loss, a deep breath and moved in with my parents.

We're back on track & have our plan & it's just all sort of sinking in for me right now. What we need to do to get there- how we need to work our tails off yet somehow still have good qaulity time with eachother & not wish our time away because we can't ever get it back.

I'm in a good spot though, just a bit overwhelmed. We know what needs to be done & now we're just doing it. It's only going to make us stronger. (Haha, did I just give myself a pep-talk?!)

So, in the future, you can expect to see photos of my Christmas tree in the basement, our little basement house & you might hear me complaining about spider crickets in the Spring.

xoxo,
Lauren