Are you still looking for us here? Well, we've moved!
Come on over for a visit!

Psst... Click on the Beth Scott Design tab at the top of the Stories of the Scotts home page to see some samples of my design work.

WE'RE MOVING!

Dear Reader,

As you may have heard, we're moving.

No, we're not packing up our freshly unpacked boxes and moving to another street, but I had you going there for a second, didn't I? We're changing our blog address! The White Rockers will be combined with Adventures with Alston to what will become The Scott Stories. With a new baby on the way, I need things to be a little more versatile than they are right now. Posting house stuff over here and posting family/life stuff over there has proven nonsensical and the two have started to overlap. So, in an effort to simplify my life, I’m combining everything into one neat little package. All of my posts from The White Rockers will be imported over and I’ll be sharing all of our stories in one place.

I will leave this blog up with a final post and link to redirect you to our new "home". For those of you who follow in Google Reader, or subscribe to the RSS feed, our new web address will be www.storiesofthescotts.blogspot.com. Please update your feeds, as I don’t want to leave any of you behind! I wanted to give you all a heads up--the official address change is set to take place Wednesday morning.

Please bear with me as I work to overhaul my blogging life.
With love,
Beth

The Brick, Part II

Forever ago, or what seems like forever ago, I wrote about the changes that Patrick and I wanted to make to our soon-to-be new house. After the home-buying process discouraged me, I tried to take a break from planning renovation projects on a house that wasn't even mine yet.
Fast forward 5 months and one successful house purchase...
Its getting close to Spring and the warmer weather has us anxious to get to work outside. While there is still much to do on the inside, I think some work on the ol' curb appeal would be just the right thing to kick me back into renovation/decoration mode.

So here's what we're working with...



Patrick already mowed down the heavily over-grown monkey grass and I ripped up the scraggly bushes in the brick planter out front. All we need is a couple of hours with some heavy duty machinery to rip up the rest of the shrubbery and we'll be ready to paint!

There are 3 different types of siding on the house, which makes it look messy, so I would like to redo all of the siding to make it all the same. I'm not sure how much that will set us back, so we may end up painting over whats there just for a temporary fix. Eventually we will also get around to replacing the windows, but thats a whole lot of money that we're not quite ready to spend.

We know that we want to keep the front door and shutters black. I would like to repaint them to freshen them up a bit and would love to have a new front door. Preferable something like this one, with a nice shiny coat of black paint.

(Found similar ones here and here too, but I think I may be able to find one at a local salvage place.)

If you'll notice, in the far right of the top picture of the house, you can see our detached gargage peaking out. It was built much later than the house and is covered in vinyl siding. I would much prefer to leave the garage as is, so we're going to try to paint the house a color that complements the existing color on the garage. Here it is in all its glory. Patrick loves having his own space to store all of his tools, hunting gear, and other manly equiptment.

With swatchbook in hand, I went outside on a day with fair weather to try to match to color of the garage. I compared paint samples to the siding in both sun and shade until I was happy that I had found its match. Then I chose some colors that I thought may complement the color of the garage. Below is my color pallette. The first color is the closest to basic white that I could find in the Ben Moore virtual paint deck. The trim and gutters will remain white as they are now. Then of course, is basic black for the doors and shutters. The third color, Natural Cream, is the closest I came to matching the siding color. The rest are different options for painting the brick and siding on the house. As you can tell, we're sticking with a neutral color and I really like the grayish khaki colors. I'm hoping to pick up a few paint samples very soon so we can do few test patches on the house.

The weather is supposed to be lovely this weekend, so hopefully the hubs and I can get outside and get to work!

Lazy

Cable Knit Throw from Restoration Hardware. Isn't it dreamy? I want to curl up under one. Too bad they're sold out.

I can not get motivated.

I have tons of little projects sitting around waiting for me to complete them.
Pillows waiting to be sewn...
Candle sticks waiting to be painted...
Artwork waiting to be hung...
Furniture waiting to be moved to a new home...
Wait. That's Patrick's department, not mine.

Anyway, I've slowly but surely been working in Alston's room. Its just so hard to come home at night and think about crafting or decorating when the kitchen sink is overflowing with dishes and there are Mr. Potato Head parts strewn everywhere... And I still have to fix dinner... fishsticks and mac n' cheese is not an acceptable meal good excuse more than once a week. After I finish dinner, load the dishwasher and pick up body parts, all I want to do is curl up and watch Glee.

Fortunately, I'm baking fish for dinner and did the dishes this morning so I'll have time to get a few things done. Unfortunately, I'll be cleaning out my closet and putting away clean clothes.

Yarn Lamp Shade

Back in this post, I showed you a picture of my living room and my thrift store lamp with a pretty DIY pretty yarn lampshade. What you didn't know was that it was only half finished! I started working on that project when I was pregnant with Alston and ran out of yarn half-way through. I never had any motivation to finish it because I didn't have a lamp to put it on. But once I found this lovely mustard yellow beauty, I vowed to finish it after we moved into our new house.

Patrick said I never would... But I did. And it took about 20 minutes.

I originally got the idea from Martha. I found a great barrel style lampshade at my local thrift store. It had a great shape, but the fabric was hiddeous and dirty. So I stripped it down to the wire frame and got busy. I used some wool yarn that I bought for its great texture and color variation. I wanted something with a natural organic look.

I started by tying a tight knot at the top of the frame, closest to one of the vertical wires. Then I pulled the yarn from top to bottom and wrapped it around the outside of the bottom frame. I kept the yarn pretty taunt and made an additional loop around the bottom of the frame. The top of the shade is a bit narrower than the bottom, so I wanted to ensure that wire was covered properly. You can slide the yarn around on the frame to ensure that it is close together and evenly distributed. As I said, I ran out of yarn about half-way though my project. So as soon as I came to the end, I made sure I had enough left to easily tie a tight knot. Whether you stop at the bottom or top, it doesn't make a difference. Double wrapping the bottom wire was not only time-consuming, but it also used a lot more yarn than I expected. I made another trip to Michaels and bought more yarn. I started at the opposite end from where I tied my last knot and began wrapping again, only this time I didn't double loop the bottom wire. I couldn't really tell a difference in the way it looked, but it went much faster and I had more yarn left over at the end. When I finished wrapping the frame, I slid the yarn around so there weren't any gaps and made sure the vertical wires were well hid. (I bent mine in a bit so they wouldn't poke through.)

I think its best to use a fairly straight shade when using yarn, but if you used something wider, like ribbon, you could use any type of lamp shade. As long as it has a structured wire frame and you are able to overlap you ribbon/fabric at the top to ensure the bottom would be adequately covered. Although, you could wrap the yarn around the frame horizontally instead of vertically, like I did.

And there you have it! My lovely yarn lamp shade. Wouldn't you know that Alston knocked that wonderful yellow lamp off the end table and it burst into pieces? My lampshade is currently living on an old brass lamp I also bought at the thrift store, but it just doesn't look the same. I've been searching for a new lamp for my yarn lampshade ever since.

In Limbo

I was still working in the guest bedroom right up until we found out we were expecting.

I'm lying.

I actually quit working in the guest bedroom.

Matching the stain for the bookcase has been too hard. Okay, so I tried once and failed and haven't been back to Lowe's to get more stain yet. It was such a debilitating defeat that I'm considering painting the whole thing instead of tediuosly working to match the stain. I've seen so many great bookcases that are painted and even like the idea of painting the back a different color.

How to Decorate a Bookcase - House Beautiful

So, since the guest bedroom/office will soon be transformed into a nursery, I will be focusing on other parts of the house instead. (Soon as in somewhere in the next nine months.)

As you've already seen, I've been working in Alston's room a bit (here and here). Like every other, its an ongoing project. I've also been storing up ideas for our kitchen makeover. There is a lot that I would like to tackle in there: paint, new hardware, new pantry, new lighting, new window, building an island... the list keeps growing. Also, I'm not completely happy with our living room, so I'm planning to bring in some different furniture pieces. Our bedroom needs a fresh coat of paint and some new accessories. I have some great fabrics that I can't wait to turn into throw pillows in there, but can't decide on a paint color. I love the Benjamin Moore selection from Pottery Barn. I have a hard time making a decision when the choices are endless, so I like having something to help me narrow it down.

Besides all of these things that have been on my to do list for quite some time, I now have to find new homes for all the things that are currently living in our guest bedroom.

Countdown to complete all of these things.... 245 days.

I think I need to make a more substantial to-do list. 

Big News!

Find out over here....
(Its pretty exciting!)