Driving home from dinner on Friday night, Ben and I saw this adorable little puppy crawling in the gutter on the street.  She was completely terrified!

I jumped out of the car and picked her up and we brought her home with the intention of finding her owners over the weekend.  But she didn’t have a collar or tags, and we’ve since come to the conclusion that she was probably abandoned.  She is sweet as pie and gets along great with our other animals, but we just cannot keep one more pet in this house . . . so we’re trying to find her a good home!  She’s sweet and loving and seems to be healthy (no fleas, no worms).  If you know anyone who’d be willing to rescue this totally adorable stray, please let us know!

On Thanksgiving Ben and I painted our bedroom (well, three of the four walls) with black chalkboard paint. It’s obviously not for everyone, but I am absolutely in love with it. LOVE.

(See what the bedroom used to look like here.) The chalkboard paint was inspired by Jenna Lyons’s Brooklyn Brownstone, which has been featured in both Domino and LivingEtc and coveted by millions. If I could live in any house in the world, it just might be hers. (Or maybe this one — Steventon House, on the property where Jane Austen lived!)

The rug and grey roller shades are from IKEA and — guess what, Mom? That’s what you got me for Christmas! Thanks! There are still a lot of other things in transition in the bedroom — like the bedding, for example. For now I just got rid of the old duvet cover, replaced the old sheets with the ones from our guest bed, and dug the blanket out of the back of a closet. I actually like the look, but we are badly in need of a new feather comforter! I’d also like to replace the nightstand with a gold table I’ve got my eye on, and I’ve got a new bedside lamp in my sights too — both from my absolute favorite store, Jayson Home & Garden. It’s almost enough to make me pack up and move to Chicago!

Over here I painted my old green dresser black as well, and the lamp — which was a steal from a Weatherford antiques store — got a coat of black paint too.  The Bertoia chair is shortly to be replaced by a gorgeous rust-colored velvet armchair — I can’t wait! And the antique Belgian painting on the dresser is my Christmas present from Ben! (Yes, I obviously have a problem waiting for Christmas…)

On the wall over here is a vintage UK bus roll from Economica’s etsy shop. I’d been wanting one for a long time and this one is just beautiful.

I cannot keep the cats out of this bedroom. They love it almost as much as I do. And have I mentioned that I love it? Love love love it.

Okay, on to the next project: A month or so ago we wallpapered one wall of the dining room with the Cole & Son woods wallpaper you see everywhere.

(See what the dining room used to look like here.) As soon as we started hanging it, I kept saying “omigosh, I love this even more than I thought I would!” We also took out the area rug in here to expose the wood floors and replaced the dark red curtains with some light, airy panels from IKEA to brighten the whole room up a bit. That part of the makeover at least was cheap!

As soon as I got over my fear of putting holes in the wallpaper, we hung a couple sets of antlers — which I somehow find simultaneously repulsive and awesome.

The mercury glass is usually the centerpiece in here, but we add the red for the holidays.

And over on the other side of the wallpapered wall is this fantastic mailbox — another score from the Weatherford antiques store!

These were definitely the two most dramatic changes around the house recently, but I’ve got some other stuff to show you too, so check back soon. You know, we’ll probably never be able to move now, since there aren’t too many people who’d be into black walls and wallpaper — but that’s okay by me! I’ll guess I’ll just have to stay here forever!

Don’t let their cuteness fool you — they are some serious troublemakers!  These next few are of Murphy . . .

And here’s Ollie (his fur is pretty short in this first one — you’ll see it’s grown out quite a bit since then):

This one cracks me up:

This one too! 

And here’s a few more all scrambled up — it’s getting to the point where it’s even hard for me to tell them apart in photos!

I have to admit, they’re a pretty great pair.  I don’t know what I’d do without them!  (Except maybe clean less . . . )

Another bonus: it’s FREE!  Here’s the link!

Spotted today on Design Mom (via lifehacker)

Gorgeous, right?  We went all the way up to the top.

Here’s the view of the White House from the top of the Monument:

And the Lincoln Memorial:

Our shadow:

This sign made us chuckle . . .

There was a neat exhibit in the top of the Monument:

I love these next three shots, all taken at the base . . .

These were taken from the Lincoln Memorial:

Ahhh, and here’s my lovely husband, desecrating a treasured national symbol . . .

Just a couple more shots, this time from sunset:

And finally, we may have missed the inauguration, but we did get to see the cleanup!

More coming soon!

. . . I wanted to pass along these fabulous FREE gift tags, from Inside a Black Apple:

They’re adorable!  Download them here, then just print ‘em out and stick ‘em on your packages for an extra special touch!

Happy wrapping!

This is my favorite ornament: my husband’s childhood handiwork . . .

Hope you all are enjoying the holiday season!

Well, we had a go at it, but you’ll notice there was a bit of a problem:

The patio was about two or three inches below ground level!  Oops…  So, to our utter dismay, we had to tear everything out, add a bunch more sand, and then lay the flagstones all over again.  After a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day of hard work, we managed to fix it.  And after another day of back-breaking labor, we even managed to get some green stuff planted around it!  So here’s what it looks like now:

Much better, right?!  You can see we’re not quite finished filling in all the cracks with sand, but this time it’s at least level with the ground!  And I think the plants around it add a lot.  Here’s a wider shot:

We tore out the overgrown bush along the fence in the back, dug a new bed, and planted a magnolia tree:

We also planted some fast-growing jasmine vines along the fence there, so hopefully we’ll get our privacy back soon!

Ben and I are really quite proud of ourselves for doing all this work — physical labor is not my strong suit, nor is patience, waiting for all these things to grow!  But we are rewarding ourselves for our hard work by hiring someone to take care of Phase 3 in the back yard: putting in a deck!  The contractors started today, so by Thanksgiving, we should have a gorgeous cedar deck where this not-so-impressive view used to be…

I can’t wait to show it to you!   (Oh, and don’t worry — sod is in the plans for the spring!)

She’s got such a tough life!

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I don’t have much of a green thumb; I’m actually more of the black thumb variety.  And while I flatter myself that I did a pretty decent job of decorating the interior of our house, I am absolutely clueless when it comes to designing a landscape.  I have no idea what grows in Texas soil, what should be planted in sun, what should be planted in shade, what needs lots of watering and what doesn’t, what will stand up to two blundering sheepdogs . . .

So, to save myself the trial-and-error ordeal, we hired a landscape designer to come in and tell us what to do.  And boy, did he!  Daniel from Colorful Impressions gave us a killer design for both the front and back of our house, keeping our lifestyle and budget in mind.  Now all we have to do is make it happen!  Our plan is to do things in phases, starting with the back yard — which is in the most dire need of help!  So we got started last weekend by doing some planting in the corner of our back yard around our giant pecan tree.  Here’s a before shot:

Ick, right?!  It was an ugly mess.  But after a very productive trip to the North Haven Gardens nursery and a long, hard weekend of tilling, digging, planting, and watering, it now looks like this:

Much better, right?!  For those of you interested in this sort of thing, I’ll tell you that we planted yaupon holly, oak leaf hydrangea, spring bouquet viburnum, and — my favorite — an oshio beni Japanese maple that I’ve named Jasper.  We also planted lots and lots of little vinca plants, which will hopefully grow into some nice ground cover.  The vinca is camouflauged in these shots by the thousands of pecan tree leaves that are falling on it, but you can see it (and the viburnum bushes) a little better in this shot:

The best news of all is that everything we planted is still alive after one week!  That’s a pretty big accomplishment for us — both the dogs and we managed to keep from destroying it!  We’re so high on our success that we’re already looking ahead to the next project: laying a flagstone patio off of our garage . . .

Yikes.  Please pray for us! 

(And bonus points to you if you can spot all the dog toys in this shot — I see three!)