Faux Wainscoting

What do you do when the walls in your 1/2 bath show water drips and you love flat paint?
Install wainscoting and paint it with enamel paint.

For this project, I opted for a faux wainscoting treatment since a real wainscoting would turn this small project into a larger, more expensive project. It's real wood chair rail and real wood panel molding installed on top of sheetrock.

By painting it the trim color, the wainscoting compliments the traditional style of the home, adds architectural interest and makes the bathroom feel larger. Walls and ceiling painted with soft khaki complete the look and take this once shabby 1/2 bath to stylish and chic!

1/2 Bath Before

The Table Top and Party Tips

In decorating our Table Top for a dinner party this Spring, I found inspiration from the time of year. A small bird figurine, tiny glass eggs, a couple of nests along with fake (but real looking) greenery mingle with the candlelight and the outdoor lights hanging on the fence outside to give a soft, glowing, etheral effect.

Party Tip #1 Use what you have to set your table. This china pattern, handed down from my great Aunt, was service for eight. It was impossible to find more pieces at the price I wanted to pay, so I searched high and low for a different pattern that I could mix with my collection. And believe it or not, I found a simple china set at Target! The basic white plate is rimmed with a tan edge and it works really well with the olive green and gray pattern from my Aunt. And since olive green and gray don't seem to work for a Spring pallete, I added white battenburg lace napkins for a lighter look.

Party Tip #2
Find ways to use flowers from your garden! The gardenias growing in my back yard were so fragrant and beautiful the day of our party and they matched my color scheme as well! I did not have many to start with, but I found that even one gardenia adds a wonderful fragrance. Hint: don't cut gardenias more than a day before your party, they turn pretty quickly, even though their fragrance lingers for many days.

Party Tip #3: Fill your water glasses with ice (just ice, no water) before your guests arrive--it's one less thing you have to do after everyone has arrived, giving you more time to mingle. By the time you are ready to start serving, the ice will have melted part way so that all you need to do is add is a little water or maybe none at all. Voila! Very Icy Cold Water!

Bookshelf Tweaking

 

Arranging bookshelves can be tricky. My general rule is that bookshelves have books. Then to add personality to the space, decorative items should be added. The books give the eye a place to rest, add balance and thus the shelves avoid looking cluttered.

And by using only items that were already in the house, WE DECORATED GREEN!

Green Sabrine, Pink Monique

My sister, Monique, and I were color coded as children. We were only 15 months apart and "two peas in a pod" as Mom would say. And even though we were as different as two peas could be (she with blond ringlets and brown eyes, me with straight as a stick brown hair and green eyes) it was necessary to keep things separated for things like toothbrushes, cups, clothes and tiny,colored Easter chicks. Hence we became color coded -- I was Green Sabrine and she was Pink Monique. The rhyming helped everyone around us to remember whose color was whose and so the color coding has stayed with us all our lives!

What's interesting about my color coded name, Green Sabrine, is that I have always been a "Green" decorator. Before the name Green came to mean what it means today, I was "Using What You Have to Make Your House a Home" and "Decorating on a Shoestring." I have shown clients how paint, elbow grease and a little imagination can do wonders for garage sale finds, hand-me-downs and heavy trash day items.


This corner cabinet came from a house being torn down and with a little paint, it has been transformed! So even if your home doesn't have a state of the art solar panel system, you can still be Green with your home furnishings by thinking outside the box, finding new uses for old things and adding character to your home with your Green Thumb.

p.s. After my sister-in-law lost everything she owned during Hurricane Ike, I helped her refurnish her home with items I purchased mostly at the Salvation Army auction. Pictures and techniques I used will be posted in a later blog, so check back soon . . .

If I Had A Blog, What Would I Write About?

This is the question I pondered the eve of my 47th birthday. I have been decorating and designing for many years, but starting a blog seems a little daunting because what exactly would I write about? (And will anyone read it?)

So here we are, on my birthday, and surprisingly I’ve decided that this blog will be about my life as a decorator and designer_-- imagine that! There are stories, ideas and tips that go with every project and I hope you find the information interesting and helpful. This blog will no doubt be peppered with real life because decorating and designing is my life, it is my passion and what I enjoy doing most. But please excuse the roughness of this baby blog, it will shape up as time goes on, I promise!

p.s. My next post will be entitled Green Sabrine, Pink Monique ....sound interesting?