Don't matter if it's pink or white!

So, I took this picture and I just had to share it with you. Yes, obviously I'm obsessed with our dog, Izzy, but beyond that, I loved the contrast of her white fur on the pink carpet. It makes a great image. I think if you look closely enough, you'll realize we're surrounded by great design - it just depends on how you frame it. Let us know if you've found any examples of accidental design in your daily life.

Summer Grilling Recipes

Spring is here and as the temperature continues to warm, I'm finding myself 'pinning' recipes for the grill like mad!  We wanted to share with you a few recipes from our Pinterest Page that we're excited to try.  

Grilled Garlic and Herb Shrimp 

from All Recipes (Update: we tried this tonight. OMG, it's DELICIOUS)

Grilled Tomato and Peach Salad 

from She Knows Miso Vegan

Grilled Avocados 

from Better Homes and Gardens

For the full recipes follow our Summer Recipe Board on our Pinterest Page. Hopefully, we'll have better weather soon, meaning we can get to our grills more. If you try any of these recipes, let us know what you think!

P.S. we've started a Summer Drinks Board too!

Welcome to our new home!

So we finally have a new blog post for you. Sorry we've been away for a while, but I think (hope) you'll be happy with the reason why - we've been working on several projects. As we promised, here is an update on some of the work we've done at home. 

We had this atrocious entry hall (sorry whoever was here before us). An entry hall should welcome your guests and give them a hint of what to expect within your home. Our entry hall had this linoleum floor that felt . . . well, cheap. It wasn't welcoming and I HOPE it didn't give anyone a hint of what to expect inside the rest of our home. 

We couldn't take up the linoleum so we had to figure out a way to cover it up.  A simple throw rug wouldn't do it for us, because we didn't want to see even the slightest hint of linoleum peeping out from under it.  Also, see if YOU could find a throw rug that would make this floor look good!  We decided to look at Flor carpet tiles.  It is a high traffic area and we knew if a tile got dirty we could either lift it up to clean it or replace it if it was beyond hope.  We ended up selecting the "Fedora" style in flannel and charcoal. At $8 a square it wasn't bad.  We signed up for their emails and also got free shipping, which saved us a ton of money.

Our original idea was to alternate tiles to create stripes.  However, when the tiles arrived we realized that each square was so big that we would end up with a total of just three stripes across the entry way.  That wasn't going to have the impact we wanted, so we decided to cut the tiles in half.  This was a labor of love!  Matthew found instructions on cutting carpet tile on Apartment Therapy.  You can read the step-by-step instructions here.  We also invested a carpet knife and a t-square, and we highly recommend these tools.  The results were great.  While not overly difficult it wasn't easy either.  It took a lot of measuring and careful cutting to get the tiles to line up correctly.  Matthew's lack of patience the carpet knife also caused a minor injury, so we recommend being very careful with this tool!

Notice those stripes on the wall?  We actually color matched them and aligned them to the strips on the carpet tiles, but we'll tell you all about that in another post.  Now we have an entry that is inviting and accurately reflects our style.