I'm a little late sharing this weeks Pin of the Week, but I still wanted to share this amazing Pin. Pinterest Pin of the Week, is where I share my favorite Pin of whatever has been on my mind during the week: Decor, DIY, Gardens and Food and much more. This week with all the amazing weather we've been experiencing in Northern California, I'm all about pampering myself a little. Whether its going out and having a Mani & Pedi date with Girlfriends or your Sister (just had ones of those dates on Saturday) or scheduling a DIY Mani & Pedi with yourself, now's the time to have fun and go super duper bright with nail polish colors! It's just more fun, trust me! 

(via Pinterest)

Lighting Ideas: Boys Bedroom

I'm still on the hunt for lighting for our entire house, so far I've shared our ideas for lighting for the following spaces: Outdoors, Living Room, Dining Room, Laundry & Mudroom and Hallway. This week, I'm focusing of lighting for our boys. It seems most lighting for boys, is super cheesy & themed and by now I'm sure you know I'm not big on themes. Now if you have a girl, you have it so easy! A lovely chandelier and bam you done! Moms of little boys like myself have to struggle and dig down deep to find fun grow with my lighting. Thankfully RH Baby & Child, PB Kids and Land of Nod all have a great selection of affordable kids lighting and no one is paying me to say this. This is 100% Katrina's opinion, yeah I just refereed to myself in the third person. 

1. PB Kids 2. Land of Nod 3. Land of Nod 4. Land of Nod 5. PB Kids

I'll let you in on a little secret, I've already chosen the lighting for Avery's room in the above list, can you guess which one? I pretty much adore it and know he'll love it for years to come! I can't wait to seeing this bad boy hanging up in his room! Now for Tabari, I'm so undecided and its mostly his decision. My input about the lighting is mostly about cost and how it will look for the over all look and feel of his bedroom, you know looking at the bigger picture. I'm going to share with him the latest lights I've narrowed down for him and go from there, since he nixed my original ideas! lol I don't want to stifle his individual creativity so I'm not going to tell him which lighting I prefer. So it will be interesting to see which one of these he likes and then we'll go from there. Right now, I'm leaning towards 2 & 5. I think  2 is so fun, they come in various colors so a color more his taste would be a must. I also like 5, vintage looking rulers turned into lighting, yes please! I think this would be a great grown with me into my teen years light fixture. 

In addition to overhead lighting, I'm on the hunt for task lighting for Tabari's desk and lighting for his nightstand. Avery's still pretty little, so I'm not sure if he'll be in need of a table lamp, but never say never. I love these task lights below for Tabari and planned on ordering two for his room, sadly the red won't be available for shipping until August....so I'm not sure if we'll 'wait it out' or keep it moving. 

(PB Kids)

This simple task light below from Land of Nod is also another option. 

(Land of Nod)

I also like the TRAL work lamp from Ikea, with a good price. If Tabari wants color, I can always spray paint them a fun color. 

(Ikea)

Which light fixture do you like most for a boys bedroom? Is there a 'Go To' kids lighting place, I need to check out?

** Also make sure you check out my post from yesterday, I think I hit jack pot and discovered the perfect grey paint, read more about it here **

Perfect Shade of Grey

For the past several months my purse has been overflowing with paint chip samples in every shade grey you can imagine: brown grays, blue grays, purple grays and pale grays. I'm sure it comes as no surprise we decided to paint the inside our of home grey again as you may remember every bedroom was a shade of grey and our living room & dining area were painted a greige color (beige + grey) This time around we decided to stick to a few main paint colors for our entire inside. I know that sounds boring but it really helps our small house flow from room to room and its no biggie to me to repaint if I get bored with a color. I love that paint is one of the most budget friendly updates you can make in your home, all it take is an afternoon. 

I recently made a pact to add no more paint chips to my growing stash and look at each color one by one and then get samples of the colors I like best, but I could only buy three paint samples.I think confusion can start to happen when you buy several paint samples and its so easy to do since they range in price from $2.99 and up. However once you start putting over four or five paint samples on your wall it gets harder to make a decision. My paint samples sitting in our kitchen windowsill. I love buying those cheapo sponge paint brushes when applying paint swatches, zero cleanup. 

The two colors I liked the most for our living room / dining room and hallway I did large test squares of paint on our still un-primed laws walls. I was immediately drawn to the lighter shade of grey, since our dining room gets less natural light than our living room because of our front porch. I knew that going with the light shade would look pretty. The interesting thing is the dark shape didn't look that dark the paint card. Oh and the french door you see leads out to our laundry room / mudroom addition. Once our new exterior door is installed, the laundry room will be filled with light, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Now before for I show you our in progress painted living room and dining areas, here's a quick reminder of how things were shaping up. Baseboards and trim our our doorways were being installed. 

A view of our newly installed crown molding in our living room, in love. 

And now for our in progress pictures with our freshly painted walls, color I used is called Designer Grey. More details about our wall color in a few. Are you blown away with the color? The colors is the perfect soft and subtle grey with no funky undertones of purple of blue or even brown. Just a purely lovely grey. In case your wondering they'll be crown molding going up in our dining room that will match our living room after our kitchen is installed. Hasani and I plan on to DIY crown molding in the rest of the house, hopefully we can get the bedrooms done before we move in, crossing my fingers it goes smooth. 

Edit: The paint on the glass panes will be removed before we move in! 

Below is a picture taken inside our living room looking into our dining room. I'm so happy we decided to widen the opening between the dining room and living room, it really makes the space feel so much more open but not to open since we wanted to keep the integrity of our little rancher. 

Here's a view of our new trim work on the doors, all the doors in or home have the exact trim work. I love all the detail in the moldings, makes me heart beat fast. 

I originally found this paint color from Meeks Lumbar - but my original paint chip sample went missing. Cue tears, however I do have a picture of the paint color we used for our Living / Dining / Hallway and Both Boys bedrooms! I'm not sure what color the brand was since I had the paint swatch colored matched at Sherwin Williams, the color is called Designer Grey. If your looking for a perfect soothing grey write this color down, better yet save this picture and take the code in to Sherwin Williams and buy a sample of this paint! Trust me you won't be disappointed. It dries more true grey than the sample dot on my paint. 

Before I forget, our trim color is Swiss Coffee by Kelly Moore, color matched at Sherwin Williams. Its the perfect creamy bright white without looking to blinding white. The color on the right in the picture (above) is our bedroom & laundry room color by Gildden Smooth Stone again color matched to Sherwin Williams. Another pretty grey and slightly different tone of grey than Designer Grey. 

Below is our master bedroom, and a peak into our addition which leads to our new walk-in closet and master bathroom. Once our new french doors are installed, the space will make more sense in pictures. I love how our new addition flows so well in our bedroom it feels like the space was always there. 

Another view of our master bedroom, and a sneak peak at our interior doors. I pretty much love them, and have way to much fun opening and closing them. 

Things are really starting to move along in our home and its feeling like a house again! So far I'm loving all our choices and so glad Hasani & I both love the two grey interior paint colors we selected for our home. I'm so happy I found the perfect grey (for our home) from a paint swatch that was hanging inside my purse for months! I even love names of both grey paints we choose Designer Grey & Smooth Stone. 

What do you think so far? Are you in the process of painting a room in your home? What colors are you leaning towards?

Pin of the Week

Pinterest Pin of the Week, is where I share my favorite Pin of whatever has been on my mind during the week: Decor, DIY, Gardens and Food and much more. This week I'm dreaming of planting a little indoor herb garden for my kitchen. I love the idea of having fresh herbs right in my kitchen for meals. 

(via Pinterest)

Lighting Ideas: The Hallway

I'm back with my lighting ideas series for my home so far I've covered the living room, dining room, laundry/mudroom, outdoor lighting. We are in need of lighting for our entire house and I don't want to cave and throw up boob lights everywhere, after all it wasn't that long ago I removed all the boob lights one by one. Our hallway always felt poorly lit because we only had one light, so I made sure when the electricians were out to have them wire for two overhead light fixtures.  

1. Home Depot  2. Home Depot 3. Home Depot 4. Home Depot 5. Lowes

I wanted to stay budget friendly since these lights are 'just in the hallway' and not an actual focal point in a room, I looked for lighting that was $50.00 and under. It's always interesting searching for flush mount lighting because most of it either ugly or a boob light. For our hallway lighting I'm most drawn to 3 & 4 and 5. I've recently seen 4 in person and I loved it, its classic and modern at the same time, but its at the very top of my budget so we'll see. I also like 3 but it has poor online reviews, 5 is simple and sleek. 

What style do you prefer? Have you seen any amazing lighting ideas for hallways?

Inspiration for Our Kitchen

I've been sharing lots of updates on the exterior or our house the past few days: new front door, exterior paint job and front door color inspiration. If your new to my blog, a quick reminder our home is going under a huge rebuilding transformation after a fire to our home last July. As many of you may already know before the fire, we were in the midst of starting our kitchen transformation: just installed new counters and bought a new five burner gas range! I loved the range and I only had a chance use it a handful of times and never got a change to even blog about it. But that's life this experience has been life changing and has helped my grow as a person. 

So now its time to move things back in side for a bit and focus on the inspiration I used for our kitchen design. Basically I wanted to design a mini dream kitchen on a mini budget. 

My Mini Dream Kitchen Wish List: White Wood Cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling. A mixture of glass door cabinets & solid cabinet doors. Stainless steal wall mount hood, White Subway tile and floating shelves.Light kitchen counters in either Solid Surface or Quartz & 'U' Shape kitchen instead of our old L shape with a floating fridge layout. Not to much to ask for, right? 

I love glass doors in kitchens, they bounce so much light around and dress up the look of everyday dishes & glass

(via Pinterest)

I love this snapshot of this kitchen. lovely wall mount hood, subway tile that goes all the way up and floating shelves. I love the how well glass doors and floating shelves work together! I would love floating shelves for cake stands, pretty mixing bowls & cookbooks. 

(via Pinterest)

U Shape Kitchen with lots of storage and tall upper cabinets. 

(via Pinterest)

A little birdie told me our kitchen may be getting installed late this week (Friday maybe?) or early next week. I can't wait to see the kitchen all come together! 

What's on your dream kitchen mini or large wishlist?

Our Freshly Painted Home

Our house is painted and its lovely, like really lovely! I did a drive by before getting out, totally wanted see our house from all angles. It looks amazing at all angles even with it been completely gated in and with a heap of junk in the front yard and my poor sod that's tore up and dead (cue the tears, you all know I love pretty grass & well kept lawns) Back to our home, after stopping in Home Depot we found the perfect color for our home Behr Pier in satin finish, which our painter color matched to Sherwin Williams (his preferred paint brand) read more choosing the color here. We had the painter all the trim and end board on our exterior a shade of white to match our seamless gutters. 

We absolutely love how the house looks painted in Pier, the color is rich and such a pretty shade of medium grey, but not to dark grey. In the pictures below the color looks a little darker than it appears in person. As you can imagine with all the construction and debris at our house it's hard to get a really good full house shot at the moment. Instead of sharing a bunch of full shots, I'm sharing some good detail shots of our home. I'll share more full shots in the future. I love how everything is flowing together from the Hardie Staggered Shingles, Hardie Lap siding, original brick, new window with grids and craftsman door from Homewood Lumber it's all working together which is such a good feeling. I'm so thrilled all our ideas & selections are working, especially since before the fire we were used to doing updates on our home little by little its been scary & exciting making so many decision all at one time. 

The very front of the house staggered shingles ties in seamlessly with the lap siding. We decided to add the staggered shingles to the very front of the house to break up all the lines of the lap siding. 

Avery's new twin windows

Our kitchen window, I keep picturing a pretty flower box under he window. 

Over the weekend, Hasani and I looked at many paint colors for our front door. If you follow me on a Instagram, then you already know I was having a tough time deciding on what color to paint our front door! Big huge heartfelt thank to everyone who left a comment letting me know which colors they loved! I really appreciate your input. If your on Instagram follow me @mrsclh I'm having so much fun sharing daily pictures of my life with everyone and getting to know people & readers of my blog and discovering so many amazing 'new to me bloggers' which is so great, love having a little 'insta-community.' If your not on Instagram yet, you should be, lol. 

Once our front door is painted, I'll share pictures crossing my fingers it looks amazing. In the meantime you can read more about our front door color inspiration here.

What do you think of our freshly painted house? Are you working on any painting projects around your house. 

Pin of the Week

Pinterest Pin of the Week, is where I share my favorite Pin of whatever has been on my mind during the week: Decor, DIY, Gardens and Food and much more. This week I can't stop thinking about potted fruit trees namely lemon trees, orange tress and even cherry tress! All in pretty pots with easy access to the yummy fruit. 

(via Pinterest)

Front Door Color Inspiration

I had had to share house updates every Friday, but now that our home is moving full speed ahead during the re-building process, I'll be doing updates throughout the week. Yesterday I shared our new craftsman style front door we picked out for our house along with the paint color we decided to paint our homes exterior with on Monday. This weekend we need to pick out a front door color, our old front door was a fun shade of red called Posh Red (read more about the color here) but this time we around we decided to change things up and go in a new direction. I've been dreaming of a shade of aqua or a shade of green chartreuse to be exact. I think either shade depending on the shade, would look so pretty next to our now deeper grey house. I plan on sharing updated pictures of our house on Monday. 

As a reminder our house is a medium deep grey with white trim, so part of me thinks our front door should be a suitable shade of aqua. The inspiration pictures be having me thinking it good work and still give us a pop of color while walking up to our front door without hitting you over the head with color.

Blue Aqua Shade 

(via forum.homeone.com.au)

Picture our siding darker.....the aqua turquoise shade could really 

(via Pinterest)

(via Pinterest)

This pretty deep aqua shade is so pretty! I love how the color pops against the white trim & deep green house exterior. 

(via Pinterest)

I love this warm grey shade of aqua, looks so pretty on Caitlin Creer Interiors. She painted her front door Benjamin Moore Cloudy Sky. 

via Caitlyn Creer

Green Chartreuse Shade

The chartreuse shade front dolor maybe not be for everyone, but for some reason I'm really drawn to the color and think it would look so pretty as our front door color. My sister thinks its an awful color for a front door! But I know finding the right shade of chartreuse will be hard, I don't want to venture into the too bright and in your face category. I want to stay in the that's pretty and cheerful instead. The doors below have caught my eye. 

(via www.BHG.com) 

Same door as above, the color below maybe closer to the actual color. I like the shade above a little better. 

(via www.bhg.com)

This dark grey color really helps me picture how a shade of chartreuse green would look on our home, it could work! The front of this house is more formal than ours and as more white around he doorway will, but still helps me imagine it. 

(via Pinterest)

(via Pinterest)

I've noticed the front door colors I'm most drawn to are the same colors we are using inside our home: grays, aqua to deep turquoise and chartreuse. Below our peacock blues lamps I found for a steal at a local consignment shop & fabric we are using as drapes & pillows. 

What ever color we end up choosing for our front door it will have to 'play nice' with our original brick on our porch. This weekend Hasani & I have some serious homework we have to get done.

What do you think are you on Team Aqua? or Team Chartreuse? 

Our Home: New Front Door

Big thanks to everyone on the comments about out hardwood floors! I can't wait to share more pictures so you can get a better idea of how amazing they look in person. Our new front door to our house was installed on Tuesday and I'm head over heals in love with it, its what dreams are made up of, at least my dreams lol. Even though I'm super excited and happy with our new door, my heart will always miss our old front door we put so much love into it. With that said, before I got into all the details of our new front door I want to share more details about our old front door. When we bought our home four years ago we inherited a solid wood front door that had see better days, the bottom half of the door was badly Sun damaged and the varnish was all but wore off on top that there were scribbles on the front door. After living with the door unpainted for quite awhile, decided to paint the door Posh Red by Valspar (if your looking for a pretty pop of red, check this color out!) you can read more about our front door transformation here. 

Here's our old front door before we painted it.

After we painted our door red to go with our grey house, it gave the perfect pop of color to the front of the house and upped the  cuteness factor curb appeal. As you know curb appeal is a good thing. 

Now for our new front door, way back in February Hasani and I went door shopping for exterior and interior doors. We found the exact doors we were looking for at Homewood Lumbar in Loomis, CA. They had a great selection of doors and were super excited to find the exact style we wanted. For our front door, we both loved the natural light our old door provided and wanted to find a door that would give us lots of natural light and tie in with our interior doors so they coordinated. Here's the perfect solid wood door for our home, it lets the perfect amount of light in and fits perfectly with our 1956 rancher style. We are going with rancher meets a mixture of craftsman style, so I guess you could call it modern rancher craftsman style?

I love how the door looks with our new shingles, so glad we used a combination of lap & shingle siding our our house to break up all the straight lines. The combination look so pretty together! 

I'm pretty much in love with this door, from the outside & inside! Here's a sneak peak at our our new interior door! Remember we doubled the doorway between our living room / kitchen area to create a more open feel, as you can see the doorway is starting to get trimmed out. The french door you see in the background leads to our laundry room addition, this is exactly what I pictured a few months ago when I shared my drawing our our kitchen, read more here. 

View from inside our living room looking out to our entry (which is all in one room)

The pretty view from our hallway to our front door makes so happy! I just love it! Sorry the below pictures are so grainy, we've been using our iPhone to take pics, as you can imagine our home is VERY dusty so we keep the good camera at the apartment. 

Almost all of our new interior & exterior doors have been installed and as soon as they are I'll be sharing a long door post about all those pretty doors! And yes my friends, doors are so pretty. Do you remember this picture I shared a few months about when I was talking about my ideas for our living room? Crazy how our new door is very similar to the one below! I can't wait to come home to my house and feel like it gave me a hug when I walked in the door. 

via Pinterest

Next Hasani and I need to choose our front door color. Looks like, we'll be buying more tester paint samples. In the past two weeks I bought 6 paint samples, looks like I'm building up my paint stash once again. Can't complain about that. 

Also out house finally got painted on Wednesday, today the painter will be painting out the trim. Click here for a reminder about the color we decided to go with. 

Don't you just love our new front door? Any front door color suggestions, since our how will be a med-dark-ish grey? Feel free to include links to ideas!