Every since I painted the inside of our front door a dark grey, I've been itching to paint the inside of our laundry room door a color. Just like the inside of our front door was to pretty to stay white, I felt the same way about our laundry room door. I knew adding a burst of color in our small laundry room / mudroom would look so great in our space. The first color I choose for the door was all wrong a muddy minty color that looked blah in the space. I stopped midway though painting the door knowing the color was all wrong for our home. 

In my home I tend to gravitate towards saturated colors with it comes to my accessories: pillows, drapes etc. So its crazy I thought I liked the muted mint. Back to the paint chip board at Home Depot, I decided to stick with shades of aqua and teal, those colors just fit our home so well. After looking at a bunch of colors I decided on Berh Bali Bliss, I used the paint and primer in one with the semi-gloss finish.

Here's a better full length shot of our laundry room door, this color makes me happy.

We also in the process of making our laundry room more efficient, details and full laundry room mudroom pictures coming to the blog on Monday. Crossing my fingers I'm able to snap some good pictures of this tiny hardworking space.

What do you think of our new door color? Are you attracted to neutral colors or more saturated colors when it comes to your house?    

Bar Cart for Entertaining

Now that were feeling more settled in our home again, one of our plans is to starting entertaining our family and friends over more often. Over the past few months, I've been pinning bar cart idea and table top bar areas, which got me thinking our small home needs a bar cart when we have friends over, like Needs one. Yup, I'm jumping on the bar cart bandwagon. Now that we are able to seat six in our dining room, we really don't have room for a buffet & our thanks to our kitchen remodel we now have plenty of storage (even though I dream of having a butlers pantry one day lol) I envision a bar cart being perfect for various parties: full bar (check) cocoa station (check) soda drink station (check) desert station (check) movie party night (check) popcorn station (check) Can you tell I've planned lots of parties in my head for this year already lol. 

Once I realized a bar cart would be a perfect solution for our home giving us extra movable space, I began my search. I came up empty handed at local thrift stores and then started trying Craigslist. Craigslist in the Sacramento area can be a mixed bag, either overpriced junk or steals that make your heart pound as you anxiously email / text or phone the seller. Sunday I frantically emailed the seller in hopes the bar cart would be all mine and I even negotiated a lower price from $45 to $35 bucks. Not bad considering most bar carts in my area on CL range from $20 - $175. Bar carts in stores like Target, West Elm and Crate & Barrel range from $149 - $799. Me thinks I did pretty good scooping up this cute little bar cart on Craigslist. 

Here's the little bar cart that came home with us. I love its simple A Frame style and its petite size is perfect to tuck into a corner in our dining room or living room. The bar cart is currently covered in faux wood laminate, not the best look. Of course you have to look past the not so cute and see all its potential. 

Of course I have lots of plans for this little guy! Right now I'm leaning towards making it a little glam and going black, glossy black to be exact. I'm also debating changing up the caster feet to something more delicate and vintage. I know your shocked I'm not going white, so am I, but you never known lol. I've rounded up a few bar carts that are so pretty and inspiring to me for my own little carts transformation.

(via Pinterest)

(via Pinterest)

(via Pinterest)

This week I'll be nailing down the details of our bar cart makeover and getting to work. Of course I'm also looking forward to styling our bar cart with lots of goodies: cute straws, pretty glasses and liqueur. Already loving how having a bar cart makes me feel a little more adult as I plan what to buy for its 'full bar' version. 

Do you have a bar cart? On the hunt for one? 

PB&J; Smoothie

Since the beginning of October I've been on a serious smoothie kick, drinking up to two per day. Typically I have a smoothie for breakfast and lunch (M-F) then my regular dinner along with two small snacks. I love how much better I've been feeling energy wise plus losing inches in my waist has been a huge bonus. I'm pretty much hooked on smoothies, for me they are the perfect easy breakfast and lunch. I buy bananas and spinach fresh and all the other fruit frozen (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, pineapples, mango and cherries) For the protein in my smoothie I use either Greek yogurt, Almond milk, Fat free milk or Vanilla Protein powder. Here's one of my go to morning smoothies 

PB&J Smoothie 

What you'll need

2 Cups of Strawberries (frozen or fresh)
1 Banana
2 Teaspoons of Peanut Butter
4 Ounces of Non Fat Greek Yogurt 
(Greek yogurt makes the smoothie crazy thick so I use half yogurt & half milk)
1/2 - 1 cup of Ice 

When I'm blending my smoothie I always throw in my liquid first (milk, almond milk or yogurt) then I add in my fruit, peanut butter and lastly ice. This smoothie is super yummy and crazy thick. Most of my smootie recipes come from the book The Body Reset Diet and Pinterest! 

I hope you try this smoothie and better yet enjoy it!

Have you been making smoothies? What's one of your favorite recipes? 

A Family Affair

For me a house feels more like home when's there's family pictures in it, family pictures tell the personal story of your family (love that) In our home before the rebuild (read more here) we had had our family pictures grouped on three DIY pictures ledges in our entryway in the living room. This time around, I thought our dining room would be the perfect spot to add a collection of family pictures. Here's a reminder of what our dining room looked like a few weeks ago. I was loving how everything has been slowly coming together the past few months, but the blank wall was screaming for some impact. 

I love gallery walls and decided for our wall to do a grid style gallery wall with all frames the same size and all photos black & white. Hasani and I decided on a combination of engagement, wedding and family pictures. 

I'm loving the view of our family photos from our living room and just like I was hoping the photos have impact. 

Have you adding in family gallery walls in your home recently? What did you think of our new family gallery wall?

Kitchen Hardware Installed!

A few months back I shared our mini dream kitchen reveal, at the time I shared our kitchen was missing one important ingredient to make it feel finished....hardware. When I shared our kitchen after, we were still in the processing of deciding our hardware. All Pulls? Pulls & Knobs? Matte or Shiny? Black? After ordering a few samples, we decided for our kitchen we preferred a mixture of knobs and pulls in pewter. Over the weekend we finally installed our hardware! Here's a reminder of how our kitchen looked like before adding our hardware.

Lets go back even further to my kitchen circa 2009, how our kitchen looked when we purchased our home. In June 2012 we started the process of re-doing our kitchen, we installed new counter tops, stainless steal sink and bought a new oven & faucet. Then a few weeks later our home was involved in a house fire [read more here] During the rebuilding process, I spent a lot of time thinking about our kitchen layout and changed the layout from a L Shape to a U Shape along with removing a coat closet that was taking up valuable square feet real estate in our kitchen & bathroom, read more about the layout changes here. 

Our kitchen has undergone a huge transformation, and I'm so happy with how it looks now. I love all the storage and cabinet space. For our cabinet hardware we decided to go with sleek pulls and simple knobs. A winning combination for classic meets modern kitchen [classic cabinet door styles, classic subway tile made modern with it extended all the way to the ceiling, modern 'floating' shelves and more touches] Opening our cabinets doors is so much easier now, and no more finger prints! Seriously I must have gone though 1-2 paper towel rolls a week in wiping away food & dirt smudges left behind, from my house full of men, but no more! We now can open our cabinet doors and drawers like grownups. It's funny I've caught myself a few times opening the doors the 'old way' and forgetting we have hardware installed lol. Here's our kitchen now. 

We purchased the hardware from Lowes, the pulls are from Residential Essentials we bought the pulls online and purchased the knobs in the store. The pulls are 5inch center pulls, which were too large for our hardware cabinet template (boo!)  The installation start out bumpy, with Hasani and I irritated after realizing the template we had was too small, and having a mini panic attack not wanting to jack up our pretty new cabinets. So I ended up making a template out of parchment paper and using that as our guide. Of course later that night we were at Shovanda's house and I asked when how Naomi and her installed theirs, they used a template from Ikea! Banging my head on the table as I type this! lol So if your reading this and have hardware to 

install save your save frustration and a few curse words and make a trip to Ikea! Lesson learned. 

Our corner cabinets on either side of our stove, our L shape twin cabinets,that's why there's only one knob on those cabinets. 

For the large large drawers that reside under our 'floating' shelves we decided to use two sets of pulls on each drawer and also liked how the pulls looked inside our panel drawers verses on on top of the panel. 

Another new addition to my kitchen is our utensil holder, I've been looking for a simple white utensil holder for months. One would think these days with all the pretty white dishes out there they would be a dime a dozen but nope. I searched Target, World Market and Sur la Table and a few other locations with no luck. I finally found one I loved at Crate & Barrel. I also recently added a working vintage kitchen scale from the 1950's, I found this little treasure on Etsy. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing our pretty kitchen with hardware!! It feels so good to be a grownup and open my cabinets like a normal person, lol. Up next in my kitchen, I'm planning on bringing in some color roman shades. I plan on customizing basic roman shades, with fabric just I like I did for Avery's bedroom. But first I'll be tackling the our crazy spice jars, dry goods storage and getting the inside our our cabinets organized. 

Have any projects in your kitchen also taken you months to complete? 

Looking Forward to 2014

Yesterday I shared my favorite blog posts from 2013 month by month. Today i'm thinking about 2014 and what's ahead for this year. I'm not much a resolution person, but becoming more of a goal setter. Click here to read my goal list from 2013, on the personal side and home goals I did pretty good....of course some things didn't happen so they'll be rolling into 2014 :) My personal theme this year is organizing, not just our belonging and our house, but also my time. Time is precious and I know that keeping myself organized and living with intention will allow me to focus my time on doing what I truly love: creating, decorating, exploring in the kitchen, drawing & painting....and of course blogging. 

Be So Good Print via Etsy store The Motivated Type 

Personal Goals 2014

Continue drinking lots and lots of water

Let go of self doubt 

Follow my heart, and just go for it! 

Host a Cocktail Party or Two?

Attend a live music concerts (seeing one in Feb)

Gain more confidence using larger power tools: miter saw / wet saw (pretty much all saws)

Invest in myself: take a photography class 

Throw a Early Spring Housewarming! 

Have a Girlfriends Brunch this year 

Cook with my kids

Learn More Sewing Skills

Make things more from Scratch: Breads, Pizza Dough, Pancakes etc 

Invest in myself and my personal time to create: draw / paint / read & write more

Have individual mom time for Avery & Tabari: Movie dates, dinner dates and playing 

Home Goals 

Fill Our home with things we only absolutely LOVE 

Create an Organized Mudroom & Laundry Room

Print Pictures out and Enjoy them!

Park My SUV in the Garage 

Organize our kitchen cabinets from top to bottom 

Create a creative and fun bedroom for both my boys

Make our bedroom a relaxing retreat

Make a stunning master closet space 

Make our Living & Dining areas feel warm and cozy 

Install Crown Molding throughout our home - even in the laundry / mudroom 

Plant a Garden an small Vegetable & Herb Garden 

& Much More

Do you have a personal theme for 2014?

Looking Back at 2013

Last year was a both a stressful emotional year and exciting and happy you for my family. If your new to my blog in the Summer or 2012 our home caught on fire and we lived in an apartment for a year while our home was been rebuilt. I spend the first half of 2013 working with contractors on our home, deciding on all the details right down to where the plugs on the wall would go. I really enjoyed working with our contractors, I love design and helping design for my family was both exciting and heartbreaking under the circumstances. In addition to dealing with contractors, working with the insurance and mortgage company (both making sure the money is going into the home repair) was exhausting. A few days shy of the anniversary of the fire, we moved back into our home, and love it more than ever just like the saying goes you don't know what you got until its gone. 

Words can't even begin to express how good it feels to be back in our home again and have it feel like home. One of the many things I love about blogging is looking back though the year and seeing all the projects we've worked on, for me a lot of my blogging in 2013 was really therapeutic. Sharing our journey or rebuilding our home with all my dear readers was really special, I loved getting all your feedback and encouraging words throughout the year. I truly thank each and everyone of you. 

A day into the new year, I was feeling a little down about not having a home that felt a little more finished [so many blank walls, and projects not yet started] When I started looking back though the achieves of 2013, I reminded myself how far our home has come in a year. And how it takes time to create a home for you and your family and friends to enjoy. I've went though my 2013 archives and picked and rounded up my a few of my favorite posts from each month. 

1. House Construction Begins 2. Floor Plan Changes 

With the construction beginning on our home, Hasani and I were eager to start looking at sofa options for our home.

1. Door Shopping 2. One Year Later, Still Cable Free

With our kitchen an official blank slate and completely gutted, I started drawing kitchen ideas how how I wanted our space to look. Our kitchen today looks exactly like the drawing I did almost a year ago, love that my vision came to life. 

1. Our Home: Busy Week 2. Lighting Ideas: Great Outdoors

After looking at a rendering of our master bathroom addition, I realized the original placement of our bathroom window in the shower,  threw off the 'look' of our french doors. Thankfully we were able to change the placement just in time and decided our new location for our bathroom window. 

1. Front Door Color Inspiration 2. Freshly Painted Home 

 In April we had the huge task of deciding on our Hardwood Floor stain color. I love that we were able save our original hardwoods and have them refinished. 

1. Thrifty Finds 2. Everyday White Dinnerware

Our homes old front door was a cheery classic red, while I love red front doors I wanted our new door to be fun bright shade that didn't take its self to seriously. I thought a pretty shade or aqua or chartreuse would look amazing against our dark grey home. We ended up going with a shade of Chartreuse its the color we loved the most and also sacred me to go for it! To this day so happy we went with our gut. 

1. There's No Place Like Home 2. Rainbow Birthday Cake 

For most of the year I was a in a cooking slump, until I came across The Mom 100 Cookbook which really inspired me to start making new to us home cooked meals. I put together a collection of cookbooks I plan on adding to my home. 

1. Twin Sofas 2. Our New Not Typical Houseplant

In July, I shared our House Tour before we officially moved in. 

1. Our backyard Pergola 2. Painted Campaign Dresser

In August, I finally shared my mini dream kitchen, which was almost 'done.' 

1. Growing Lemons 2. Toddler Art Caddy

I fell in love with this chartreuse fabric for Avery's room, and transformed basic white roman shades into custom roman shades for Avery's twin windows. 

1. Our Bedroom Progress 2. Toddler Room in Progress

In October I made back tab drapes for our drapes for dining room.

1. Making a Rug with Flor 2. Prepping for our Thanksgiving 


Project wise, November and December where quieter months around our house, but I was happy I was able to refinish our vintage dining room table, just in time to host Thanksgiving. I love how how the table turned out! 

1. Our Modern Thanksgiving Table setting.

For Christmas we skipped our usual decorations colors of aquas and whites and decided to have a color-filled Christmas. Our tree was full of multicolored ornaments and we hung colorful felt garland from our windows. 

Wow that was a long blog post! I hope you all enjoyed looking back at Chic Little House in 2013. I'm already looking forward to working on new projects around the house and getting more settled now that were home. On Wednesday, I'll be sharing my goals for 2014. 

Do you have any favorite projects we worked on last year?