Crazy Quarter Grotto...

With the weather down here being PERFECT, the other day my mom and I decided to bike around the French Quarter and check out a church's grotto she had noticed a while back. It was cool and kinda crazy! It's at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on the skirt of the French Quarter.

Below is the little cave like entrance into the Grotto. 

It's very cool on the inside - candles everywhere and plaques giving thanks to St. Jude cover the walls.

Mary... with a beam of light behind!

I know this is a religious altar but I'm always in design mode and was enjoying the Grotto for all of its awesome design elements a little more than the religiousness of it. Like below with the Thank You plaques... I loved the composition and the varying grey and white colors.

The masses held at the church... I wonder what the "special healing service" entails!? 

If you're a local you should definitely go check out this Grotto! 

Landscaping Love...

I have finally found exactly what I would love to do for landscaping the front of our house! I love the landscaping below. It's simple, low maintenance but also oh so lovely...

This was taken in front of a home in the French Quarter.

Below is right where I want to do this landscaping... 

We could pretty easily do this too - just build a little wall from all the free bricks we have, plant hedges, add some monkey grass and to top it off find a beautiful planter and put a large statement plant in the center. 

Hmmmm.... who feels like building me a little brick wall!?

What do you think?? Do y'all prefer formal landscaping like my inspiration or do you lean toward wild gardens?

Bywater Home Tour THIS WEEKEND!!

FYI all you NOLA locals - the Bywater Home Tour is THIS WEEKEND!! And our block is featured on the tour :) Please come out and see all the unique homes of all our neighbors! (and no, our home is NOT on the tour... if only I had that extra 100K to spruce her up to be a contender! ha!)

But you all should come. And if you find me on the streets I'll give you a bonus tour of our little Creole Cottage. (only if you promise to "see" my vision of what she can become!)

Hope to see ya there! 

Bye Bye Wires...

OK, remember how much I HATE wires?! Well, I was delighted to discover that all but ONE of the wires I despised for the TV aren't actually for the TV! They are all for the surround sound!? (which is no longer hooked up to the TV, we mainly use it for radio and streaming music)

Please ignore the dust. But just look at all these wires!? WTF?! ALL this for one surround sound system!??!

So all this madness is tucked away to the side of the sofa...

Ignore the rubber duckie... I have no clue how that got in this pic?!

So now all those nasty little guys are hiding out by the wall -

And the TV has been moved to the other wall (are you surprised I yet again moved around furniture?!)  I decided to put the TV on this hand me down crap little book shelf and in a pyscho crazy fit I very half ass-edly DIYed a staple gunned skirted white fabric to it! 

The scale is totally wrong for the TV but this whole project was free and looks so much better than it was! BONUS I get extra storage hidden by that fabric! :) 

AND I just so happened to have just enough fabric to continue on in my psycho I have a staple gun and I like to use it mode and tackled this chair:

It's a funky reproduction but I bought it for like $20 with the intent of it being a reupholstering project for me - I've never upholstered a chair so thought this was a good starter!

And here she is!

It's definitely not perfect and that pillow is hiding a booboo! BUT I definitely understand how to upholster it now and will re-do it once I find a great fabric. It was much easier than I thought! And good old trim will cover the staples! 

OK, that's it for projects this week... I think....  ;)

Anyone else out there tackling big or small home projects?! Does it ever end!!??

** Update! Ikea must of been reading my mind about Tvs and their wires... CLICK HERE**

Our Dream Chair is SCORED Thanks To Craig!....

Some people may have dream cars, dream handbags, dream vacations... not us. The Hubs and I had a mutual dream of a black leather Eames lounger. (thank goodness I married a guy who went to school for Industrial Design! ha!) 

These bad boys run 3 - 5 THOUSAND so we weren't planning on owning one for a loooooong time. And I have been happy with our $75 knock off. But the brown knock off bothered me because I felt like the room was too brown with it. And it's a little wobbly. I digress....

Here's what I found on Craigslist yesterday!!!

now residing in our living room...

Black Eames Lounger!!! What?! Whaaaat?! I couldn't believe it! I snagged this baby up for $400. I happened to book our rental unexpectedly for the same amount about 10 minutes before I found him so I didn't feel too guilty. And we've agreed this chair is our Christmas present to ourselves! 

I'm SO excited! This one is so much more comfy than our other one too. The Hubs is attached to the brown one though so for now at least we have TWO of these chairs in our living room! They look like they're about to duel. I wish i could get a good pic of them but it's dark and rainy day = awful pictures! 

What do you think!? Do you have any dream pieces you're dying to get your hands on? 

Awesome Art Exhibit!! (Thornton Dial Totally Copied Me)

Hello all!! Sorry for no posts... suffering through a stomach bug and working a lot! :( Do you other bloggers find it difficult to want to write when you're under the weather?!

ANYHOOT back to the post!

There is an AMAZINGLY AWESOME art exhibit going on at the New Orleans Museum of Art right now that you must check out if you're a local! It's an extensive exhibit of the work of Thornton Dial. He does a lot of mixed media and sculpture. 

He uses a lot of dolls and toys in his pieces - which would lead you to think they are playful and fun but they are actually very intense and moving. Here's a more thorough description:

Below is a sample of his work:

Now, when I say Thornton Dial uses mixed media - I think he may use more "ingredients" than any other artist I've seen! Check out the list below that's in one of the pieces!

What?! What?! A desiccated GOAT, RAT and TURKEY are up in the art!? Love it. 

Here's some more:

The above picture is kinda fuzzy but it's HUGE and it's filled with.... wait for it.... BARBIES!!! 

Her skirt above is made from metal.

Now for all you faithful blog followers - does this one kind of remind you of the wacky art I made!? Shall we bring you back to  Barbarella Barbie?!

It's almost like my space Barbies were landing to save their sisters from the New Orleans Museum of Art!? (sorry if you don't get my sense of humor) That is kinda weird though right?! 

It's giving me some inspiration with the rest of my gang that's for sure!

Seriously though - go check out the exhibit! It's really cool. 

A New Bricked Walkway is HAPPENING!!

My lovely momma just gave us ALL these bricks! She's getting a pool put in so they had to remove her bricked courtyard and lucky us, we got the bricks!!

So, we hired some guys to remove all the disgusting busted up concrete and haul it away and this is what it looked like once it was removed:

They worked so fast I didn't even get a chance to take a before!!

We decided to continue with the herringbone pattern you can see above that is from the sidewalk.  I love herringbone, it's so classic! Although it is tricky to make sure it's centered properly so the bricks are on a 45 degree angle. 

Here's some during shots:

As you can see, we're almost done!! 

I can't wait to share with y'all the completed project!! It's looking so good!!

What If...

OK, yesterday I posted about how challenging my living room can be because I have FIVE doorways into it. I currently have a white curtain covering one of the openings but it's still annoying me bc you obviously know it's an opening because of all the molding. 

(Where #2 is)

SO, what if I did that whole back wall in floor to ceiling neutral, light weight fabric? It would add drama, texture and the illusion of one solid wall. And I could center the TV without it looking "off" because of all the molding to the right...

Here's my awesome drawing of what I'm thinking:

Use your imagination people!

What do you think? I could do it pretty inexpensively... and easily reuse the fabric for another project down the line... just thinking out loud today... 

Thoughts?

Things that drive me crazy...

Now let me start this post by proclaiming my love for my little Creole Cottage here BUT I must say, there are some things that drive me CRAZAY! 

I'm keepin' it real today and sharing with y'all some things around here that drive me bonkers!! Granted, some of it is my own disorganized messy self, while other annoyances are here to stay until I win the lottery and get to knock out walls, re-do the kitchen, etc... hell who am I kidding - my ass is outta here if I win the lotto! 

Annoyance #1:

FIVE yes FIVE entries into our living room/foyer:

Yeah, crap camera phone pic but I'm too disgruntled to find the real camera and upload nicer pics! 

This room is such a pain in my ass. And no, it's not clean, or styled for a "photoshoot" - that's not what today is about!! Now, I challenge all you designers out there to make a great room out of this!! It's impossible with all the doorways. AND this will become a dining room so I'm on a spending freeze as far as anything new coming in. 

Annoyance #2:

TV WIRES & CABLES!!! Uggghhhhhh

I hate wires and cables.... can't technology make everything wireless now!? We don't have cable so we stream things from our laptops to the TV so some of those wires have to stay.... my friend told me about some wireless system you can connect to your sound system though so I'm going to look into that. 

Also, the table the TV is on is temporary. I'm waiting on a piece from work that the TV will soon reside on! 

Annoyance #3:

Weird back room that's a HOT MESS!!

oooohh yeah... I'm sharing all my dirty secrets today!!

Remember when it looked like this!?

Ahhhhhh not anymore!! We never used the dining room back there so we moved the table & chairs into the living room. This back room will soon become an art studio/guest bedroom. That's a whole other post in itself though! 

So there ya have it. Boo's annoyances for the day!! Now I get to start cleaning that little room! I think I mainly have to PURGE a lot of crap we don't use anymore. Bleeeghhhhh....

What about y'all!? Do you have annoyances with your house!? I'm sure ya do! Let's hear them!!

Candle Giveaway!!

I never do giveaways on this here blog but my work blog is giving away an awesome candle from PatchNYC!!! 

We're trying to get more followers over there so please CLICK HERE to follow & enter for your candle!! If you're not local, we'll ship it!!

THANKS!