The Fat Hydrangea

Sara Michelle - Columbus, Ohio

My Home,Playroom

Fall Home Tour 2015

Fall Decor, Home Tour, My Home, Dining RoomSara Michelle B.13 Comments

Hello friends! So excited to share our early fall home tour today as part of the Farmhouse Fall Tour of Homes with 14 other amazing bloggers (and to show you our newly re-painted dining room in action!)

Of course the dining room is the hub of our home, so this is the area that gets the most love in terms of decorating for the seasons. This year I decided to paint ceramic pots the same color green as the walls and bring in some white mums for the perfect fall centerpiece. (I swear I kill mums faster than I can buy them, but they seem to be doing much better inside than outside - who would have figured!)

The white pumpkin candles, leaf plates, and light-up pumpkins are all from Pottery Barn from several years ago. The faux white and green pumpkins are from Smith & Hawken from probably a decade ago (does anyone else miss that store as much as I do?) and the small white pumpkin soup tureen's are from Williams-Sonoma from probably 3-years ago.

This new three tiered stand from Bungalow Home in New Albany, Ohio is the perfect addition to our kitchen! You can display so much with one of these without cluttering up your counter space!

I also decided to add a big white mum to the family room and some additional, cozy blankets and pillows. Just a few pumpkins are on the coffee table, because as you can imagine my sweet 1-year old boy thinks these are the coolest toys ever and loves chucking them across the room ;)

I also have a few pops of yellows, golds, and oranges throughout the kitchen to get more in the spirit!

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The best part of all of the fall decor is how the lights and candles come to life and sparkle as the sun goes down. It smells like pumpkin spice and is downright warm and cozy!

I could sit in front of this fire for hours on a cool fall evening (and believe me, this is exactly what I did last night!)

Thank you so much for stopping by! Don't forget to check out the rest of the homes on this week's Farmhouse Fall Tour series! They are so beautiful, you don't want to miss it!

Green AGAIN?

DIY Projects, My Home, Paint, Dining RoomSara Michelle B.Comment

Yep, I pulled the trigger... I got out the paint supplies and tackled the room for the third time this summer, painting it back to the original color, Martha Stewart's "Falcon."  I know I'm crazy and I'm promise this is the last post you will ever see from me about dining room paint!  (You can see the other colors HERE!)

WHY the change again, might you ask?

1) The white was awesome for summer, but fall had me craving something warmer and richer. Originally I had planned on getting a nice warm rug for the room to bring in more color and to ground the space, but you should see the mess Miles has been making while eating recently... That rug would have been destroyed in a matter of days! We will be rug free in this room for a longgg time.

2) The wainscoting, crown molding, and built-ins in this room are SO BEAUTIFUL and they were completely getting lost with all of the white.

3) Just like the navy, the white just didn't feel 100% quite right. I can't explain it other than it was just a feeling I had that I could not get over!

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The lesson I walked away with from this experience is that you do not have to be afraid to try something bold or new! Paint is SO EASY and inexpensive to change (assuming you are doing it yourself!)  It's okay to play with it and it's okay to be wrong and have to go back to square one. It's really not all that traumatizing or all that difficult!

Additionally, I learned you just have to go with your gut and do what feels right for you. If you don't love something, CHANGE IT! You don't have to ignore that little nagging voice, embrace it and use it to guide you to what feels right.

I will have the full staged result during my Fall Home Tour 2015 which will be published next Tuesday September 22nd! Myself and 15 other bloggers will be showing you our homes all decorated for fall that week! So excited!

Our DIY Restoration Hardware Knock-Off Table: A Review 2-Years Later

My Home, Fall Decor, DIY ProjectsSara Michelle B.Comment

For my milestone 30th Birthday, my sweet husband made me a beautiful dining room table! (How was that two years ago? I'm getting old! Yikes!) I get a lot of compliments and questions on this particular piece, so I thought I would share a review of how I am LOVING it two years later.

First, let's share some of the back story. My inspiration was this lovely table below from Restoration Hardware. Lovely, but pricey! We figured we could make something ourselves that fit our room perfectly for a fraction of the cost!

I knew I wanted a table that could seat 8-10 and that was WIDE enough to fit serving dishes and a centerpiece with a fully set table. That being said, the table is 90 inches long and 46 inches wide. As you can see from the pictures above (taken last Thanksgiving), it absolutely accomplishes that goal!

Evan used cedar wood for the table, which at first I wasn't sure about because I didn't love the orange/red undertones. However, he stained with Sherwin William's "Woodscapes" Stain in the color "River Birch" and any trace of the red undertones disappeared completely. The color is perfect!

Yes, even in the process of making it, I always made sure that there were fresh flowers on the table!

We also designed it to use this bench that I scored from Pottery Barn Outlet a few years ago, since we only had 6-chairs and we wanted the table to seat 8. Worked perfectly!

He made the top of the table and the legs outside in the garage, and then assembled and stained when it was inside. In a super old house like ours, there is no fitting anything through the narrow doors and hallways!

I'm not always a fan of make-it-yourself furniture because it can look a little too homemade in comparison to store bought pieces in the same room (which is how I feel about my desk and TV stand, but I'll share those thoughts another day!), however, this table is definitely my favorite piece of furniture in our house. Believe me, that is saying a lot!

The other thing I love about this table is the durability. We put several coats of poly on top of the stain, and you could do just about anything to this table without damaging it! Very kid, husband, and craft project friendly!