In the Navy, yes, you can sail the seven seas

People, finding the right navy blue paint is HARD.

When we painted our bathroom Richmond Green, I think I tried one other color just so we could be extra special sure, but once Richmond Green was up on the wall, even in a tiny 12 by 12 area, it was perfectly obvious that was going to be our choice.

Not so with the navy blue for the office. Oh, you didn't know we were going dark in there? Sorry about that.

I couldn't find the original source for this pin so if you know,
please let me know in the comments!

I saw this pin and I pretty much loved everything about it. So even though I had pinned a bunch of white or grey rooms with dark wood floors, when it came down to decision time, we were feeling the navy with lots of crisp white.

However, it took many tries to find the right color. We didn't even have this much trouble when we painted our living room grey, which is a notoriously difficult color to work with thanks to the huge variety of possible undertones ranging from yellow-green to blue-purple. We ended up with Benjamin Moore's Silver Lake, which we are still very happy with almost three years later.

I have always been trepidatious about choosing paint colors, but after years of doing it, I've developed some strategies for coming up with a happy color.

First, if you don't already have a fan deck from your favorite paint supplier, I highly recommend that you acquire one if you're trying to paint a whole house or do a lot of painting projects. I think mine was around $25 and gave me all the Classic Colors in the Benjamin Moore arsenal (get, it arsenal? navy? never mind). Not only does it save you running to the store for swatches and then test paint and then more swatches and then more test paint, it helps knock out choices that are obviously wrong because you can see all your possible options in the light of the actual room you'll be painting.

Second, they only cost about $6 a color so before spending close to $50 on a gallon of good quality paint, get a test pot. I bought four for this project. That's $24, a bunch of fun navy paint for future little projects and a whole lot of peace of mind because I know I got the right color. In fact, when I painted this thrift store shelf, I used a leftover test pot.

Third, get a second opinion. Or a fifteenth. Doug is a good judge of color, but having just one other opinion has never worked well for me. For a long time, I relied on Facebook friends for paint help: posting a photo of samples and letting them weigh in. That worked well, but now I found something even better: the new Young House Love Forums! John and Sherry put up these forums for readers to interact with each other and not only is it so. much. fun. it's actually really helpful when you've got a design dilemma. I posted my painting dilemma on Tuesday and got 15 responses in less than 24 hours!

There were a couple common themes. Mainly, people thought the colors I'd tried were too grey. And though they looked more grey on the monitor than they do on the wall, the forum people were still right. I needed more blue. One brilliant poster suggested I try to match the color value of the navy blue to the color value of the Richmond Green across the hall, which was an absolutely excellent suggestion and ultimately what led me to take my blue samples into the bathroom and look at them in there against the green.

That's how I ended up with the color I actually chose. And what color was that you're probably wondering?

Well, you're just going to have to wait until Monday when the room is all painted. I'm sure the suspense is killing you.

Field Trip Thursday: Pies & Puggles Takes Richmond

In which Pies & Puggles drives to Richmond to buy donuts. Ahem.

As pretty much everyone I know can attest, my favorite blog is Young House Love. John and Sherry Petersik have such a warm and approachable writing style and their DIY instructions are always easy to follow. They also happen to live in Richmond, Virginia, which is only an hour and a half drive from me.

I've been working really hard lately so yesterday I decided to take a fun field trip to see some of my favorite bloggers' favorite DIY and home decor destinations. Oh, and to eat donuts. They talk about these places all the time on the blog and always make them sound fabulous!

I started with a trip to Dixie Donuts. This place makes small cake donuts in extra yummy flavors like "Aztec" with a spicy cinnamon chocolate donut, chocolate frosting and pepitas on top and "Maple Coffee" which pretty much tastes just like it sounds. They were divine, of course.

I bought a dozen. I ate four. The rest went with Doug to work today so I can't eat any more. I now resolve not to eat another donut until the next time we're in Richmond. Hmm... maybe I should visit again next week...

The next stop was the Shades of Light Decorating Outlet. Shades of Light is the local Richmond company that makes the Young House Love lighting collection. It's a line of great fixtures and other decor designed by John and Sherry and all priced at $99 and under. I saw several of their lamp shades in the outlet, but here I was after something a little different for the office makeover. 

I got a great deal on the small shade I bought: $5 because it's dented, but that doesn't matter because I'm going to re-cover it anyway. I also bought a kit that converts a standard shade into a ceiling mounted fixture. It retails on the Shades of Light website for $50, but the cord was short so mine was half price. Since I'll need to further shorten the cord anyway, that was no problem for me!

Then I headed back downtown to U-Fab, a discount fabric store that features many contemporary upholstery fabrics at very reasonable prices, which I just loved. In fact, I loved it so much, I forgot to take pictures inside!

I've been so disappointed with the selection of fabrics at local Northern Virginia shops like Joann's and G Street. They have many super traditional fabrics like toile and damask and many, many fewer modern fabrics like ikats and geometrics. At U-Fab, they had a good mix of fabrics, but I was impressed at how beautifully organized it was and how many cool fabrics they had. I really wish I had taken pictures. Ugh! (There's a little snapshot here in this YHL post.) I would love to get U-Fab up here. Though when I complained about the sad lack of good fabric stores up this way to one of the salespeople, she lamented their lack of an IKEA in Richmond. Since it only takes me about 20 minutes to get to IKEA, I guess fair's fair.

Finally, I stopped at the actual Shades of Light retail store. My objective was to take a look at the lighting fixture I intended to buy online for the dining room. They didn't have the exact one I wanted to see in the store, but they had a similar one so I was happy. The Young House Love fixtures have been so popular that they are out of stock, but since YHL posted a Shades of Light coupon code today, I was pleased to order the fixture I wanted with a 10% discount. 

Happy shades at Shades of Light.

I had a really great time in Richmond today. The traffic was pretty much non-existent, which was a huge surprise for me coming from Fairfax County. So even though I didn't plan my stops very efficiently, I was still safe at home within seven hours of when I left. All the staff people at Dixie Donuts, Decorating Outlet, U-Fab and Shades of Light were extremely helpful, friendly and design savvy. Seriously. Every single person I had the opportunity to interact with. Everyone. At Decorating Outlet, a customer even stopped what she was doing to help me look through their fabric remnant bin. And at Shades of Light, someone offered to make me a salad! Talk about a friendly town!

And of course, you know I'll be back. 

So have you ever gone out of your way to get somewhere that was recommended by a blogger? Taken any fun field trips lately?

Guest Post - DJ's Maple Leaf

There are a few basic foodstuffs that have earned themselves an automatic place in our hearts (and our table, and our recipe books). Chief among those are the Big Three - bacon, bourbon, and maple syrup. Anything that combines at least two of these three ingredients is almost guaranteed to be pinned to Ali's Pinterest boards, and probably tried at least once.

In this post, I share with you one of the more successful of the combo recipes we have encountered over the years - the Maple Leaf cocktail. The ratios have been tweaked to suit our tastes, so feel free to experiment with your own.

DJ's Maple Leaf

2 oz Bourbon (or in our case, Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye)
2/3 oz pure Maple Syrup (preferably from one of the states whose name begins with a 'V')
1/2 oz Lemon juice

Put the maple syrup, lemon juice, and bourbon  in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake, then pour into the cocktail glass. Serve with a cinnamon stick garnish (optional but highly recommended).

Vintage Mystery Theatre: Glass Pitcher Edition

I went out thrifting with a friend on Saturday. We found a Milo Baughman lounge chair upholstered in blue velvet for her and we found this for me:

And also these:

Though I found them on the same day, now that I've seen them in sunlight, I'm not actually sure that they match despite the fact that they're both smokey gray glass and they've both got polished pontils, indicating they're both hand-blown. The glasses are a more true gray and the pitcher is a bit greenish, I think.

That said, they're still quite nice together. I'm having visions of summer raspberry lemonade.

So what's the mystery? Well, even though I know quite a bit about mid century furniture and I'm getting to know a bit about mid century ceramics, I still know very, very little about mid century glass. But these both being clearly mid century and clearly of excellent quality, I was determined to find out more about them.

Thanks to Modish, I'm pretty sure the tumblers are Old Morgantown, which is utterly ubiquitous around here. In fact, last week I found some blue wine glasses that were even marked Morgantown.

The company was in West Virginia so I'm not surprised that I see suspected Morgantown pieces quite frequently. But the pitcher isn't Morgantown.

Via eBay and Etsy, I discovered that the pitcher was likely either Orrefors or Holmegaard. I had guessed maybe Holmegaard when I bought it because it's not dissimilar in color to the little Holmegaard glass dishes I listed this weekend and those are marked.

However, my search revealed two photos at Replacements, one labeled Orrefors and one labeled Holmegaard.

Holmegaard from the Elsinore line, photo via Replacements.

Orrefors from the Rhapsody line, photo via Replacements.

Let's look at mine again, cropped closer to resemble the other pictures:

My mystery pitcher.

So here's what I think: I think this is Orrefors. There's a slight curve to the inner part of the handle where the Holmegaard pitcher is more vertical. And the way the bottom of the handle is attached to the body of the pitcher is also more vertical than on the Orrefors pitcher, which seems to be at a very slight angle.

What do you think? Holmegaard or Orrefors? Orrefors or Holmegaard? Or how about something else entirely? Surprise me!

Warehouse Redux: Redecorating the Office

The office in our house is a perpetual problem. First, we call it an "office", but it's basically a glorified storage room. We don't need a desk. We work in the living room. We had a desk in the office for two years and we never used it so we opted for a large dresser instead to give us more storage. And here's the thing: that's okay with me.

What's not okay with me is this:

Actually, that's a photo from the last time it got bad and I decluttered it...about four months ago. I didn't take a before-decluttering photo this time because it basically looked exactly the same except with one fewer cooler and the bathroom stuff got put away when we finished replacing the sink and vanity. It was full of radio project junk, paint cans and Etsy stock this time.

And here's what it looks like now, albeit without the boxes in the middle of the floor because I disposed of them:

Clearly there's still some work to be done, but now that we can move around in the room and find things easily, the next step is to have it look stylish and deal with our on-going storage issues.

There are some great ideas on Pinterest:

Source: thewaffler.com via Alison on Pinterest

Source: copycatchic.com via Alison on Pinterest

Source: chloeroseboutique.tumblr.com via Alison on Pinterest

And in blogs that I love:

Young House Love

Centsational Girl

And yet I wasn't quite certain how to make it all work in there. The only commonality between these pictures is grey walls and white cabinets (with that one outlier where the bookcases are a pale blue-green).

As for project criteria, here's what we're working with:

• Our whole house palette involves grey, emerald green, navy blue, various shades of blue-green in small doses and a hint or two of orange because it's my husband's favorite color. 
• The only furniture we're determined to keep is the walnut Brasilia long dresser (which will remain walnut) and a tall dresser that was my husband's childhood dresser, which is now our "tool shed" (which we are open to painting). 
• The top of the dresser has to remain clear because that's where I shoot photos for my Etsy shop.
• The center of the floor has to remain wide open because it's our only inside space to do projects.

So here's how I think this project is going to develop over the next few weeks:

• declutter the space so we can see what we're working with
• knock out a few projects that are in the way (take apart the radio, sell or donate the old games and childhood memorabilia, figure out what to do with a big box of old trophies)  I'll show you what I did with those in a future post.
• paint the room 
• bring in different shelving, sell off current mismatched shelving
• paint the "tool shed"
• hang some curtains 
• hang art on the walls
• install a new light fixture
• do something about the awful mirrored closet doors
• add accessories that are currently in storage

Sounds like I've got my work cut out for me! Luckily I think this is all pretty fun. Wish us luck!

Show Us a Retro/Vintage Corner of Your Home

I read about the Show Us a Retro/Vintage Corner of Your Home link party via Dana over at Mid2Mod. It's being hosted by Donna at Hung Up On Retro and Kylie at Lucy Violet Vintage, two Australian vintage bloggers.

And though regular readers will have seen this corner recently (it was one of the subjects of today's post), that little snapshot doesn't provide a comprehensive view for new readers.

So welcome to my favorite little vintage corner, with some additional details about each of the pieces in it. There's a lot going on here, which makes it fun. This corner is also a pretty good representation of my journey as vintage modern collector over the years since it contains both my oldest and newest vintage pieces!

Starting at the left, there is a vintage Emeco Navy Chair purchased several years ago from Circa Antiques in York, Pennsylvania. If you're ever in their neighborhood, it's worth a phone call to see what they're up to. Seriously some of the nicest dealers I've ever met--they pulled four chairs especially for me when I mentioned I needed dining chairs as a newlywed and wanted a few big name pieces for my collection. They met me at the Modernism Show that the Art Deco Society of Washington hosts every year with their picks and each one was so perfect that I bought all four. Great eye, great talent, great dealers. 

Immediately to the chair's right is a small desk I acquired via Craigslist from a DWR employee who was upgrading from his 1970s Dixie Furniture to something fancy from his employer. This desk has been an entryway table, a buffet, a dog crate disguiser and, finally, a desk, though it has been years since I used it that way.

Ignoring the art for a moment, the Marshall Martz lamp was a recent Goodwill find. It's sitting on an end table made by my husband's grandfather and the waterfall scene was painted by his grandmother. All the way to the right is a Broyhill Saga sideboard that has been used as an entertainment center, a dresser and a catch-all storage piece over the last three homes I've lived in. I bought it at the DC Big Flea around 2008.

As for the art, I did a full post on that here quite recently since all of it is relatively new and came from local thrift stores. I recently added a printable of my own design and an estate sale find (both shown in the above photo, but not in the other two, which were taken a few weeks ago). 

There are several other vintage pieces pictured: a Gorham wine coaster, a Seth Thomas clock, a set of Hollywood Regency brass elephant bookends, a 1960s globe. Everything has a story.

Is there anything else here that particularly catches your eye?

Little upgrades everywhere!

It's been a busy week! I finally finished turning my antique radio into a bar. I also got caught up on some cleaning, which I had been ignoring in favor of projects for several weeks. I went to Twins Ace Hardware four times. For the record, they have started to laugh at me since I was there again this morning.

I also made a few little upgrades around the house. Let's review, shall we?

First, I found this old decorative ship's wheel at Goodwill a few weeks ago for $4 and I'd been waiting for warm, dry weather to do a little spray paint upgrade.

This was an easy peasy project with a little bit of leftover spray primer and Rustoleum Painters Touch spray paint in Gloss Navy.

I'd been wanting to add a couple more hints of navy in the bathroom and this was a good start.

Second, I hung another painting on our gallery wall in the living room.

I found this at an estate sale on half off day last weekend for $17. It's a little more expensive than the art I'd normally snatch up, but the blues were a good fit for the room and I like the lighter frame.

Third, with all the liquor bottles gone and into the new bar, I have a little more space on the countertop in the kitchen so I decided to finally paint the open shelving in there.

I'm actually waiting for the paint to dry completely before putting everything back up on the shelves and restyling them. I'll show you guys how that turned out next week. Here's the before picture.

So that's it! Have you been making any little upgrades lately?