Decor Inspiration: son's room and living room

I have been posting fashion inspiration on Mondays for awhile but today I just couldn't figure out what fashion to talk about. I am more focused on decor inspiration today, so instead I am sharing that!

The first set here is bright, and I am thinking of these kinds of colors for my son's room. Take out anything girly from the pictures, and add a robot theme and I think it'd be very fun. He already has a robot blanket and wall decals. His room is white, we never painted it. I like the blue paint shown below(found that from yesterday's Etsy finds email).

1. Untitled, 2. studio shelf, 3. .2605, 4. .4159

For our living room and possibly another room, I am still leaning towards grey. I like finding pictures with grey painted walls and some bright accents. It helps me know that things I already have as decoration can still be used with the grey. I have also heard good things about grey since I mentioned it a few months ago from fellow bloggers like Fallon.

I picked out a bunch of paint color chips yesterday in shades of grey and blue. It's tricky finding the right color sometimes with such a small color chip. I have found it's better to go lighter or more subtle than you think you want because the colors always look much more powerful when covering a whole wall instead of a tiny square! I have learned that the hard way. When we painted our living room when we bought our house, I wanted light green walls. The color chip I picked looked really nice and fresh, but once we painted the whole living room it was way too bright. If the sun was shining on it, you had to squint! It hurt our eyes. So the next day we had to paint again, this time finding the right color- a pale guacamole type green. But now I am tired of it since it's been on the walls for over 4 years.

Here are some nice grey inspirations:

1. Small spaces: Elegant, compact living room, from Elle Decor: 'Light Pewter' by Benjamin Moore, 2. Baby's room, detail., 3. Benjamin Moore 'Winter Solstice': Gray living room + built-in bookshelves, from Elle Decor, 4. Switching up the living room

To see more grey room inspiration I posted back In February, click below:
Grey doesn't have to be gloomy

Do you have any decor plans going on? Tell me about them!

Happy Mother's Day!

My rose and card from my 2 year old son. Him and daddy went to the store together to get them(and a little chocolate). The card is perfect, since he does make a mess, even in the kitchen.

We ate a late lunch at a Greek cafe that I love. It was a nice day!

Wishing all the moms, moms-to-be, and motherly hearts a happy day!

Flashback Friday: Mom!

The picture above is from May 9, 2009. Just under a year ago from today! Me and Kavi were visiting my family in Alabama. Kavi and his grandma! My mom is a wonderful mom and a wonderful grandmother! She is my friend, too. She is a spiritual leader, a kind person, and fun!

The pictures below were taken at a park area while we were visiting. They set these up for kids to take their pictures behind, but me and my mom wanted to be chickens too!

Kavi

Me

Mom

Happy Mother's Day, mom! We love you a lot and are very thankful to have you as a mom!

Join in and share a flashback!

Goals

Art print from valentinadesign

The beginning of this year was filled with a lot of looking ahead to our trip to India and planning for that. Now that the trip is over and we've been back home 3 weeks, I want to start focusing on other things for this year now. I have some goals and "to do's" I'd like to accomplish.

One is to redecorate portions of our house. Nothing big, mostly paint color changes and shifting around existing decor. We've owned our house for four years now and the living room has been the same paint color since we first painted it (right before moving in). I am ready for change in the living room and other areas that have been the same since then. I love coming across decor inspiration on flickr. I have many ideas saved as flickr favorites. I made a gallery of some of the decor in my favorites list. You can see it here.

1. flickrsource, 2. flickrsource

Another continuing goal is weight loss and getting healthier. I realized I never updated the blog about my weight loss attempt before going to India. I did lose much of the holiday weight I gained, before we left. :) When we were in India, a few people told me I look like I lost weight since last year. And well, in most cases in India, calling someone fat is not considered such an insult. So I was always paranoid about that wondering if someone was going to call me fat in their teasing way, and for them to say I lost weight instead was such a relief! And from the trip they saw me on last, I only weighed a couple pounds less this time, but my body may have changed shape enough to look different. I don't really know!

But now I need to focus better again. I don't diet or deprive myself of everything I like while I try to lose weight. I eat less crappy food(but still end up having some sometimes!) and add in exercise and that seems to be what I need to do. I have to add exercise back in again since coming back from India. I have a goal to lose a certain amount of weight by the time I turn 30 this year at the end of October. It's almost 6 months from now and I'd like to lose 30lbs. That doesn't seem like it'd be too hard, but it will be if I don't stay focused on it. I know I can do it, if I do what I had been doing already.

1. New Year's Healthy Eating(flickrsource)

On another topic, I had shared pictures of my "crafty corner" months ago when it was nice and tidy. Well it got messy over time, of course, so last weekend I made it tidy again! My mom took pictures while my parents were visiting last week. She posted several on her blog and they look cute over there. Take a visit! I will share my own pictures in the future too. I still needed to nicely fold my fabrics that are inside the white shelf when she took pictures. So now that part is done too. Click below to view her blog post.

Happiness

I recently got this fun Happy 101 award from Beka at hold on, love. I enjoy her blog and we seem to have many of the same "likes" in common! Thank you, Beka! :)

I am supposed to share 10 things that make me happy. So here we go!

1. International food like Indian and Thai

2. Watching sunset at a small local beach with my husband and son

3. Reading(which I haven't done for awhile! )

4. Listening to music that I love

5. The season Fall, even though I'm in Florida and the trees don't get pretty during fall usually

6. The first chilly feeling day in Fall which is hard to predict down here, a welcome relief after the hot summer.

7. Getting a good night's sleep, especially if my son slept through the night(he's 2)

8. My son's "scrunchy nose" smile

9. My alone time sometimes after everyone is in bed and I can sew a pillow or watch my boring British period stuff

10. Specialty coffee drinks like a caramel macchiato, pumpkin spice latte, vanilla latte

Now I will pass this award on to a few other bloggers! I know some have already gotten this one so I will try to pick people who haven't!

Devon at Living the Small town Life
My mom at Considerthelilles
Melissa at SewSweetStitches
Wandering Nancy

You are free to choose whether you want to do it or not! It's a nice reason to post 10 things that make you happy! :)

Fashion Inspiration: Jeans

It's time again for some jeans, the kind of thing I'd wear every day! Now the weather is getting hot here so the jacket/cardigan won't work anymore but these are still good photos for fashion inspiration in jeans.

1. jeans, actually, 2. 5_1_10, 3. 28-o4-o9, 4. painting outfit

A polyvore pick:

Sunshine! by ohℓivia

*edited to add:
After a couple comments, I just wanted to say that I also haven't gotten skinny jeans and well, I have tried on variations and I look like a pear(the fruit) with legs! Not appealing. ;) heehee! I wish I could wear them!

Flashback Friday: homemade food

It's my first Flashback Friday post in ages it feels like! I haven't done one since before going to India.

The above picture is from March 2009, not long after our trip to India in 2009. I can't believe that was over a year ago already. Kavi was just over 1yrs old. We were eating at a cool restaurant(that we ate at again yesterday!). I took pictures from yesterday's visit too. It's part of an older lady's house. Her house is in the back and the restaurant is at the front. It's called Whole Note Acres and it's very country and cozy feeling. It's only open Tues-Fri 11am-1pm. This place has been in business since I was a little kid in the 80's! We used to live in the same city where this is, in New Port Richey, Florida. Now I live about 30 minutes north of there. So once in awhile when my family is visiting, we take a ride down to our dear old friend Whole Note Acres. The same lady lives there and owns/runs it. She is now in her 80's I believe.

The food options are limited, but are very special. The daily menu is quiche, salad, soup, desserts, breads, and drinks. Each day of the week is assigned a specific quiche and soup. I spend usually about $8 there. That would be for getting quiche and soup, plus as much bread, iced tea, lemonade, coffee, or tea you want. It's self serve, you just get what you want and tell her what you ate at the end! It's such a warm, personal environment. The inside seating area is a circle shaped room. Outside seating is in a screened in porch that curves around the circular building. The owner lets you walk through her house too, if you want to. All her rooms are circle shaped. It's almost like being in a hobbit home, but not exactly. hehe. These pictures are just from the inside eating area, last year. They don't at all capture the place. I took more pictures yesterday and will want to share some of those once I have them edited.