Mailboxes Etc.

We originally planned to keep the old mailbox after the fire, but somewhere during the construction and rebuilding process they mailbox went missing. I thought adding a mailbox slot [ similar to this ] to our front door would be a cute alternative to the traditional mailbox, Hasani wasn't feeling the idea, lol. No worries, I'm the girl that always has a million backup plans in the works if my original plan doesn't work out. I checked out mail box ideas at Lowes & Home Depot, nothing really jumped out at me. Then I checked out Pottery Barn. You see there's a mailbox I've had a crush on for like forever, and yes its completely normal to have crushes on mailboxes. My crush was on the Envelope Mailbox, its just so cute and I knew it would look amazing on our house. Only catch was it was more than we wanted to spend on a mailbox $49 bucks, but as a luck would have it a few weeks before we moved into our house, it went on clearance sale!! 

The bronze mailboxes were marked down to $34.99 and thanks to additional 15% off coupon code for clearance items, I was able to buy the mailbox for $29.74!! So happy, I still had to pay taxes and shipping but in the end can't complain. Here's our new mail box, I love how well it goes with our chartreuse craftsman style front door and outdoor light fixtures and black front door hardware.  

The mailbox is actually a really good size, nice and deep. It has a magnetic closure on the inside.

At first I was tempted to spray it black, but I like how the bronze / black finish makes it appear aged, like its always been apart of our house. I plan on taking updated pictures of our house to share how its currently looking. 

That's how our mail is arriving to our house these days. Any recent updates to the outside of your home?

Fabulous Rug & Quick Makeover

It seems like every weekend since moving back home we've been busy, not necessarily busy working on projects around the house and getting settled. We've been busy having friends and family come over to visit, which is so much fun to show them around and share our ideas and thought process about floor-plan changes etc. In between spending time with family & friends this week, we squeezed in two updates to our living room..

Do you remember my fabulous coffee table I scored on Craigslist months ago? It finally made its way into our living room and I love it [the height, size & style looks amazing in our living room] but it had a few flaws. Mainly several nicks in the finish and I wasn't a huge fan of its deep bronze finish. So what does a DIYer do? Spray paint it of course! After much thought, I decided it would look best in a flat finish. I figured a flat finish on the metal would resemble cast iron a look I love. Here's a close up of the nicks, I was hoping to camouflage with a some black spray paint! 

I left the spray painting to my resident pro, Hasani. I love spray paint, but I don't love doing the spray painting. Anyways, the flat finish on the coffee table was just what it needed. 

Months ago during a huge sale at Rugs USA we purchased a large grey Dhurrie rug for our living room. The rug just set in our rental apartment for months and months, I couldn't wait to see how it would look in our living room. Before placing in the rug in our living room, I purchased a Mohawk rug pad from Target to give our rug a little more cushion and help keep it in place on our hardwood floors [ we also made sure to wait 30 days before placing a rug on our refinished hardwood floors ] As a reminder these pillows are 'temporary', and will most likely be our 'fall / winter' pillows. 

We're in love with how the rug and newly painted coffee table look in our living room. I'm so happy we went with a large size rug for our living room, last time we went with a smaller 5x7 rug. Thanks to the great deal we got on our new rug, we were able to go with a larger size. 

When we first rolled out the rug, I was a little concerned there's too much grey. Since we have light grey walls, and two grey sofas. My backup plan was to use this rug in our bedroom, if there's too much grey in our living room. But after thinking about the living room plans: new pillows for our sofas [ see fabric selections here ] hanging drapes [ still deciding on fabric ] bring in some artwork & those amazing aqua teal lamps, paint our campaign dresser & find fabulous side tables and styling the coffee table, its going to feel layered in colors and not all grey. 

We'll see how everything evolves over time. What do you think of our new rug?

Side Note: This post is my 501th blog post for CLH!! Fun milestone :)