World Traveler's Living Room

Imagine traveling the world. Landing in each destination and falling in love with the unfamiliar scenery. I have always loved a great adventure. The very first time we traveled, we went on a cruise. We first docked in Bermuda, instantaneously we fell in love. Every house was painted a different color, and all the plants were lush and flowering. You could smell the clean beach and sun in the air. No candle can ever compare. Trust Me, I have bought every sand, beach or ocean scented candle and none of them smell like the real thing. Before heading off to the beautiful beach, we walked around the market trying to find some souvenirs to bring back for our families. While walking around, we came across these beautiful wood carved and hand painted masks. We loved them so much, we purchased one for ourselves. Buying these masks has now become tradition every time we travel. When Danny and I first moved in together we wanted to display our travels. We wanted our living room to feel worldly with deep rich colors, travel books and things we have collected through out our adventures. 

For the paint colors we went with a dark orange "Fallen Leaves" paint color, which reminds me of when I used to live in Florida. We paired this with a slate grey-blue color. Our sofa is a neutral beige color which goes with everything. Our rug ties the whole house together with colors from each room.  I hope our living room inspires you to collect items from your adventures and use them as pieces of art around your own home. Here are a few pictures from our living room and the masks from our travels.

Our Living room

Accessories 

Travel Books, Globe and Vintage Vogue

Above our television

Claddagh Symbol from Ireland (Above our front door)

Puerto Rico 

 Bermuda 

Turks and Caicos 

 Bahamas 

Chichen Itza 

Healthy Living

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Small House Loving Blog.  Today I will be discussing a new topic on the blog, the ever cringing topic of Weight Problems. For as long as I can remember, I have always suffered with weight problems. I am the shortest girl and the heaviest of my friends and family members. I have gone on diets and succeeded with some and failed with others. After some time I have wanted to change my life style but always used the famous Maybe Tomorrow phrase. Finally about three weeks ago I decided enough was enough and I made the choice to change. Danny and I joined our local gym. I have started using a free app called LIVESTRONG to log-in my calorie intake. The app allows you to put your weight, height, and your goal weight. It also gives you the suggested calorie intake per day. What you choose to do with the calories is up to you. I have been measuring my meals, swapping heavy starches with vegetables, and enjoying every minute of it. I have found myself feeling less hungry and more energetic. I also have seen a great change in my sleeping habits, falling asleep at a normal hour and waking up early to start the day off. Our exercise include swimming laps in the pool, lots of cardio, and using all those funky machines at the gym. I usually start my day off with Yoga, especially on those days my muscles feel sore. I find it helps to stretch my muscles out and teaches me how to breathe during exercises. If you have struggled with weight issues like I have, well here is your chance, your new start. Why not start today? Start logging in those calories you will be surprised when you see how many calories you consume in a day. Start doing exercises that you enjoy, my favorite exercise is swimming. Find what works for you. You can do it.

Here are some healthy recipes:

Roasted Cauliflower 
Cut your cauliflower into small pieces, on a hot pan put 1 tsp. of coconut oil.
Toss the cauliflower in the pan and season with some black pepper, garlic and pink himalayan salt
I found my pink himalayan salt in Marshall's food section.
Cook until the cauliflower is soft yet caramelized on the outside.

I have replaced Potatoes with Cauliflower.
I usually pair roasted cauliflower with a grilled chicken breast.

Grilled Chicken Breast
Cut your chicken breast into thin slices
Squeeze some fresh lemon onto chicken pieces
Season with garlic, cumin, salt, pepper and some hot sauce.
On a hot pan cook your chicken.
I usually put a bit of water into the pan to keep the chicken moist.

Master Bedroom Facelift.

Hello everybody.. Sorry for the lack of blog post. But we are back and ready to discuss our Master Bedroom. For a while we felt that our bedroom was just not what we wanted. We were looking for our bedroom to be fun yet relaxing. We loved our DIY Stenciled Wall which we discussed in our prior post. After looking online and trying different bedspreads from all white, all brown, brown and blue and lots of different colors, the room just didn't feel like it was coming together. One day, I happened to be browsing the Target stores, and came across this beautiful Ikat reversible bedding set and Nate Berkus braided jute rug. After looking on Pinterest, I loved the look of a DIY basket chandelier, so we browsed our local stores and found the perfect basket at Ikea.  I also loved the look of the Anthropologie Flamenco Curtains but wasn't loving the $118 price per panel. We went to Marshalls and found a very similar fabric shower curtain that we loved even more. They were by Cynthia Rowley designs and were on sale for $12.00 per panel.

Here are both products side by side.

Yes they are shower curtains, but I loved them as curtains for our bedroom. They are made of fabric. The ruffles and ombre effect are just wonderful. I have to admit the Cynthia Rowley ones are my favorite of the two.

Danny got started on our DIY Basket Chandelier.

DIY Basket Chandelier
The basket was about 5 dollars at Ikea and the Mini Pendant Kit was about 19 dollars at Home depot.
The first step was shutting down the circuit power in our bedroom to ensure no electric shock occurred.
Next we removed the old light fixture,  and we slipped the pendant kit wire through the center of the basket.
The pendant kit we bought was to long so we had to cut the cord and strip the three wires to adjust the length. Our local Home Depot didn't have different length pendant kits.
Danny connected the wires together using wire nuts, which comes with the pendant kit. The wires are colored, connect like-colors to each other.
After making sure the Basket Chandelier was centered and the perfect height, he screwed in the fixture and voila, a brand new light fixture hung.
Remember when you are done to turn the power back on the circuit.

Next we put our new bed spread and laid the rug down. Here is our Master Bedroom Reveal..
DRUM ROLL.......

We hope you have enjoyed our Master Bedroom Reveal. Did you enjoy the DIY Basket Chandelier? Have you attempted a DIY project in your house and would like to share? 

Thank you for reading. 

Ireland Adventure

    Hey there.. Happy St. Patty's Day.

   Today I will be sharing the week the Callaghan's arrived in Ireland. One of our bucket list dreams was to visit Ireland. We wanted to see the lush green scenery and breathe in the fresh air, taste the scones and dance the irish jig while sipping on some whiskey. When we finally arrived in Ireland we couldn't believe just how beautiful it is. Films nor pictures can do it justice. Not only is the scenery beautiful, but the people are just as wonderful. Have you seen the movie P.S. I love you? If you haven't, you must and keep a box of tissues next to you because it is a tear jerker. Well imagine the beauty of Ireland in that movie x100 for those of you who have seen it. 

   While in Ireland we did what the Irish do. We went to the Guinness and Jameson Distillery. We walked to the edge of the Cliffs of Moher. Danced in the rain in the Corcomroe Abbey while listening to wild bulls from afar. (Which Danny and I crossed our fingers they would stay far far away because the noises were quite terrifying.)  Bar hopped at Temple Bar.  We went on a haunted tour which included Kilmainham Gaol, which is the most beautiful prison I have ever seen. I mean its the only prison we have ever seen really. One day while strolling to catch lunch, we even got to see Formula 1 racing in the streets of Dublin. Ireland is one of the best Adventures us Callaghan's have ever embarked on. It was filled with beauty, lots of walking, lots of dancing, breath-taking architecture, and the food was delicious.  It is one of the places we can see ourselves returning to.

Kilmainham Gaol 

                                                         One of the cell rooms

                             

Just a random Irish man who I thought was just the cutest. 

                                         

                                                             Corcomroe Abbey

             The Jameson Distillery, it is the industrial decor lovers dream.

                                                                Dancing with the locals.

Cliffs of Moher

Callaghan Sign

                                                   The beautiful scenery

Inside the Guinness Distillery

St Patrick's Cathedral

If Ireland is one of the places on your bucket list, we promise you won't be disappointed.  It's the dream location for an adventure lover. If you have gone to Ireland, tell us your favorite part. What are some of your Bucket List Places? 

The Callaghan's next adventure is Costa Rica summer of 2014. 

Furniture Makeover Part II

Hello there... Happy Friday. In my last post I mentioned my love for thrifting so today will be a continuation of this love. I mean really, who doesn't love finding great old pieces in great condition for great prices?  Furniture just isn't as great as it use to be. How many of your grandparents still have the same furniture from the 60s and I bet that furniture is still in prestige condition! Well when I was younger, my grandparents had this great rocking chair. I just loved that chair. My grandma would rock us to sleep or tell us stories from her childhood. I knew that when I had a place of my own, I would be getting a rocking chair. Not just any rocking chair, a vintage one. One I would have for years that I would sit with my kids and tell them stories about my childhood. Since we bought the house, I have been in search for my perfect rocking chair. Searching antique stores and thrift stores. One day, while searching craigslist, I came across an estate sale in our neighborhood and low and behold the most beautiful rocking chair was listed.

How adorable is that chair. After doing some research, I learned that this particular rocking chair is called a Sweet Heart Rocking Chair. Online they are listed for 500 buckaroos and we snagged ours for $60. What a steal. After some cleaning and polishing I decided I wanted to stain the rocking chair. We first sanded the whole chair to get the old gloss off of it to make sure the stain would soak into the wood. After the sanding I began to stain.  We went with a Red Mahogany Minwax stain. 

Here is the contrast of the stain versus the original color

After painting the whole chair I let the paint dry for two days. 

Here is our finished product. 

The stain brought the wood back to life. It was dull before,  now it has a great shine to it and complements the rest of our living room furniture. I hope you all enjoyed this DIY project.

Any of you have pieces of furniture you have stained? Any great finds to share? 

Furniture Makeover

Hello there... today I will share my secret on how to makeover furniture with some simple paint. There is nothing I love more than going to estate sales and thrift stores to find some cool furniture for decent prices. One day we decided to stroll at our local thrift store and couldn't believe how cheap the furniture was. Jaw Dropping cheap! That was when my addiction started. If our car was bigger, I would have left with all the furniture. Unfortunately, we could only fit a dresser which was $9.99 and a desk priced $12.99.

The desk

 The dresser drawers

We forgot to take a picture of the whole dresser before, but the drawers above belonged to the dresser. That floral design was all over the dresser. It's not my style at all. We went to our local home depot and started looking at some potential colors. This is what we left with. 

We first cleaned all the furniture with some clorox wipes. (We didn't sand any of the furniture before painting) After cleaning everything, we slapped on some Rust-oleum primer in a flat gray. When painting furniture a dark color, always go with a grey primer rather than white. After painting the desk, we realized we really loved the grey primer color and decided we would leave it grey rather than all black. We painted the top of the desk with the flat black chalk paint and gold dipped the bottom. 

After finishing the desk, we moved on to the dresser. We wanted a dark espresso finish for our bedroom since our other pieces of furniture are dark espresso. When using Rust-oleum in espresso, beware the color will appear purple when first opening the can. When it dries, it will become a dark espresso. We had to paint 2 coats for all the furniture. 

As you can tell some the pieces are missing knobs. In our bedroom, we changed all the knobs so that our furniture would have something in common. 

We went to ikea and got these cool glass looking knobs. 

I hope you guys enjoyed our furniture makeover. Next time you are strolling in your local thrift store, don't pass up that eye-sore furniture, just paint it and make it your own. 

DIY Stenciled Wall

Hello everyone. Today we will be discussing how to stencil any wall in your house. Our bedroom walls are a beige color. At first I was in love with the neutral look of the bedroom,  that lasted about a week, and then I was bored with all the neutrals. I am just not a neutral girl. Danny was not going for the lets paint the whole bedroom a different color approach, so I had to get creative. I love the look of a Moroccan style in everything really. The colors, the fabrics and those beautiful light fixtures.

Look at these amazing light fixtures.

The top one is from Ballard Designs and the other from Moroccan Designs.

Lets take a moment to swoon..... 

Let's get back to the point before I go off into my bohemian gypsy dream world.  I went onto google images and started looking at moroccan prints. When I finally picked one that I loved, I printed the image out and cut it onto a piece of cardboard. Cardboard is best because it's sturdy and everyone has a cardboard box laying around somewhere. The next step is really the most time consuming. Now you have to trace your shape onto the wall. I first traced the stencil with a pencil. Then when I finished the whole wall, I went over it with paint. We choose a bright aqua as our paint color. It was one of the options I wanted to paint our bedroom at first, but decided against it because it was pretty loud, so we already had the paint color.  Because we already had the paint, this whole project was absolutely free. It took us two days to finish the project. We did take lots of breaks.



                                            Here are some pictures.