Favourite Furniture Fridays: Powell Brower Home

Hi! I'm Nancy from Powell Brower Home.

I'm happy to join Tiffany for her Favorite Furniture Friday series! It really made me go around my house and analyze what pieces I like the best, and I was hard pressed to come up with only one.  I love my mom's antique round tilt top table, and I still love my Mid Century solid teak dining room table, but my new favorite is this sofa I got last year from Room and Board.  It is my third white sofa in 25 years, so I'm not afraid of white since it has survived my kids, my animals, red wine stains and so on.  I will always have a white sofa, and have never tired of it. 

This is the Hawthorne, 85" long and in the Doss microsuede fabric. It is super comfortable and so versatile.

I will add a 2nd favorite furniture piece and that is my glass coffee table that I found at Salvation Army for $40.00.  It has solid brass hinges and is 1/2" glass top and bottom.

Thanks for having me Tiffany, and I look forward to following your design projects this term! Best of luck!  Come see us at Powell Brower Home!
Nancy

I just love the velvety look of Nancy's sofa! I agree, I can't get enough of white sofas. I was really nervous about keeping one clean but surprisingly it has held up really well. And what a great deal on that coffee table. Thanks for sharing Nancy!
Happy Weekend lovies.

My Pretty Copy of "The Great Gatsby" and other Beautiful Books

Yesterday, in my guest post for Michaela Noelle Designs, I shared my love of F.Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'. I loved this classic novel when I first read it in highschool, and loved it even more this time around now that I have an English Degree under my belt. I also can't wait for the movie! I predict that Leo is going to be amazing and that the film is going to inspire some trends in design this year! My brother and his girlfriend gifted me this beautiful copy for Christmas, and I just can't get enough of the lovely cream and bronze cover:

  I got quite a few compliments on this copy, and a few questions as well, so I thought I would share the information with you all. Coralie Bickford-Smith is the talented designer behind the book cover. She has, in fact, designed art deco inspired black, gold and white book covers for an entire Fitzgerald series, and each one is drool worthy:
  
She has also created beautiful and timeless clothbound covers for many classic literature works from Penguin Classics, including my personal fave book of all time "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte. Have any of you read it? Take a look at how pretty these clothbound babies are:

via CB-Smith

My goal is to collect one of each and read them all. How beautiful would these look on a shelf in comparison to your typical paperback?! I've seen the sets sold quite pricey, but you can find them individually on Amazon for great prices (around $16 a piece for many of them).

They can be tricky to find, so use the ISBNs when you are looking for them on amazon!

I just love classic literature! It's why I chose English as my first major and I love that these books fuse good reading with my second major, good design.

xox

ps. A special thanks to Emily from Once in a Blue Room, who first introduced me to these beautiful books!

She Loves Me

I'm over at Michaela Noelle Designs today sharing my current love and less-than-love list.
I hope you will hop over and check it out!! xo

Yellow and Grey Toile Plate

Admittedly, I've been pretty shy about sharing the blog around to people I actually know. Another goal that I have for 2013 is to tell more people about it. I'm proud of it, and I should show it off! My boyfriend's mom recently discovered it (sneaky, sneaky) and read my post featuring this room (still one of my faves) in which I state my love for a good yellow and grey colour scheme:

via Style at Home

Being the thoughtful person that she is, when she was out shopping she saw this and thought of me and picked it up as a little gift:

 I just love it! It's the perfect addition on top of a stack of my decor magazines:

Also, it reminds me so very much of these darling curtains in a bathroom by Sarah Richardson:

via HGTV

I'll be sharing more on my shelf styling next week! Stay tuned. xo

Au Naturale...More on my Chippendale Chairs

Happy Monday loves! So, you remember last week when I had my heart set on painting my chippendale chairs black? Well, over the weekend I saw a beautiful room with a chair just like my chairs, with their bamboo left au naturale. I sort of loved it! The graphic fabrics that Grace of A Storied Style chose really give these vintage babies a new life. Take a look:

All images via A Storied Style

I am so in love with this bright and happy space, and how good do the chairs look all dolled up?!
Be sure to check out the rest of the makeover here.
Just a reminder of how similar my own chairs are (I've got four of em total!):

New Term

This week I started my second term of design school.
Tuesday and Wednesdays are long days, with 8 hours of straight class. Luckily, time flies when you're having fun! Here are the classes that I'm taking:

1. Visual Communications
I'm so excited to learn the proper drawing techniques with my Prismacolor markers, pencil crayons and pastels! This will include material rendering, such as drawing hardwood, marble, glass, metal, etc.

This course will also teach us how to do perspective drawings, which I'm very excited about. Hopefully one day my drawings will be as good as Candice Olson's..who is quite amazing at rendering techniques:

via

2. Textiles

I'm also looking forward to learning more about the different kinds of fabrics and textiles in my Textile class. I think textiles are what really make the design and add personality to the space, so this will be a fun class!

3. Design Studio 1
In this class, we will be designing a condo for the entire term. I'm really excited to work on the same space for three months!

4. Art History 1
I absolutely adore art history! I took several art history electives during my time at the University of Guelph and fell in love. Art History 1 looks way back, to the earliest forms of art known to civilization. Pretty cool.

 
5. Drafting Standards
Another manual drafting class, a continuation of intro to drafting that I took in term 1.

It's going to be a great term...I can feel it! xo

Biking in the Snow

Sometimes, pursuing dreams isn't the glamorous thing we make it out to be. Moving to Toronto for me means a very tight budget and giving up my access to a vehicle. Luckily, Toronto has great public transit, but a monthly pass is still over $100 a month. My solution has been to bike.
At first, I found biking very difficult, as I hadn't ridden my bicycle since I was a young girl. Over time, I have come to love it! Even when it is cold out. But let's face it, I don't look like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

I wish.
My school is about a 12 minute bike ride away and my job is about 20 minute ride. Often, I'm biking after dark and in windy and cold conditions and I end up looking more dorky than glam. My safety is important to me and this means making sure cars can see me. For Christmas, my parents bought me one of these:

And you can bet your bottom dollar I rock it! Along with a hat, scarf up to my eyeballs, mittens, a helmet, and blinking lights on my backpack. That's real life for you guys.
To date, biking has saved me over $500 since September! Not to mention its great exercise.
Do you guys ride your bike?

Inside the Bell Jar: Cloches

 

I've always liked bell jars, or cloches. I think they can elevate a simple item that might otherwise be overlooked into something worthy of showcasing, like this shell that I put under a cloche on my coffee table. I found the darling little cloche at a local antique shop and couldn't resist its charm.

  I love the way that the pink hues in the shell play upon the pinks in my coffee table books, and that the bell jar gives my vignette a little bit of height.

One of my newest coffee table books is Nate Berkus's 'The Things that Matter'. And what is featured in Nate's place? Why a bell jar of course:

via Nate Berkus 'The Things that Matter' - Print.

I'll be reviewing his book and some other coffee table books later this month. This image demonstrates how perfectly bell jars fit with any decor. My space is so feminine and cheery, whereas Nate's is more masculine and moody. 

You guys might remember from this post that my love for library ladders was inspired by Beauty and the Beast... Could this be where my crush on cloches began as well?

 xox

Craigslist Purchase: Chippendale Chairs

We all do crazy things from time to time. For me, this includes driving nearly 2 hours to purchase a dining set when I do not have a dining room....

Maybe crazy, but I have been drooling over Jonathan Adler's Faux-bamboo chippendale chairs for a year now. At $645 a piece they are obviously out of my budget. But then I stumbled upon a real bamboo chippendale set - 4 matching chairs and a table. I offered $80 and it was accepted! And they are almost identical in style to the JA chairs. I couldn't be any more thrilled!!

I plan on selling the table. It's beautiful and in great condition but I don't love the idea of a matching set. I also know that I'm going to spray the chairs, and maybe replace the worn cane seats with something upholstered. I won't decide on a colour until I have a room to put them in, but of course I'm thinking about it already. My front runner is black:

via Christina Murphy Interiors

via Style at Home - Designed by Ray Staples

via Elle Decor

White is my second choice:

via Amanda Teal

via Tiffany Eastman Interiors

 But then again there is always blue or orange:

via Plush Palette

via

The options are endless really. My vote is black, but what is yours?

Yellow Kitchens

Recently, I had brunch with a friend who is looking into buying her first home. Number one on her list is a kitchen painted bright yellow, and she asked me whether I liked the idea or not.
 
Some inspirational images of yellow kitchens:

via

^ These yellow stools, tulips and bowl of lemons really make a bright impact in this classic white space.

via design*sponge

^Once again, the white keeps this kitchen so crisp and allows the yellow to shine. A yellow oven is fearless!

via Better Homes and Gardens

^ I think that this is my favourite! Why not paint the island yellow rather than the walls? It's such a show stopper in an otherwise all white space. 

Here are my thoughts:
1) Why not? Paint is a good place to experiment if you aren't afraid of color because its easy and inexpensive to change.

2) Because yellow is so bright and cheery, I recommend it with white cabinets. White will keep it crisp and fresh.

3) There are great ways to bring yellow into the kitchen without painting the walls.
I am a firm believer that using an accent colour in strategic ways can make an even greater impact than simply slapping paint on the walls.

via Tiffany Leigh Interior Design

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Would you do a yellow kitchen? I think its so fun!