Buttercup

{image source: flickr user law_keven at www.creativecommons.org }

 

I remember the buttercups that used to dot my elementary school playground. 

 I went there for nine years so I knew the field well.  The buttercups would shoot up faster than the blades of grass between mowings.  

 

{image from wikipedia}

 

When we were younger, we'd hold them up under eachother's chins & it was, " Do you like butter?" 

  

A little older and it was, "he loves me, he loves me not"

 

{He loves me!}

 

 You never really knew if he was going to love you or not with buttercups because some types have 5 petals and others have 6.

 

 

 

I loved making flower chains & never really grew out of it.  I remember doing them in the Spring as I waited for my turn at long jump in high school track.  One day I remember making necklaces for the other sprinters & somehow convincing even the guys to wear them as crowns...  (My coach must have loooved that ;)

ahahahaha   (It really still makes me laugh out loud.) 

 

More than anything, I just remember always picking them up & playing with them when I see them.  Long talks on the field with my best friend, scooping down to pick a buttercup, subconsciously.  Crumbling the old flower centers into little pieces between my fingers & rolling them around. 

 

 

 

 

I love these pics of the plants from NC State...  (above & below) 

 

 

 

{image source for above pics: http://www.toronto-wildlife.com/Plants/Buttercup_family/more_tall_buttercup.html }

 

It's for pretty much all of these reasons that I've known for a while I wanted to do a buttercup design for my textile line.  When the power went out for days this Summer & we needed to get out of town, we made an impromput visit to see my dad in Illinois & have him meet the baby...  The car ride is 13 hours and it was the first time after Luke was born (in May) that I'd had some time to sketch.  I  worked on "buttercup" in my lap...

{The beginnings of it...  as you can see, drawing doesn't come easily to me & there are lots of erase marks & mess ups}

 

The design (like all of them) is just an interpretation... not a botanical study.  I add my own little things here & there and I'm sure I leave out pretty important parts, but it's the feeling that I'm after...

{One of my first strike-offs}

I'm working on the final colorways now but I'm really happy with the light earthiness of this first one...

 

A few more options are on their way & I hope you enjoyed a peek into the process.

 

...

 

Do you have any buttercup memories?

 

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Demo & Rebuild

I'm back to the construction zone from a whilrwind trip to NYC and, like I've been mentioning for the past few weeks, we're now down to the studs at our place. (!!)  We're reworking the floorplan- closing doorways, adding new ones, moving walls, removing them... plumbing is being moved, windows are getting enlarged, we're adding a fireplace, redoing the bathrooms & kitchen... it's madness!! (but the good kind of madness ;)  We have the air off because there's so much dust flying around & we want to keep it out of our upstairs "apartment" as it's been dubbed... But as I type this morning, I'm hoping it stays warm a little longer because there is definitely a chill in the air & there's no heat for us until we get the bulk of the contruction completed. 

One of the biggest changes we're making is opening up the kitchen to the living room...  Here it is before:

And here it is now: 

 They've finished sanding down the beams.  The red-brown stain is now GONE and we've exposed the bare pine.  (How I wish that pine had been exposed over the past 40 years, aging gracefully but oh well... It's very raw now & we had it hand scraped & wire brushed.  )  We've also had insulation added between the beams because before there was only a layer of plywood before the roof & we're making it a bit more energy efficient.   And of course as  you can see... the wall is DOWN!!!  The kitchen is now completely open to the living room.  We also expanded the kitchen two feet to the right (taking space from the dining room) so that it spans the whole width of the living room now.   Floors are going down this week & next (more on that as soon as I have pics!) and I CANNOT WAIT.  Once we have floors, we can move our things inside from the garage & pod.  Dave went diving in the pod for clothes last week & climbed over all of the front stuff to get to the Fall stuff in the back.... He dug himself a little hole and climbed down into it....  And I  honestly thought he was buried by the stuff at one point.  (thanks to him of course.)    

{it's since been rearranged} Me, after realizing I hadn't heard him talk in a while:  "Dav, are you okay in there??"him, very quiet/ far away: "Hellllllllp"At that point I was about to launch the jogger strollerfrom the pod to the woods behind me as I screamed "DAVE?!!!!!!"Then I heard "No no no no no!!  I'm fine!!" in a completely normal volume.  Then laughter.Oh wow. He's very lucky I couldn't reach him at that point. We've had the discussion before of "fright or flight" in emergency situations.  I'm a "fight" kind of girl.  There's tyipcally no hesitation in my reactions and I find myself doing things before I've even thought about them.  Thanks to him, (yes am still bitter ;)  I almost launched our Christmas breakables into the woods.   Anyway, things are happening around here & I'm in the midst of planning the kithen (and pretty much everything else around here) so I'll be back this week to share some plans!!  Off to some clients for the day & keep your fingers crossed we find our nanny soon!!  My head is busting with things I need to remember & people I need to speak to... send some brain space my way.  I've never been so busy in my life.  I'm not at the breaking point yet but feel like I should be.  Maybe once you actually get here, you're too busy to break. ??? ;)  

{at least I've got what matters most} 

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

What's Up

I can barely remember this past week...  We moved into our new house a week ago. 

We're still living on the upper floor because the rest of the house has been gutted, which is actually working out just fine.  Most of our things are packed up & in the garage...  We labeled things as best we could & had a lot of help from our family, but some things have still just ended up "missing."  Right as we were moving into our house, a huge storm hit and the movers got our stuff under cover as quickly as possible so "organization" sort of hit the fan.  We're slowly climbing through the garage in search of some really important (A.K.A.  "work") things.  Dave's whacked his (bald- completely exposed) head on the garage rafters mulitple times during his searches.  :(

 

 

Fall is hitting (I loooooove Fall!!!) and it's time to switch over our wardrobes but most of our stuff is buried in a POD in our driveway.  We've had people (on a couple of different instances) walk up to our house & ask if we were having a garage sale!!!  My grandmother was here one day & told the woman asking, "No, it's just junky."  (Thanks Grandmother! ;)

We had a new nanny start last week & it didn't work out so we're on the hunt again.  I've realized I can pretty much deal with stress calmly in any situation- except when it comes to my kids.  When I'm worried about them & who I'm leaving them with, I am not okay. I may not freak out & show it, but inside I pretty much just want to give up & quit everything & just be with them.  This past week, we watched as the new nanny we hired (very sweet, I think?)  do things over & over that just didn't sit right with us.  As the week went on, I realized we'd completely lost trust in her & that it wasn't going to work out.  I'm swamped with deadlines at work & having to constantly check in on the kids &and worry about them being okay or not didn't work out so well.  SO, she's out and now we're on the hunt for Mary Poppins again!  For now, we're trying to make it work. 

We handed the keys over to our old house this weekend (tear!) and getting the holes in the walls patched up & getting all of our things out was so intense that I really don't think I ever want to move again.  (Please remind me of this next time.)  There's just SO. MUCH.  STUFF.  I broke multiple vaccuums & Dave was out until 2 AM getting the house ready Friday night for the Saturday morning walk-through.   We did so much of it with our kids with us because we were afraid to leave them with the nanny, which was one of the hardest parts.  You just can't get as much done holding a 3-month old.

{Bye bye sweet home!!  We loved  you!!}

 

...And it's onward march!

{It's even more contemporary than our last home, which I'm really excited about!! It's not the home I ever imagined myself living in but I looooove it & can't wait to make it "us"!!}

So... for a very long time, this house is it.  We're done.

Which brings me to the overall conclusion that I want this house to be just right.  Just right to raise our family in.  I want it to flow & work well on a daily basis & then be able to convert easily into party space for gatherings.  At around 2400 square feet, we need to make the most out of it.  I want the materials to feel good & to be perfect for the vibe I'm after.  I'm willing to wait for the right things and I don't want to rush anything.  (Although I can't wait to have a kitchen again!!  And a washing machine too for that matter!! ;) 

{The back view}

The messiest things need to happen first and so one of those "messy" to-dos is sanding down the pine beams on our living room ceiling...  They currently have a dark brown stain on them that hides the old pine beams.  I really want to be able to see & appreciate the wood iteself, so the team from CarrMichael Construction is hard at work, hand-sanding the dark stain off the wood & hand-scraping and wire brushing the wood to give it a rough-hewn look. 

{above, beams before}

 

{You can see in the pic above that they're getting lighter!!}

 

 

Time to start my day but I'll be sure to post progress pics & show you some of my inspiration photos!!  Finegrs crossed for us in the hunt for Mary Poppins!!




If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Where I Lay My Head

Almsot every surface looks likes the surface of my bed.  We're temporarily sleeping in Luke's nursey while the construction's going on.  It's working out pretty well actually. Please excuse me (and the mess!) while we get settled!!! 

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

OH. MY. GOSH.

 

We spent the weekend moving & it was crazy.  Really really crazy.

 

We moved into this:

(Well, minus the boxes...  We threw them there in an attempt to get some normalcy happening upstairs.)

 

Our new house is pretty much down to the studs. 

{You can spy our kitchen through the dining room in this pic.  We're expanding the kitchen 2 feet closer into the dining room & a wall will be going back up.}

 

There's a lot of this (below) going on because we're trying to live here through the construction.

 

(our foyer, quarantined ;)

 

We live up here now:

 

{The upstairs loft living room.  There are 2 bedrooms & a bathroom off of the living room.  Dave & I are squatting in baby Luke's nursery for now.   We're eating most meals outside or at the little table on the left.  }

 

We still have a few things at our old house to do & touch-ups there of course, but we're almost completely done.  It's pretty surreal.  I haven't really had a minute to think about all of the design decisions I need to make for the new place.  There are sooooo many coming up that I'm really excited about but I've got too much other stuff on my plate to even really go there right now.  I'm trying not to delay anything constuction-wise!!

 

And....

 we have a new office! 

 

Check it out:

(The Garage = stylin' new digs for Lauren Liess Interiors ;) ;)

 

rigggggght.

 

Although I'm kind of in love with working basically-outside.

 

Here's my new spot:

 

We epoxy'd the floors last week before moving everything in.  

My job was to sprinkle the sparkles. 

(I had waaaaaaay too much fun with that.)

Have a great week!!! I'll keep you posted!




If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Our Nature Box

I'm back from a whirlwind week of work & packing for our move! We leave our house Saturday and I'm bittersweet about it. 

 

We've been trying to take some time to enjoy our house as much as possible before we move & one of our favorite things to do is to take walks & spend time outside.  The boys & I have been working on filling up our "nature box" which is actually an old printer's tray:

 

 

 

 

We love coming home from walks & trips to display our finds in the nature box.  Some of the finds are from our beach trips this Summer & Spring, while most are from around our neighborhood.

 

 

Lately, we've been starting to see the acorns!! (yay Fall!! :)

Some are still green & a few are brown.  The seed pods are so pretty too in their own way.

 

I don't know the names of half of the stuff in the box, but of course we have our own names for our finds.  When we get our books set up at the new house, we'll look them up the old-fashioned way.

(I.e. "spikey balls" -  below)

 

The boys often come home with pretty little stones to add to the boxes.

{What are these green crazy things we found on a tree??!!!  seeds pods??  love them!}

Anyway, I hope you've been having a great week!  We have so much going on right now & it's starting to make me a little nutty in the head.  I'm forgetting things left & right and I can't seem to keep anything straight.  I am so excited about everything and, emotionally, I'm totally fine, but it's my brain that's going! :)  I'll be back as soon as I can to share pics on the DEMO going on over at our new place!!



If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.