Inspiration

I have been extremely stressed about all the things we have to do over the next few months. Our home inspection is this weekend, which is something I'm somewhat afraid of, because we are buying a foreclosure and will not have recourse to go back and ask the sellers to fix anything. We are buying as-is. On the positive side, the house was built in 2005, so the chances of there being major problems is pretty low, but you just never know.

To get my mind off of the stress, I am spending time thinking about what I want to DO with this house. We are moving from a 1000 sqft 2/2 apartment to a 2800 sqft 4/2.5 house, so there will be quite a bit more space for us to decorate.

Lately there are two rooms I have been really thinking about...The kitchen & the guestroom. Although I love the kitchen layout (two pantries and a prep sink in the island!), I'm not too fond of the finishes (honey oak cabinets w/ no hardware, beige laminate counters, vinyl floors...yuck), so to start, we would really like to paint the cabinets a creamy white, and paint the walls a sunny yellow. I really want to go with a French Bistro type look, using this Vera Bradley fabric as inspiration for the color palette:


I don't necessarily want busy floral patterns everywhere, but I tend to like graphic floral prints and I love the swirly vines in this print. I was thinking a black & white tie-up curtain on the window over the sink (maybe some kind of stripe?), lots of black & white French accessories above the cabinets...maybe some fleur de lis, some black wroght iron scrolly wall art. Lots of black and white decor against the yellow walls.

For the guest room, I really wanted to do something different from my regular style. I decided I want to do a blue & white motif that suggests "seaside" without being overly "beachy". I saw this beautiful, very simple framed photo of sand dollars, which is what inspired me:

Maybe some bedding like this:

My parents are giving us my younger sister's bedroom set (which actually used to be mine...I picked it out when I was 9 years old!) and we plan on painting the tall dresser, short dresser, mirror, and nightstand white. There is also a desk with hutch, which we plan on painting an antique black and using in the loft (which we currently plan to turn into an office).