Bar Styling

Thank you for weighing in on the dining room pillow dilemma yesterday! I love hearing your opinions and I'm liking the suggestion of using the yellow for now since it's summertime, and using the brown come fall.  I plan to style the table soon and show you how it turned out.  

Today, I'm turning my attention to the area just next to the dining room- the butler's pantry, and specifically, the bar.  I'm a big fan of bar carts and bar styling, but have never really "styled" our bar area until recently.  It's fun to play around with the different bottles and accessories and see how it looks.  

The Raffia tray is from West Elm (18 x 28) and their mirrored trays are awesome too.  If you don't have a bar countertop, the West Elm tray comes with a sleek stand that you can make into a bar cart.  When our house was first built, the back cabinet wall was just drywall, but I had the mirror added and it made such a big difference in reflecting the light from the windows.

In setting up my bar, I started with six bottles of Pellegrino water for height and because I love the green color.  Then I layered in other liquors, keeping the tallest at the back and the shorter ones toward the front.  At first, my tray was too crowded, so I moved some of the alcohol to a lower cabinet.  I didn't want it to look cluttered.

A bunch of mint adds a live, green element and the colorful yellow and white straws are fun.  Mojitos anyone?! 

 The mini silver cups are sophisticated too. 

Being the chocolate lover I am, I always keep a little treat nearby.  These Ghirardelli salted caramel squares are so good!

A bowlful of limes is so clean and pretty, but slicing one up made it look even better.

I don't use our gold flatware very often, so I thought it would be nice to put it out on display. I got mine on Overstock.  It's currently out of stock, but you can sign up to be notified when they restock.    West Elm sells a nice set of gold flatware too. Of course, if I can keep the hydrangea alive for more than a few days, that would be great.  

My favorite thing to drink on this tray is pink champagne.  Good times! 

Skyy vodka reminds me of my college days.  And I've always thought the bottle was so pretty.

Are you styling your home bar?  What is your favorite drink?!

CHEERS!

Dining Room Pillows (Yellow or Brown?)

Hi friends! It's good to be back from a little time off last week.  We are taking things one day at a time, and have had a lot of family togetherness, which feels really good.  I did some things around the house that I haven't shown here yet, so I plan to put together more posts this week.  It will be good to clear my head and distract from the heavy-hearted things that I cannot control.  Thank you again so much for the prayers for my Dad- they really mean so much.



We've been eating more meals in the dining room lately and especially after finding these gorgeous, vibrant lamps from HomeGoods, I wanted to start layering and styling the space more.  The "buffet" which I think is meant to be a media stand, is just a stand-in until I find something better and much longer.  It was purchased years ago at Crate & Barrel.  I'd love to put sconces on either side of the mirror too.

As you can see, there's not much going on and the room needs some fabric and pattern to tie into the drapes and bring the room together.  I had our drapes made from Dwell Studio Vintage Plumes Peacock fabric and then "no-sewed" the curtain liners using a flat sheet.  After a couple of years, I still adore the colors and pattern in the fabric.  I must like aqua and yellow together- it's the same as my blog design!

Shopping Etsy, I found Festive Home Decor, who makes pillow covers in lots of different styles and shapes for reasonable prices.  Torn between a yellow and brown pattern, I bought both because I knew I could easily change them out and move them around the house.  

The yellow pair are smaller, but look punchy and cheerful with the aqua lamps. 

I was cleaning out the media room, aka playroom, so James could have more space to play, and needed to move the large woven urns out- so into the dining room they went.  I'm liking the effect- another layer of texture and height.

The brown are nice too.  I really like the groovy geometric pattern and the 20x20 is a good size.

Which pillows do you prefer in this room?  I shared another online source for pillow covers last week in case you missed it. 

Have a great week!

House Prices in Southern California need to Rest now (reposted from Forbes).

From my Forbes blog:

DataQuick today reported that house prices in Southern California have risen 28 percent from the last year.  A year ago, people who were buying houses in this part of the world were getting a good deal.  Now, the deal is so-so.

Take a look at the table below (it is something I constructed for my class on mortgages and mortgage backed securities).  The numbers on the vertical axis (.03,.05,.05..)are cost of capital numbers–the financing costs of owning a house.  Generally speaking, the cost of capital for owning a house is the mortgage rate plus one percent, which reflects that the cost of the equity in the house (the down-payment) is higher than the cost of the mortgage.  The numbers across the horizontal axis (10, 15,20…) are rent-to-price ratios.  Suppose you can own a condo for $360,000; the rent on the same unit is $1500 per month or $18,000 per year.  The price to rent ratio is then 20.

In the example given here, we are looking at a household that pays a federal marginal tax rate of 25 percent, a state marginal tax rate of 7.9 percent, faces closing costs of 3 percent, annual maintenance cost of 2.5 percent, a property tax rate of one percent, a Realtor commission of 5 percent, and expects to hold the property for five years (feel free to email me at richarkg@usc.edu if you wish to put your own assumptions in the spreadsheet that produced the numbers listed below).

As it happens, I have been looking at costs and rents in Westwood, a neighborhood just west of Beverly Hills and on the other side of the 405 from Brentwood.  Rents on 2 bedroom units run around $28 per year per square foot; prices are around $650 per square foot, so the price to rent ratio is around 23.  With current mortgage rates at 4.5 percent, the cost of capital is 5.5 percent.  So lets look at the cells that are bolded: a price to rent ratio of 23 and a cost of capital of 5.5 lies in the middle of them.  The numbers in the cell is the amount of appreciation that is required each year that one holds a property for renting and owning to break even with each other.

So right now, for owning to be a better financial deal than renting, prices must rise around 4 percent each year.  Is this feasible in the long run for Los Angeles?  Yes, because over the long term, prices in LA tend to rise by about the rate of inflation plus one percent, so if we think 3 percent steady state inflation is in our future, we should be fine.  But will it rise much more than inflation plus one percent for a long time?  I doubt it.  And of course, CPI growth is less than two percent right now.  House prices are about where fundamentals say they should be, but it is time for increases to slow down.

				Price to Rent Ratio
		10	15	20	25	30
	0.03	-0.031	0.003	0.020	0.030	0.036
	0.04	-0.024	0.010	0.027	0.037	0.044
	0.05	-0.017	0.017	0.034	0.044	0.051
Cost of Capital	0.06	-0.009	0.024	0.041	0.051	0.058
	0.07	-0.002	0.031	0.048	0.058	0.065
	0.08	0.005	0.039	0.055	0.066	0.072
	0.09	0.012	0.046	0.063	0.073	0.079
	0.1	0.019	0.053	0.070	0.080	0.087

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Washi Tape Bookshelf

Can I just say that I am truly grateful for the love and support I felt from your prayers and warm wishes for my dad over the weekend.  Even if you did not comment, I still felt lifted up and appreciate so very much that you took a minute out of your day to pray for my family.  I normally don't post the not-too-pretty side of life since my blog is my "happy place" but this was just too important not to reach out.  My family thanks you from the bottom of our hearts.  We got a chance to have a nice visit this weekend and it was good to just be together.



At home, I dove into a major toy organization overhaul and then didn't have any energy left over for much else.  I did add a bit of easy pretty to my office (James' room too- just didn't photograph his yet).  Check this happiness out.

I swear sometimes it really is the little things.  I unwrapped a new roll of washi tape and was delighted by the bright, colorful pattern and immediately thought, I need to see this sunshine everyday!  So I pulled a big ole strip across my bookshelf.



And then I added a pink and white chevron patterned tape . . .

Little polka dots . . .

And big polka dots. . . (and yes that is a SATC trivia game.  I rock at it too.)

What about this floral tape?!

The cool thing is, washi tape pulls off easily without any damage.  If you get it crooked, just peel it up and restick it. 

This is a project that is fun for the whole family.  Look closely at the bottom left-hand side of the bookshelf.  James was helping.  

He was all, "I want some tape too."  I'm not gonna lie.  I gave him some plain old masking tape.  He looked at me like really?? and I felt ridiculous.  Then I let him have the "good tape."  

To see what else I've done with washi tape, go HERE.

To see how I covered some of those books with fabric, go HERE.

To see how I lined the back of my bookshelf, go HERE. 

Have a great week friends!

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Prayers

I'm so thankful to have many wonderful people who read this blog.  If you happen to be one of those readers who believes in the power of prayer, my family would appreciate prayers for my dad.  He's not doing too well, but I know God is the ultimate Healer and can restore his health.  I know that when we pray, especially multiple people praying over the same situation, God hears our prayers.  I appreciate you so much.

Pins of the Week

Part of the reason I love Pinterest so much is because it allows me to track and organize all of my pins and then use my boards as a resource for home projects, future blog posts, and food/fashion ideas.  I most often pin to these boards:  Yummy (526 pins); Crafty (409 pins); Christmas (350 pins); Love & Fashion, Beauty, Hair (tied at 308 pins); Yes Please (282 pins); Paper and Things (180 pins); and Organization and Cleaning (126 pins).

I also love to see what y'all are repinning- this lets me know what you are most interested in and what you like.  

The Pins of the Week are:

Honey Lime Tequila Shrimp Tacos with Avocado, Purple Slaw and Chipotle Crema via Tartine and Apron Strings (175 repins)

No. 12 on the Series (101 Ways to Get Pretty Organized) via Torie Jayne (75 repins)

The 10 Second Top Knot via The Freckled Fox (121 repins)

And look what I saw last night pinned onto MARTHA STEWART'S Organization & Storage board:  

Family Command Center via Hi Sugarplum! So cool Cassie!

Are you still digging Pinterest?  I really don't think I'll ever tire of it, although some days I find better content than others or more things that pique my interest.  I still pin a lot from outside sources, but also repin straight from Pinterest.  It's sometimes tiresome to see things pinned repeatedly, but I understand good ideas are popular and repinned often.  I also like a good mix of just photos without graphics- let the photo speak for itself with a caption, right?.  Crazy graphics make me kinda anxious.  What do you think?

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Pillow Covers // Goods by Grinn

I'm changing up the color in a few of our rooms (guest bedroom, living room, and master sitting room) and started searching for pillow covers.  Etsy is, of course, a great resource, but I feel like I'm seeing the same patterns/colors over and over in a lot of the shops.  I stumbled upon Goods by Grinn on Pinterest (my addiction!) and was instantly excited over her pillows.  And at great prices- around $36 for a 20x20 inch cover with a zipper closure. :)  You can buy pillow inserts at places like Hobby Lobby, Joanns, and Michaels.  I like to buy inserts just a little bigger than the pillow for a fuller look.

The gold basket weave is definitely on my list.  But these coraly pinks are so pretty too.  They remind me of my Rifle paper notebooks.

Gold dots are hot right now - like the decals on the walls of Courtney's daughter's room.  

I can't resist a heart or anything to do with l o v e. 

Ah, the arrows!

And geometrics!

Don't be surprised if you see some of these pillows at my house in the near future!  Which are your faves? Do you have a go-to place for pillows? Please share!