House Update: Pretty, Pretty Things

There have been a few developments on the decorating front. Stuff we ordered when we moved in suddenly started to pour in at a rapid place. Which is all very, very exciting. Come, take a walk with me through the Poe Palace (fine, it’s Chauteau de XFE, but I was consulted on some of the decisions.)

First up is the biggest deal: the shed, which we had built and which was fraught with difficulties, including discovering that our first choice of wood stained our concrete while it was piled up outside in the rain. Then, our contractor Rob started putting it on the shed front anyway, only to discover a day later that it would continue to run and stain our concrete and anything else it touched. So it had to go.

BUT, the shed was so worth the wait. Isn’t it gorgeous?

The (non-leaking) wood is called ipe and it’s very fancy. Especially for a shed.

The shed is the home to our grill and the Big Green Egg, which is why it’s so fancy. Can’t have the BGE just slumming it. So we had a shed built that’s only slightly less nice than our house. Speaking of….

That’s my new shower curtain. It’s a chandelier. Cuz I’m fancy like that.

My chaise from West Elm finally showed up. It’s a bit more “stuffed” and less sleek than I expected, but it’s really comfortable.  And, well, it’s not really returnable since we custom ordered it, not that I ever would return it. It’s just a bit mushy compared to XFE’s sleek white couch.

It’s even Petunia approved.

As you can see, there’s also a new piece of art hanging in the dining room. It’s a bull. His name is Sonny the Longhorn.

It’s by an artist named Jennifer Moreman from Tyler, Texas. Funny story: every time we go to a steakhouse and they have those old Western paintings of bulls, XFE cracks a joke (apparently, he was not joking) about needing a painting like that for our house.

With that in mind, I began searching around for something similar but modern. I found Moreman’s shop on Etsy, but her paintings were prohibitively expensive. Recently, while looking for house stuff, XFE sent me a link to a sale on One King’s Lane, but I never opened it.

A day or two later, I remembered Moreman’s Etsy shop and sent it to XFE with a note saying I knew it was expensive, but maybe we could buy it for Christmas or something. He responded right away about how he saw this artist on OKL and for a lot less. It was total kismet.  I love it so, so, so much. It combines my Texan heritage,  our inside joke, and our love of modern art.

Finally, you might also have noticed a new dining room rug peaking out and you would be right.

It’s a gorgeous peacock blue.

We’re missing a dining room chair because we’re having new seats made to replace the rattan. And it’s cheaper than replacing all of the chairs wholesale.

So that’s the latest on our decorating adventures. The rest is just small decorative stuff, but all the major pieces are in place. We even bought a pillow (the one behind Petunia in the picture above), which we got for free, basically, because of our recent One King’s Lane purchases.