Lindsay Ballard, Author at Makely

I’ve often noticed that the features in design magazines show these meticulously decorated homes with the exact same style throughout the house. It’s almost like you could take a design element from one room in the home and place it in another, and it would fit seamlessly.

Perhaps that’s something they teach you in design school, I don’t know. All I know is that I like far too many styles to settle on just one. I guess my design styles blend well together – I don’t have crazy modern furniture or use country blue and mauve – but they are definitely not completely interchangeable.

But you know what? I still think it’s beautiful. I think Melissa over at The Inspired Room would be proud that I am looking beyond the perceived imperfections to find the beauty. Or at least I hope she would be.

Let’s take a brief tour of my home, so you can see what I mean. Will you join me?

This is my dining room. The first thing we did when we moved in was paint it this amazing shade of blue. We also added crown moulding and chair rail. Well, DH added the moulding and chair rail. We have dark wood furniture in that room, and the contrast is amazing. I love it.

Through an arched hallway, you can pass from the dining room into our kitchen. I’ll admit, I’ve done absolutely nothing in the kitchen – other than add my coffee maker and espresso machine to the counter! We have dark granite counter tops and dark wood cabinets, but tons of natural light so it’s not at all dark in the room. The appliances are stainless. One of my favorite features are the little mailslot windows on either side of the cooktop. I definitely need to add some accessories to the kitchen, but I don’t want to give up any of our plentiful counter space.

Our breakfast room is immediately off the kitchen. We had a table and chairs stained to match our kitchen cabinets. Isn’t this little toddler chair adorable? DS isn’t quite tall enough to sit in adult chairs, so we bought him his own little chair that matches ours. The curtains in our breakfast room are blues, browns, and golds. You’ve seen them really dark pictures of them before here.

The kitchen and breakfast room open into our family room. This is absolutely my favorite in the house, but it also presents the biggest design challenge. We only have two full walls in the room, and one has floor to ceiling windows. Because this room is open to the 2nd-story, the walls are extremely tall. The above picture shows the top of the two story window treatments I created (which coordinate with those in the breakfast room). I have a lot of problems trying to decorate this room – between the tall walls, tons of windows, flat screen TV hanging on the wall, and the toys – so I haven’t done a ton in here. I’m definitely looking for inspiration (and ideas).

The last room in our home that has a similar style to the other three that have been mentioned is DS’s playroom. This room is on the 2nd story, but it’s a lofted area that overlooks our family room through wrought-iron railings. To be honest, the extent of the playroom decor so far is a Thomas the Train table, a denim slipped couch with red pillows, and this airplane on top of an armoire. I definitely need to focus more on this room, but since it usually looks like this…

…it feels pretty pointless most of the time.

Off the playroom, you’ll find my sewing room. As the only female in our house, I declared that this room was mine to decorate however I wanted, which meant as girly as possible. It’s kind of shabby chic, with white furniture, roses, pink, etc…basically anything that will ward off the boys. This chair was my first ever re-purposing project.

When we moved into this house, we moved DS out of his crib and into a big boy bed. He went to stay with my parents for a week while we moved and got settled, and he came back to his new room and transportation bedding. He loves it and never had a single problem in his transition from crib to bed. I bought the bedding at Target so it was cheap. I’m all about cheap bedding for little kids. His room will probably stay “theme-y” until he’s a little bit older.

Back downstairs, you’ll find the master bedroom. It is a lovely room with wonderful natural light and six windows. Six! There’s even a bay window! Even better to highlight my beautiful TOILE! Sweet DH…It takes a special man to agree to sleep in a French Country bedroom. He even helped me fabricate a toile covered headboard (which I promise to do a tutorial on when I have the time). This room is still coming together and has a long way to go, but I am loving it. I also love my combination of the red pillows with my navy toile, but my mother does not. 🙂 It’ll all come together, I promise. I can see it in my mind.

Well, there you have it. Several different styles of decor throughout my home. I do want to start incorporating some elements from the different styles in each room so they flow better. That presents a bit of a challenge, but I think I’m up to it.

Please tell me I’m not alone! Do you have several different design styles in your home?

Before our Zack was born, Tom and I had a set of really awesome coasters from Crate and Barrel in our living room. They were slate and chunky and natural and cool. I loved them.

Then, like the second Zack was born, we tossed them in the trash. They were slate and chunky and natural and cool, and definitely dangerous to our newborn. There was no telling what he could do with them – put out an eye, crack his head open – you know, endless possibilities of danger. Ha! First time parents.

We’ve been without coasters for nearly 3 years now. We didn’t really care because we had old cruddy end tables. However, we bought new end tables about a month ago, and I’ve been making Tom put his Diet Pepsis on notepads and magazines so they wouldn’t leave a ring. We needed coasters before I became Joan Crawford-esque by yelling, “No drink rings on the table!!”

Have you been in the market for coasters lately? I found this one:

And this one:

And then this beauty:

Um, no me gusta. Are you kidding me? And more importantly, who is buying these?!?Anyway, I figured that the perfect solution was to make my own. It’s really a pretty easy thing to do.

I bought 6 cheap ceramic tiles (they were 16 cents each!) and some felt dots at Home Depot. Then, I went over to Michael’s and picked up 2 sheets of 12×12 scrapbooking paper that matched my living room decor, a bottle of coordinating acrylic craft paint, a foam brush and a bottle of Mod Podge.

I measured the tiles and cut squares of scrapbooking paper that where 1/8″ smaller than the tiles. I cut them smaller than the tiles because I didn’t want the paper to overlap the sides of the tiles if I didn’t get the paper on them exactly center.

I laid out a garbage bag so I wouldn’t ruin my kitchen table with the glue. Don’t use paper towels or newspaper. They will stick to the tiles when you put the Mod Podge on them, and it will make a huge ugly mess. Don’t ask me how I know that.

Next, I used the foam brush to spread a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the tiles and then centered a square of paper on the top. I smoothed any bubbles out with my fingertips.

Once the paper was applied, the tiles looked like this:

I let the Mod Podge dry for about 20 minutes, and then I broke out my brown paint. I wanted to paint the edges of the tiles and the edges of the paper so that they looked a little worn. I used a dry paper towel to wipe off any extra paint on the paper. You could use colored tiles, stone tiles, or just leave just leave the edges white if you don’t want to paint them.

Lindsay tip: Did you notice that I started with six tiles and now only have four? That’s because I dropped one on the floor and broke it (doh!) and put too much paint on a second one and it looked awful (double doh!). Since this project is so cheap, buy a couple of extra tiles, just in case.

After the paint dried, I applied a coat of Mod Podge to the top and let it dry for about 20 minutes. I repeated that process five more times for a total of six coats. I used the “hard coat” Mod Podge, so that it would really seal the paper and make a solid surface.

Once the tiles were dry, I added four felt dots to the bottom so that they wouldn’t scratch my tables. See? You can even see my sloppy paint job! No one is ever going to see the bottom of your coasters, so it doesn’t really matter.

And there ya go! Four coasters that coordinate with your living room decor instead of having cats or fish or eagles on them. Now wasn’t that fun?

One last Lindsay tip for you: According to the bottle, the Mod Podge takes about a month to fully cure. I normally don’t believe in little things like directions, so I just ignored that and put my coffee cup on a coaster this morning. Well, the hot mug stuck to the coaster! I guess because the Mod Podge hadn’t fully set, the hot beverage heated it and made it sticky again. It’s fine now and they work great with cold drinks, but I don’t think I’ll be putting any hot mugs on them for about a month!

Now, my tables are protected from those evil drink rings. I’m not sure these are actually any safer for Zack, who will probably now use them as weapons, but they sure are cute.

Design Styles

DIY Tile Coasters