Last Saturday I went and saw Paula at The Square Nest in Salt Lake City. (I posted about it before.) I took in a cabinet door and a sample of my counter top so she could help me pick out a paint color. (She agreed that yellow, the color I had tried to use in my kitchen, is a really hard color to use correctly.) Well, I am so excited to announce the color we will be painting the walls in our kitchen…Smokey Slate.

Isn’t it beautiful!?! Paula has the one of the rooms in her store painted this color, and it is gorgeous. Behr.com has a cool tool called Color Smart where you can pick a color and it will choose coordinating colors for you. Unfortunately, I don’t like any of the colors it picked for me.

Tags: Interior Design Ideas by Tricia
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Now that you’ve heard about etsy, I want to tell you about Hiccup Inc. They are a success story in the making, and I have been so interested in the story behind the local company since I read a Deseret News article about them on Saturday. They have some very cute things, mainly building blocks for baby and picture frames, that they started selling on etsy at the beginning of March. After just a couple of weeks, BAM!, Martha Stewart–yes, the Martha–called and wanted Hiccup on her show. Things have been taking off ever since, in fact she says it is hard to fill all the orders. Isn’t that a great story? It just makes me wonder what I can create that will get people talking like that. It also makes me want really cute puzzle picture frames.

Picture from Hiccup Inc.’s etsy store.

Tags: Interior Design Ideas by Tricia
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If you haven’t heard of etsy you are crazy! Or you’ve just been missing out on some really fun things. Etsy is a site where you can buy (or sell) all things handmade. I enjoy seeing all the creative people out there. Here are my favorite ways to use the site:

• If I only have a few minutes I look at the Main Showcase. The showcase has 36 new items every day. The 36 sellers actually pay to be in the showcase, so it might not be the coolest or most unique stuff but I usually find fun things.
• I love to search by location because I see what people from Provo, Salt Lake, etc. are selling. It is a fun way to see all the creativity that is in my own back yard.
• I look through the Time Machine 2. This way I can see what people are buying. Sometimes you can see that something is super popular and snatch one up for yourself before they are all gone. This is where I can spend a lot of time looking.

The thing that I have bought and loved the most so far is this 2008 letterpress calendar from Ilee Papergoods. It is beautiful.

Tags: Very Interesting by Tricia
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Last Thursday I stopped by Real Deals, a great little shop in Utah County that has good deals on unique home decor. They keep their costs low by renting out an old building and only being open on Thursdays and Saturdays. Some of my favorite items they had there were a turquoise coffee table and a big white bird cage. They would be so fun in my front room!

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me on Thursday, so I took a screen shot of the Real Deals website that has the franchise owner’s picture as well as a picture of the store. There are a lot more pictures online if you are interested, just click here to browse through them.

Their Customer Bill of Rights are great. You have the right to:

• Drool upon entering.
• Make us your preferred source of retail therapy.
• Leave the store bare…leave the store naked!
• Mistake Real Deals for heaven on earth.
• Ditch your kids, meet your friends, and shop till you’re sane again.
• Well up with happy tears. We understand.
• Make us your Saturday morning hangout.
• Get goose bumps of excitement even when it’s hot outside.
• Ruin all of our wonderful displays.
• Make us open every box and inspect every clock to find the one with the greenest finish.
• Tell everyone where you got that perfect piece for that hard-to-decorate spot in your house.
• Ask for the item that makes us get a ladder to reach.
• Buy your own birthday present…every week.

Sounds good to me!

Tags: Utah Home Decor Stores by Tricia
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It seems like there have been so many places to go and see (and purchase) some great local stuff lately. This weekend isn’t any different! Today and tomorrow is the Beehive Bazaar. I went to the last bazaar, held in December, and I have kicked myself for not picking some things up. I still haven’t officially decided what to get my mother-in-law for Mother’s Day, so I’m hoping something there jumps out at me. We’ll see!

Tags: To Do by Tricia
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Look at this awesome dresser transformation from Sunset magazine. They found an old dresser on Craigslist for $25 and made it into something that is freakin’ awesome. They spent $100 on the transformation goods, and I think if you are a little bit more budget conscience, you can spend less than that and get the same look.By the way, here is the before:

I am imagining the possibilities for this dresser in Orem.

Thanks for the great article Suzette!

Tags: DIY, Interior Design Ideas by Tricia
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My cute sister, who lives near Washington D.C., wrote in to tell me about a store she loves. She said:

I have a recommendation for you regarding home decorating stores. There is a chain out here called HomeGoods that I LOVE to check out on occasion. It is owned by the same people as Marshalls and TJMaxx, but the entire store is dedicated to home goodies. We have a bunch of them around here. I looked online and it looks like there’s only one in the Salt Lake area. It may be worth checking out if you feel like it one of these days. (Since there’s only one in your area, hopefully it’s a good one and not totally lame!)

Well Tiffany, the HomeGoods store you are talking about is in Brickyard Plaza (off of 33rd South and 13th East in Salt Lake City) which is approximately .5 miles from my old condo, and I too love the store! Their furniture prices are still a bit too much for me, but their prices on wall hangings and accessories are awesome. In fact, when I was redoing my downstairs bathroom I needed an inspiration piece that wasn’t too pricey. After looking at a ton of stores around my house, I still hadn’t found anything, so I made the trek up HomeGoods and WALA! A cute picture practically fell into my hands. $25 later, I was the proud owner of this little bird.

We decided to paint the walls blue to match the little bird’s feathers and are going to have some yellow accents. Someday, when the bathroom is actually finished, I’ll post pictures of this little guy hanging up in the bathroom for all to admire.

Photos above from the HomeGoods website.

Tags: Utah Home Decor Stores by Tricia
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I love the Stuff White People Like blog. (It is a bit irreverent, so don’t read it if you are super sensitive.) The two posts that seem to pertain to me most at this moment are #37 Renovations and #90 Dinner Parties. I really do dream about restoring an old home to its former glory, and I am currently planning some awesome dinner parties. (Once my kitchen is finished, of course.)

From #90 Dinner Parties:

Hosts are expected to deliver a magical evening. The food must be home made with fresh, organic ingredients, the music must be just right (ambient, new, but not too loud), and the decorations inside the house should be subtle but elegant. The ultimate goal is to do a better job than the couple at the last dinner party while attempting to make everyone jealous and sort of dislike you.

Tags: Uncategorized, Very Interesting by Tricia
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The Women’s Expo I went to this weekend was awesome. Not only did we get the word out there for Lavender Days, but I also saw a lot of very cool Utah vendors that are doing very cool things! (Shout out to my booth neighbors HugaMonkey!)

One of my favorite booths to walk through was Raymond Designs. I love them because they have LDS art that is different than all the usual stuff out there. (If you’re not LDS, you might not know that just about every member of the LDS Church has some type of religious themed art in their house. So, after going to a few LDS people’s houses it may seem like they all have the exact same pictures on their walls. You might actually start thinking that they pass pictures out at church for people to hang on the walls. But they don’t. Everyone just happens to have the exact same pictures as everyone else. It is one of those quarky things about those Mormons.)

I especially love the temple pictures from Raymond Designs. The designer, John Raymond, just knows how to make the pictures beautiful. The thing is, Deseret Book is now carrying his stuff, so this might become too mainstream for me. We’ll see.

What I really want is a picture of my family in front of the temple with this sepia toned, washed out look. If a photographer out there is willing to give it a try, let me know!

Tags: Interior Design Ideas by Tricia
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I love reading good blogs from fellow Utahns. Nicole Hill writes a blog called A Little Sussy. She is a photographer and is “in the know” on a bunch of cool things, so I like to keep up with what she is blogging about. Yesterday she wrote about a blog she just set up to sell some of the props she has bought for past photo shoots. Some of the things for sale are really unique.

Photo from Rubberball Sells.

Tags: Interior Design Ideas, Very Interesting by Tricia
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