One Trick We Tried to Get a Better Night's Sleep

One of the first purchases we made when we moved into our house last year was buy a bigger mattress. At the time, we still let our two little dogs sleep with us and, with a queen sized bed and four sleeping in it, things were getting tight. 

We made the decision to buy a king sized mattress and then started making the girls sleep on their own bed in the laundry room and it changed everything. It was glorious. Such a better night’s sleep! But we made another decision that’s made all the difference, too: every few months, we started switching which sides of the bed we slept on.

PJ suggested it one day, a couple of months in, just when we were getting used to sleeping on a new bed in a new house. We were both skeptical at first, but changing everything up turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. We're both so used to sleeping on one side each night that our bodies had grown accustomed to laying a certain way, and sometimes we would even wake up sore. 

Switching sides of the bed gives you and your partner the chance to experience how it feels to sleep in different directions and hopefully find the one that both of you agree on. If you don't like your side of the bed once you make the switch, you can change it in a month or two. This article  gives some statistics conducted by Saatva Mattress (a luxury mattress company) that we found interesting:

• Right side sleeping males feel relaxed instead of stressed most of the time when compared to men sleeping on the left (71% vs. 60%)
• Almost half (46%) say that when they first got together as a couple, both partners preferred the same side of the bed and 79% of them had to concede their preferred side to their partner.

Pretty crazy, right? Do you switch sides of the bed with your partner regularly? If not, give it a try! You might be surprised with how good you'll start sleeping.

(Bed from here. Lamps from here. Duvet from here.) 

Design Sponge House Tour

So, something amazing happened. Sort of a dream come true, really. Last week our house was featured on Design*Sponge and we collectively lost our minds. Like everyone else, we've been following D*S for YEARS and have fallen in love with the blog's house tours and essays. We were so flattered when they agreed to feature our house and tell a little bit about our family's history with it!

Now that the tour is up, we will be updating the house tour page on our blog to reflect our current home, but the other one will still be available to tour as well. We also plan to do a YouTube tour pretty soon, we just have to wait for a pretty day and sadly, we're pretty short on those lately.

Thank you Garrett at Design*Sponge and for our photographer Golden who helped put this together with us! Y'all can click here to see some before and afters and read a little bit about the back story with our house on Design*Sponge!

We’re Obsessed with the Style From “Call Me By Your Name”

Have you seen Call Me By Your Name? The film was nominated for 4 Oscars this year, including Best Picture, and won for Best Adapted Screenplay, though, we think it should have won in another category, too: Best Costume Design.

Even though it's still getting down to the 30's here on some days, we're daydreaming about warmer weather when we can wear the Oxfords, Polo's, and shorts like Elio and Oliver do. The film is set in 1983 but the style still seems classic and very doable today. It's all about short shorts, over-sized short sleeve button downs, and some slip-on boat shoes. Since Spring starts tomorrow, it seems like the perfect time to get our wardrobe together for the next couple of months.

Below, we've rounded up some items YOU can wear this summer to achieve the CMBYN look, too:

(above photo via here)

Are You Watching Queer Eye?

Ever since we finished Shameless, we have been fixated with another show on Netflix. The new Queer Eye reboot is SO GOOD and has a completely different feel from the original. This isn't your mother's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (assuming she watched it?).

This time, they don't just focus on making over straight guys. They feature gay men AND straight men who want to change their lives for the better. Maybe they're stuck in a rut they can't get out of or struggling to come to terms with themselves. Every episode we laugh until we cry, then we actually cry. 

Each member of the Fab Five specialize in their own area of expertise (grooming, culture, clothes, food, and design) and each bring something fun and unique to the table. Our favorite? Jonathan, who focuses on grooming. He's hilarious and says the most ridiculous yet relatable things you've ever heard. The show is worth watching just for him alone, but you come away with a valuable and meaningful lesson after every episode. We can't get enough and can't wait for season 2 already! 

If you haven't watched it yet, we highly recommend checking it out!

(picture via here)

Breakfast Room Progress

The room in the center of our house has had a couple of names since we moved in. At first we called it "the library", because we were going to put bookshelves in eventually. Eventually has now turned into "umm maybe YEARS down the line or possibly never, whichever comes first." We had a rug in there when we first moved in that has since moved to our bedroom. Below is how it looked on our TV pilot "Down to the Studs".

So then we called it "the center hall" because, well, it's in the center of our house and we only used it as a hallway to pass through to get to other rooms in the house. We didn't have any chairs around it then and it felt very staged. You can see that phase below.

Now, we call it "the breakfast room" because we currently have chairs around the table and eat most of our meals there. We have a 9 ft dining room table (in the back of the picture above) that we usually only eat at for special occasions. Otherwise, you'll mostly find us eating at this table in the room of a thousand names. 

We've been very slowly filling it with frames and plan on doing some more above the table with the lamp on it to the right. This room gets the most amazing light in the winter and is right between the living room and the kitchen, so you feel like you're right in the middle of all the action. A room that we weren't sure what to do with when we moved in has suddenly become the central hub of the house.

Sometimes it just takes living in a house to get a feel and understand each room, you know? We plan on doing that a lot this year :).

Sources:

• Chairs
• Floor lamp (similar)
• Table lamp
• Stairwell garland

A Chalkboard Wall

We did it. We finally did it! We painted our kitchen wall in chalkboard paint. 

We went back and forth for months on if we should actually do it or not, weighing the pros and most certainly the cons (it's a trend! it will make the kitchen too dark! chalkboard walls were so 5 years ago!) over and over again. We even asked you guys what you thought about it on an Instagram story, with most of you saying no ;). But then we thought, what if we just tried it?

That's the great thing about paint, if you don't like it you can change it in a day, even if it takes you a few coats. In the end, we are so happy we made the jump and just did it. It makes the kitchen fun and, as our friend Anne said, it says we don't take ourselves too seriously. Thomas' mom has a huge chalkboard wall in her kitchen and over the years friends and family have filled it with their signatures and loving messages. You may have seen it in a few of our pictures from time to time.

Are chalkboard walls a trend? Probably. We tend to stay away from trends, but there is something so homey and inviting about a chalkboard wall, don't you think? And we love the industrial feel it gives our kitchen with the pots hanging up against it. It may not last forever, but for now we are glad we went with it. Follow your gut despite what anyone else says. It's your home, after all. There are no "rules" so we've always said do what you feel happy and right about doing and nothing else matters. 

We have a YouTube video coming out soon about the actual process of painting it and some tips for you if you want to do your own chalkboard wall, so stay tuned! Also,  pictured above are some sweet, no-bake treats we made last night. There may or may not be a YouTube video about those coming out even sooner ;).

A White, Black, and Brown Kitchen

We've seen this kitchen pop up on Pinterest so much lately and it's left us completely in awe. So, after probably the fourth time of coming across it, we decided to track it down and see who's it was.

Turns out, it belongs to designer Daryl Carter and is located in Washington D.C. He bought the home in 1997 and has since redecorated it multiple times, but we hope it stays the way it is now for a while. We love the sophisticated, collected, artsy feel throughout; with statues and sculptures and books in almost every room.

The kitchen is by far our favorite room, though. It's that perfect mix of warm and cool, industrial yet lived in. The marble counters are a beautiful contrast to the black cabinets, while the stained wood island with an iron étagère on top of it gives it warmth, depth. The range (!!!!) with the stainless steel hood, glass front cabinets, and the shelving unit in the middle of the island really make it feel like a commercial restaurant kitchen, don't they? You wouldn't think that putting giant shelves on top of your island in the middle of your kitchen would ever work but they definitely -make- this kitchen 100 times cooler. 

With his to-die-for kitchen, one would think Darryl would be a master chef. Not so much. “I do not cook. At all. Anything," he says. "I will occasionally do the dishes.” We've been slacking on staying in and cooking lately, but we will gladly help him cook in this kitchen!!! 

To learn more about the house and see the rest of the pictures, head to One Kings Lane!

All pictures via  here.

Finally Getting Around to Hanging Some Art

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year (for the first time ever!) and had a bunch of family and friends over for the day. Since we knew we were hosting, we wanted to make sure everything looked good and ready for guests. We've had art lying around the house since we moved in in April just begging to be framed and hung on the wall, but for some reason we kept putting it off and finding literally any other project to work on besides that.

We've been collecting art over the last couple of years and there was no better excuse to hang it than with the holidays just around the corner. Thats when Framebridge came to the rescue! We went to their website, picked out our favorite frames from their huge and beautiful collection, input the dimensions of our art, and waited to receive packaging to send in our art. Once the packages arrived (with the return shipping label!), we put the art in them, sealed them up, and sent them off to be framed. Literally 4 days later we had our old art back home with us, only this time in brand new custom frames that the people at Framebridge made and sent back to us with the utmost care. It's as simple as that.

Then the fun began! We FINALLY had our art framed! It was time to hang it all around the house. Take a look:

Our trip to Seattle last summer made such an impression on us, we had to frame this old picture of Puget Sound we picked up while we were there. We framed it in Framebridge's steel-ribbed frame and it's our absolute favorite one! That's the thing about Framebridge, they offer so many different styles that you can get whatever type of frame fits your design aesthetic. 

In our dining room we hung a picture of the old train depot here in Cleveland that we picked up at an estate sale TWO YEARS AGO. We weren't kidding about pictures lying around the house for way too long.

We had two prints framed that we purchased on our most recent trip to Rosemary Beach this past summer and hung them in our upstairs guest bath. The bamboo frames are so different and unique. Obsessed with them:

In our breakfast nook we had an eye chart that we picked up at a local antique store framed, along with the original blueprints of our last home below it. 

The last picture we had framed was a map of way the stars were aligned on the day we got married from The Night Sky. Seriously y'all, these pictures make such thoughtful, completely original gifts for loved ones. We highly recommend checking them out. We ended up placing it in one of our guest bedrooms (we call it the tree house room because of its vaulted ceilings and big trees right outside the windows) and it looks great against the white walls and striped duvet cover.

So here's to Framebridge & The Night Sky for making our house feel more like a home, especially during the holiday season. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving spent with family, friends, and some delicious food.