man-corating: for the stylish gent

Most blogs these days are dedicated to the style of women, ladies, girls, chicks, etc., but very few depict a more masculine style. Maybe that's because women usually make the design choices. And in that case, if you are the one calling all the decor (and other, don't be coy) shots, then feel free to ignore this post. But if any of you have a guy like mine in your life, this post could open the door for a new avenue in your relationship...co-decorating!

I know, i know! You probably think I'm nuts allowing a man to have any say regarding the overall look of a home, but let me stop you before you get all "that's a woman's thing. Guys should focus on the yard or cars or something." You may be right in some instances, but what if your man lives alone (a boyfriend, a good guy friend) or he has a space in your shared home (some men call these "man caves," but I prefer the term "gentleman's quarters." It sounds much more sophisticated.) Either way, giving an interested man a say in the design of a space, may be a building block for a relationship.

If there is one thing the Fox and I enjoy, separately from each other, it's style. In fact, it's one of the things that attracted us to each other. Since our time together, we have both taken an even stronger interest into the opposite sex's style. I've enhanced his horizons about the treasure to be found at thrift stores and yard saling, and he has taught me about shirt collar types, Billy Reid and the likes. It's been a very fascinating journey and one I thought was worth sharing.

In July, the Fox became a bachelor; he lost his roommate of over 4 years. Not only was he a bit lonely, but he found himself in a style-less home. 😞 Sad, but not defeated, he called up his savy, bargain hunter, decorator friend (me) for a little advice. Over the past few months, we have been on a mission to man-corate his place.

Last weekend we went to a yard sale that was the ultimate, Billy Reid-esque gold mine. I immediately grabbed up a vintage metal stool and a couple of weathered suitcases. Like most times, I hadn't had a purpose in mine, but you can't always wait for that. Thrift style doesn't lend itself to buy as you need decor items, it's buy as you see.

The lady hosting the sale had some great things, but they weren't all prices I was comfortable with, so I told the Fox we would come back later and maybe we could get some of the items at cheaper prices. A few hours later we did just that. After some brief haggling, we walked out of there with a solid wood desk, a trunk and four framed oil paintings for less than $100. You can't beat that kids!

We rushed home and soon the man-corating began! Our first order was finding a place for all those neat oil paintings. The Fox had an empty space in his breakfast nook, so I quickly devised a plan to take this blank canvas....

And turn it into...

Sorry for the poor quality photos. The end result turned out wonderfully! I need to take better pictures of the overall look of the breakfast nook, but for now, here you go!

We added the vintage stool in the corner ($15), the lamp and shade a total of $8, the picture collage and vintage suitcases (seen below that immediately snagged at the yard sale). It turned out so cozy!

So, it's coming together bit by bit. Stay tuned for posting of the other things we're doing in this "gentleman's quarters." If you missed the post on The Fox's awesome valance that we made, check it out here! It's so cool and we had a great time putting it together!

Happy Holidays, y'all. I'm going to try and put "post more often" on my list of new year's resolutions, but that was one for this year as well and.... ;/.

Merry Christmas!!

pandora me christmas

It's that time of year...again! Can you believe that we are back to the holidays already?! It's crazy to think that another year has flown by and we are all another year older. 

I don't know about you, but Christmas always makes me sad. I love it as a holiday, but it makes me sad to think that time is going by so fast and sometimes I don't like being older! All the bills and responsibility! Who wants that? Yuck! What I'd do to be a kid again...

Anywho, because I don't anticipate a "17 again" moment, I guess I have to embrace the present! And presently I'm listening to Christmas music!! Whoo hoo! I love, love and I mean, LOVE Christmas music. It always puts a smile on my face. Right now? Brad Paisley is serenading me into winter wonderlanded bliss. Not to shabby considering I'm an old school holiday tunes kinda girl. Nat King Cole and Amy Grant have my heart at Christmastime. But sometimes I have to step out and see what other classics are being covered. Who knows, I may discover another "Baby It's Cold Outside" by Lady Antebellum. I could also listen to that one on repeat for hours. <3 it!

Now, if any of you are like me, I'm sure you're stressing out about what to buy who, and thinking to yourself "do I really need that bite of cake?" Well, all bets were off concerning my diet for Thanksgiving so it's crunch time until I slack off again at Christmas. But something I can't slack off on is my gift buying! What a chore! Thankfully my family is blessed with everything we need and more, so the task of gift giving is extra difficult. So to take my mind off of what everyone else needs, I decided to do a little shopping for myself :). And boy did I score!

Last weekend I snagged several clothing items at Goodwill and yard sales. It was the Ebonn jackpot!

Let's see, we have a cute animal print jacket, a painted picture, I got two of those cute pillows, a shirt from target, some Pine Cone Hill curtains, ikat place mats, a Carolina Herrera scarf AND vintage Hartmann luggage! Such a success! I even scored a few Christmas presents (which is about the only way I can afford to pay for everyone in my family!). I love finding a great deal.

After my bargain finding, I was fortunate enough to take the week of Thanksgiving off in preparation for the holiday AND, like all great South Carolinians do, for the Carolina/Clemson football game. We had a great time, with lots of food (allow me to share a killer recipe - see bottom) and friends. And to top it off, my alma mater won! The Fox wasn't too happy about that, but he'll live. The house shall be divided till the bitter end...

Here's our group at "Twilleygate."

And us at halftime.

On Sunday after the game, the Fox and I made a road trip to the mountains to find the perfect Christmas tree. And boy did we ever! It's beautiful! Big and plush and smells wonderful!

Back to SC it went, and now it's in the galvanized tin we bought at goodwill and decorated to the max! Now onto the outside decorations...the Fox tends to get a little excited about this part, so stay tuned...

I'm excited to spend time with family and friends this season. Oh and the food. I love the food :). Speaking of food, like I promised, you must try this killer recipe:

Chocolately Pumpkin Cake

Get 1 package of spice cake
Get 1 can of pumpkin
Mix the two together
Then add one package of milk chocolate morsels
And a few tablespoons of milk (just enough to make the dough moist)

Then put it in your favorite pan, casserole dish, bundt pan or cupcakes and bake as the spice cake package recommends.

This stuff is amazing! Pair with a little ice cream (might I recommend Kroger's Toasted Coconut Carmel - and hold onto your seat!)

Oh and also speaking of living in the present, presently I have a leftover mashed potato cheese soup ready for the crock pot tomorrow. Fingers crossed it turns out!

Happy giving season, y'all. And don't forget my online store at www.bumbleanddola.storenvy.com!

mountain-land!

My day off Friday was in preparation for my and the Fox's trip to the mountains. The western part to be more specific.

The drive up was exactly how I pictured it. Beautiful and colorful. As you make your way up 26 and 385, the colors become more vivid and you can physically feel yourself becoming more relaxed.

When we finally arrived to our destination, it was perfect timing for the evening sun to bounce off the transitioning leaves of the trees. As we rounded the curvy, mountainous roadway, I had to take a few pictures.

 

It was just too beautiful not to photograph. The colors, the way the leaves were falling. It was just breath taking. Such a beautiful place. Hopefully, one day, I'll be able to visit it as often as I like. But until then, there are working vacations in our future.

But hey, if you get to eat like this (see below), then I can't have many objections.

Homemade potato salad, grilled corn on the cob and smoked ribs. Yummmeee! Can't beat a homemade dinner in the fresh mountain air. Just grab a cold beer an make yourself a plate. We sat by the fireside and had the best time.

The craziest thing? We all survived with zero mobile devices (well until we were able to get to a place that had service). But overall, it was wonderful! Little to no contact with anyone for 48 hours - it a wonderful thing to have a restful mind...even if it is for a few hours.

After dinner we decided to hike up the very steep hill behind us. So we each grabbed a stick (some of us also brought alcoholic beverages to keep us hydrated.) and off we went!

The view was beautiful. Had we been able to hack down the trees around us, it would have been even better. But alas our hands were already full and we had to settle for looking through mother nature.

The way down was much easier than the hike up, but somehow we all survived (empty bottles in hand).

The best view during our entire trip? This guy:

It was at someone else's house, but we couldn't help but take pictures. We even got one of us (don't judge, it was early after a day of hard work...)

Just wonderful. And on our way out, we snapped just one more of the rather gloomy day ahead of us.

It was a great trip. We had a great time. Laughed a lot and just enjoyed each other's company. We anticipate several of these trips so stay tuned for lots of pictures!

Happy November everyone - where has the year gone???

it's falloween folks - jewelry, screens & selling things

Hello Friends! Or shall I say, Happy Falloween! Can you believe it's already the end of October? I mean where has the year gone? It's crazy how fast time flies and how on one day you think "man, that's so far away." But then suddenly you are either days away or the day is HERE! But I guess that's when we take a look around and thank God that were alive to see the day we had been waiting for.

Speaking of long awaited days (or at least a long awaited weekend) - today is my FRIDAY! I love that moment when you're snug in your warm bed and you realize, "Hey! I don't have to go to work today!" It has to be one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. 

It's not morning yet, so I figured I'd do a little posting to bring everyone up-to-date on all things eb!

First off, if you don't currently follow me instagram, please do (if you wanna). My name is eb_bumbleanddola.

It's certainly nothing fancy, but I like to post about a little bit of everything. Mostly things pertaining to fashion, design, and photography - the things that create and inspire the life of me. In fact, I'm attempting to use it as a way to sell and promote pieces that I find in my travels.

As you all know, my mom and I currently have an antique booth at 763 Meeting Street in West Columbia. Unfortunately, because of space limits and legal documents, I'm not always able to sell things there; or more accurately, sometimes I don't have the room! If I can create another way to get the word out about my inventory, I'm all for it. I mean I can't keep EVERYTHING I find - even if it kills me to see it go... (like the gold tea cart that I just put at the booth that I forgot to take a pic of, but I will as soon as I get back over there.)

I've also opened an online store at Storenvy. You can find it here: http://www.storenvy.com/bumble_dola. I don't plan to use it for large pieces, but I think it's perfect for some smaller things.

While I'm working on getting that up and running, I'm keeping busy with other things for sure. For instance, the Stella & Dot party I had last night. Can I tell you how much I <3 their stuff?? It's so incredibly cute! I wish I had an entire jewelry room of their products. If you wanna share in my envy, check out their site (which also happens to be my party site, so feel free to purchase something until 10.31. 10% of the party proceeds will be donated to Harvest Hope Food Bank!) - http://www.stelladot.com/ts/slak5. Some of the things I have on my wish list are:

Of course these are among the 50 things I want, but a girl will have to dream for now.

Anywho, I had a great time at the party and was able to do a little Halloween decorating which is always fun. In preparation, I rearranged my patio and added a new design element - a screen door. But in typical eb fashion, not in the expected way...

At first I had it like the picture above, but do you see that cute little flower pot sitting in front of the door to the right? Well, that's no longer there. Not because I had a wild hair and decided it looked better somewhere else, but because as I was walking out to enjoy my patio, a large gust of wind came through only to push the door over and on a path to break everything in its way. I was unsuccessful in my attempt to beat Mother Nature, but I wasn't going to let that get me down. Nope, not me. 

After about 30 good minutes of figuring out how I was going to get that sucker back in a decorative position, I finally came of with this.

Which actually turned out much better than the vertical way I must admit. Even though I lost a pretty unique pot, it was worth putting my mind to work to come up with a much more user friendly idea. Now, I'm able to hang things from it without fear of it meeting it's demise with a gust of wind. Heck it may have even fallen victim to the fact that my patio is apparently now a squirrel's playground (don't get my started on those beasts. let's just say, I'm 100% against animal cruelty, but if I had a gun, goodbye alvin's cousin.)

Anywho, because of the wind debacle, my more sturdy design has allowed me to hang lanterns (that I stole from a yard sale for $1.00/each!). I also added some curtain finials to the top for a little extra character. 

How did I get it up there, you ask? Well, after my 30 minutes on the patio, I probably spent another 30 at Lowes in the plumbing aisle. I KNEW there was a way to get this thing to stay up there and I was determined that it was going to be with plastic piping.

I finally figured it all out and quickly ran home to paint and assemble my creation. A 1/2 day later, spent on a project I hadn't anticipated, and I had a cute little red backdrop for my cute red chairs. I just threw it on top of the railing, wrapped the bottom with my handy, dandy zip ties (one of God's greatest creations) and BAM! Crisis averted. Blow away my Mother Nature friend! There's no bringing this guy down (well maybe with a tornado).

Once that patio was perfect and the house was Southern Living ready, I was ready for a party. I had a lot of great friends and yummy food and it turned out to be a great ladies night. I look forward to doing another one in the future!

Finally, speaking of making things perfect. In my last post I took that awful, farm-ridden drawer thing I found and gave it a quick makeover. After I posted the transformation, I decided I wanted something a little more fancy for the handles. After some pillaging through of my extensive button collection, I landed on this:

Some fancy buttons and a hot glue gun are all I needed to take this gem up a notch. So much better, right? Now it holds some of my jewelry unrulies. Perfecto!

Ok, enough for now. Just because I'm off tomorrow, doesn't mean I don't need my beauty rest :). 

Happy Falloween, everyone! I look forward to seeing everyone's fun costumes this year!! I leave you with Gracin's costume:

He's a male model :). Night!!

a win for everyone

Wooohooo! If you haven't already heard, South Carolina beat Georgia's B-U-T-T last night. It's so wonderful to be the "liked" guys. For so long, USC has had just a run of bad luck and lord knows we've had our fair share of hiccups, but FINALLY, it looks like things are turning around. I still probably won't go to the games (it's just so much easier to watch on tv), but I'll continue to cheer for them for sure :).

While waiting for the highly anticipated game to begin, I began the beautiful day running a 5k for Palmetto Health's Walk For Life.

This is my 3rd year participating and it's wonderful. The weather is always awesome and it's a way for me to give back and support such a terrible disease, breast cancer. I didn't make my best time, but I felt like a winner none-the-less :).

Cluck, cluck...

To continue my productive day, I worked on a couple of crafts. Easy ones, but enough to keep me busy. The first one was a redo of a little drawer-thingy I found at a thrift store. Now if you like chickens, then this was your piece...

I mean, look at the detail! 

I know I could have sold it as it, but I saw more for this tragic case of farm decor... I did a little spray painting and wahla!

A much more modern country piece. I'm not sure what I'll use it for, but we'll see.

And the winner is....

Also in the makeover department - trophies! If you haven't see the new thing around town, then you're missing out. Painted trophies. Go ahead, pintrest it. It's a real thing and it's cuuuuuuute!

So, I did a few of my own! I found the baseball one at a thrift store and the cup one came from the Fox for winning a golf tournament. Both were small, but I wasn't looking for the holy grail of trophies for trial one. I grabbed some gold spray paint (actually I have like 6 cans of it as I bought it when it was on sale...shame) and went to town.

 The end result is nothing short of awesome! I created a fun little gold vignette to help show it off. Cute right? I paired it with a hat mold, some gold dogs and a picture of my grandparents.

What a fun way to give a new life to something that otherwise would have made it's way to the trash bin. Wouldn't it be fun to do them in a kid's room? Pink for girls, red for boys. FUN! FUN!

And that was my Saturday, folks. Another successful, didn't go to the game weekend. :)

Until next time. I hope everyone is enjoying this incredible weather and getting ready for Halloween! It's just around the corner!!