Kitty Deschanel | Food, Wine, and Travel Adventures Across the USA

Update: We loved this project so much that we've installed another 4 (yes, 4!) custom wallpaper murals along the ceiling of our ridiculously tall bathroom. Photowall Wallpaper Mural Coupon Below Many years ago, when SN and I tackled our first major decorating and remodeling project in our first home, we played it safe. We ended up with a beautiful kitchen ( before & after photos here ) and received many compliments. It was great...but also sort of underwhelming. Granite counters? Us and every other kitchen in America. For future projects, we knew we wanted to amp up the "wow" factor, even if it meant taking on more risk. Go big or go home, right? And we were already at home!  A waterfall running directly over our patio. An arched wall with a chandelier over a Jacuzzi. A dramatic stripe of river rock running along the floor. A pitch black painted ceiling. We really did all of these things.  That last one actually turned out to be hideous. SN was a ...

Choosing a wallpaper is a difficult decision. With infinite options (literally, as the magic of the internet now allows you to turn any image into wallpaper), SN and I spent several years trying to agree on a solution to finish  our hallway bathroom  interior design project.  The room already looked nice. Did it really need wallpaper? (Yes, it did, SN.) We settled on a design called Pamir Garden from the Sanderson Caspian Wallpaper Collection. A fantastical oasis scene of floral sprigs, stylized trees and wild animals. The design has been painted in a fresco style with a crackle glaze effect which gives the paper a time-worn look. Finally, our bathroom is ready for its close-up. Bathroom Wallpaper Ideas This artistic fish is apparently also ready for its close-up. Before Before Pamir Garden is printed on thick, high quality wallpaper and we loved the pattern. There was still a tough choice to make though - deciding between Pamir Garden in white or green. Both we...

Stealing a Clawfoot Tub (Or So They Thought) We recently built our dream home and were able to save money by supplying many of the fixtures ourselves. We had an acrylic clawfoot tub shipped to our current house and brought it to the construction site the Saturday that it was supposed to be installed. There was a delay though (if you know anything at all about construction, you surely just read that and thought OF COURSE there was a delay, as that's Construction 101), so the plumber was not going to be able to get to our tub installation until Monday.  We left the tub and my husband returned to the construction site on Sunday to work on the landscaping. To his surprise, two men from the construction crew showed up around the same time. No one worked on the house on Sundays.  The men seemed startled when they saw him. Flustered, they announced they were just there to install baseboards. After about 30 minutes, they left.  They drove from town to our home in the mountains o...

The timing was not great for my birthday in 2020. COVID was brand-new and especially scary, so we didn't risk any sort of get-together, socially distanced or otherwise.  This year, SN and my parents are fully vaccinated (here in New Mexico, we're #1 in the country for our COVID vaccination rate ), so we planned a COVID birthday party. Welcome (finally) to our home! SN and I are not big on housekeeping. We try to keep up with daily tasks like dishwashing and sweeping up endless tumbleweeds of dog hair, but even that often gets away from us. Pre-COVID, our house would benefit from a good scrubbing every time a visitor came.  COVID = No visitors for more than a year. Our home was a disaster! We tidied and dusted and rearranged our decor for springtime. Much better. I'm clearly incapable of taking a straight photo (too much peer pressure coming my way through the glass), but I was able to hang my carrots properly. You know, whatever is the proper way to attach linen table runne...