Our little love nest

This is our master bedroom, and as you can see, we are, for better or worse, "pets on the furniture" people. Our room isn't very big but it often seems to be the hub of the house because it's right off the kitchen, provides comfy TV watching and holds the phone/answering machine. We replaced a chunky modern chandelier that didn't seem to relate to the rest of the house or our style with the sparkly one. Do you see those spots in the picture? Have you seen those shows on the sci-fi channel about "orbs" being captured on film? Ghosts? We were fairly confident our last house had a ghost, after a number of interesting occurences, but it was built in the 40s and held the memories of many, many years of living. We are the first to live in our house now, having bought it brand new, so I wonder whom those orbs would be...I woke up one night and thought I saw a huge, though non-menacing, lumberjack (occupation determined by his buffalo check shirt, ax resting on shoulder and overall Paul Bunyon look) float through one wall of the room and out the other, but I was probably on cough medicine or something.

Our black cat, Maya Angelou, doesn't seem to be too worried about orbs, and I guess I'm not either. Although I don't like to sleep with my back to the door. Silly, I know.

I got this old mantel that we use as a headboard at The Seedbox. I think it is just lovely, but it drives my husband crazy because our pillows always fall through the hole where the fire would have been. I have a big shutter that would perfectly close up the gap if we were motivated enough to move the bed and screw it on. Someday.

I got this chippy old sewing machine table at a thrift store near my house that always has major bargains. The top is in really bad shape, but covered with a vintage table runner, I love its shabby look. I moved my husband's alarm clock for cuteness' sake.

This chippy white table is on my side of the bed. No need to move my alarm clock, since I am a teacher and it's summer vacation and I put that thing away until 20 August. Woohoo! I have a cute little dish where I put my glasses and the essential Carmex, and there is always a book or magazine there because I like to read to fall asleep. The current book is What I Know Now, a compilation of letters written by well-known women to themselves at a younger age, explaining what they wish they would have known or done then. Pretty good. I'm sure we could all write several of those to our younger selves. I know I could and I'm only 31 with a lot left to learn about life. Ryan bought the book for me because he thought I would like it and wrote "To my perfect wife" on the inside cover. Very sweet. Very false, but very sweet. He's like that.

How many of us love the word NEST? I bought all but the S on ebay over a period of time. The S is from Anthropologie and tends to tip over unless I put the little metal fragment under it. I have had the word in a couple of places in our house.

My friend Barb and I each bought 3 of these metal fragments in Highlandville, Missouri. They remind me of the wrought iron posts on my grandparents' house in Oklahoma and were maybe broken off similar ones.

The armoire that holds our TV was another ebay purchase, from a man who repurposes furniture he imports from Europe. This piece is supposed to be from Latvia, and although I watch Jeopardy! every day, have a masters degree and was, I think, a good student, I can't for the life of me think of anything I know about Latvia. Except that they make a heck of an armoire! We bought this one to use as a computer armoire in our old house, but we rearranged the shelves a bit and use it now to hide a TV. The ivy on top is one of 2 surviving fake plants in my house that haven't been moved out in my quest to eliminate fake greenery from my house. The silver corbels are from Target's World Market a couple of season ago. The tall rubbed silver bunny up there with them was a gift from my mother-in-law and it landed up there and hasn't found a better home yet. She thought it just looked like me, and I think she was right. We were looking into continuing the wood floors from the rest of our house into this bedroom and our son's before the basement flooded and we did the slate tile down there. We want to be a no-carpet family (with all the pet hair we deal with it would be easier) but that project is at a standstill right now.