Keswick Retreat

Shaun and I haven't gone on a vacation yet this year. With summer being over I was pretty bummed about the fact that I never went to the beach since I grew up so close to the water and was so used to a quick day trip down to lay on the sand and run from the waves. However, buying a home and having so much to explore in my new little town and the nearby mountains, main streets and shops has kept me quite busy and satisfied and dulled the pain that the sorrow of missing the beach had brought.

Just a few weeks ago, however, we went on a mini retreat to Keswick in Charlottesville for Shauns work and I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed just getting away and pretty much doing nothing for a while.

The first thing I adored about Keswick was the beautiful setting. We went through farms for several miles before reaching our destination and even passed an absolutely breathtaking little stone house by the side of the road with a fully functioning water mill outside. It was a few more miles before I picked my jaw up off of the jaw floor after passing that.

When we arrived we were greeted by the most beautiful entry hall that looked like a Country Living spread on steroids. Beautiful grandiose furniture. Antiques everywhere and a calm, warm feeling color palette throughout. I was in total vintage heaven.

 Shaun was so embarrassed walking around with me snapping pictures everywhere but I just couldn't help myself.  It was too pretty to put into words so I had to capture it. Our room was equally as adorable with a fun country cottage feel and a big comfy bed.

Of course web ad to take our traditional vacay selfie picture. You can tell how much Shaun is loving this right now, right?

This was sort of an accidental selfie as I wanted to get a picture of this huge, beautiful dresser.

I was tempted to steal the art off the walls and smuggle back in my suitcase. However, Shaun already scoffed at me for taking a magazine and the rubber ducky. You can't give me a rubber ducky and expect me to abandon it?!

Here is said magazine. It was chock full of beautiful little shops in downtown Charlottesville that I hope to revisit one day when we have a bit more time!

I actually loved the Molton Brown ginger lily body wash so much that I ordered a full size version while I was there. It arrived 2 days after we got home and I was thrilled because it felt like I was extending the vacation a little bit whenever I take a shower!

I can't explain to you the sheer beauty and coolness of this desk. It had a whole separate part that rolled out with a bunch of tiny compartments, then some additional slabs that slid out on the sides. You can't tell in the picture but that middle section top has an etched leather inlay and that entire piece slid back to show the compartments below.

I mean…seriously? I was even envious of the trash can. Where can I find one of these? I'm gonna need one in every bedroom.

After lounging and taking a nap in our adorable room we decided to hit the town after Shauns meetings.  We went to downtown Charlottesville and explored the little main street shops and had lunch at Orzo wine bar, neither one of us had wine…go figure!

If I was the owner of this civic I would park just like this every day and play some awesome action movie type music every time I got out.

 This amazing little pho place was a refabbed Transmission parts and service building! How cool is that? Ridiculously cool that's how.

Unfortunately Shaun does not care for pho. Nor does he really care for Meatballs. So I never got the chance to try either of these yummy looking places

We ended up not realizing there was an entire "pedestrian mall" area of Charlottesville (even though I insisted on the map it was totally a thing *ahem*) so to burn the extra daylight we drove down to the Michie Tavern and mill. It was a really cute little cluster of historic buildings dating back to the late 1700s with people in period costumes trying to sell you overpriced knick knacks. I didn't buy any knick knacks. I did however buy some rock candy, a cow tale, a bottle of coke and a slingshot. Shaun remarked how much it looked like he was accompanying Bart Simpson and I told him to eat my shorts.

Seriously regretting not purchasing the tea brick!

It was pretty much the perfect day to be out and about exploring. We ended up heading back to Keswick and touring the grounds by ourselves before we had to get dressed for dinner.

This charming little garden cottage was the most perfect little fall setting. 

These gorgeous purple flowers wrapped around the spa. I ended up getting a deep tissue massage and reflexology. It was goooood.

The dinners were classy and wonderful just like all events thrown by Shauns work. He joked with me a little bit when I ordered a bloody mary at the cocktail reception around 9PM but the bartender reassured me it was totally normal so I ended up sitting with the bartender most of the time.

All in all it was a wonderful quick 3 day trip to a place we never would have been before. We got the chance to relax, refresh and the morning before we left I caught up on a Law & Order: SVU marathon in the room. I was actually supposed to go on a garden tour bright and early but I ended up sleeping through it and getting room service instead. It's my mini vacation I can be lazy if I want to, right?

Easy, inexpensive DIY wall art

I'm one of those people that comes through in the clutch. The great thing about this is when there is an emergency I am great at keeping calm, organizing things and acting quickly to get things done. The bad part about this is that oftentimes I will procrastinate until I absolutely have to do something. Decorating my house is no different.  I have so much inspiration and great ideas in my head, but once I get home from work that motivation completely dissipates and I end up laying down on the couch, realizing how comfortable it is and taking a nap until Shaun gets home.

I had Brittany, my best friend since I was born who I grew up next to in Baltimore come to stay this past weekend and I realized on Saturday that the 2nd floor of my home was severely neglected, including the guest room.

Amidst all of the frantic, last minute cleaning and laundry I was struck with a sudden burst of creative energy. I realized I wanted to make some sort of art for the guest bedroom but I didn't have time to run out to the store for frames, nor did I want to spend a ton of money on something that I would rarely ever get to see.

So here's what I did.

I ended up with 8 clipboards that I picked up from the Dollar store forever ago in hopes to do something creative with them. I knew I wanted to line them up in some sort of a pattern to make the illusion of a large piece of art.

My initial desire was to do vintage botanical prints from Etsy but most of the nice ones I found were about $10 a piece. I knew I didn't want to spend $88 as I felt I could totally spend that on something better. Like shoes. Or ice cream.

So I tried to do something really cheap that would probably have a horrible result. Google image search. I thought, some website would certainly have a few prints I could print out and then perhaps I could add something in between if I could only come up with a couple. The google gods were shining upon me that day because I found a website that had great quality, full page vintage botanical prints that were free to download and print! Sweet sweet cheap success! It ended up taking me forever to print them since I used the best quality printing but it was totally worth it in the end. I printed on some Matte presentation paper I had that was a good, thick quality so they wouldn't blow around if I had a window open, which I often do.

After this I just trimmed the small border around each print, clipped it gingerly to the clipboard and hung them on the wall with pushpins.

This room isn't done either. I'm picturing some art on the wall that the bed is against and then some curtains. However I'm just happy to have a guest room that people can come and sleep in. 

 I ended up using only 6 in the guest room because I really loved one of the prints and dreaded the fact that I would only see it in the spare bedroom. So I took 2 and placed one above my nightstand and another above my craft room desk

I also went back later in the day and made some little yarn balls  to put in the lamps that had been sitting empty because once I start crafting, I usually end up doing much more than just the initial thing I planned on.

Even though I feel like our bedroom is the least finished room in the house and I'm totally not happy with the furniture, I feel like it's finally starting to come together and I'm happy with the progress. I'll just have to be patient with that and enjoy the fact that Shaun hasn't complained too much about my choice of decor.

Yes, I know, I totally could have been thorough and used picture hanging nails and perhaps a level and a tape measure to measure it out. But I'm also impatient, so push pins and eyeballing it had to do.  I'm sure sometime in the future I will end up going back and doing it the right way but for last minute decor I think I did pretty well especially for a solid piece of decor for $6!