Designer Jeans for Less Styled Three Ways

Styling Wide Leg Cropped Jeans

(Not a gifted or sponsored post. All writing/opinions are my own.)

Hey everyone!  I thought I would take a little break from sharing my 16 year house reno story and give you a little "Fashion Friday" today! I'll be back next week with more on the house renovation, though, so if you missed Part I and Part II be sure to check those out, OK?! Now, let's talk designer jeans. 

Have you heard of the brand Seven7 in jeans wear? I hadn't until I came across this pair of cropped wide leg jeans on the clearance rack at Stein Mart. They were my size and marked down an additional 30% off over the clearance price so I half-heartedly decided to bring them home and try them on for size. I'm so glad I did! I love these jeans, found them a comfy and stylish fit and decided to style them three ways for you today. 

It's funny because I really haven't been much of a fan of the frayed hem and distressed look type jeans, but this frayed hem is more subtle and I like the wide leg look as well. This first styling I'm showing you is with a bold color top and comfy sandals. The cute tie belt came with the jeans and is removable. 

Here, you can see the slit in the leg of the jean. These jeans are extremely well made. The material is incredibly soft!

Now, let's look at a more polished look. White blouse, a bold blue necklace and blue wedge shoes take the look up a notch. 

After I brought these jeans home and found out how much I like them I decided to search online for other pairs. The Seven7 site came up and I started browsing and "Whoa!!" I couldn't believe the prices I was seeing! Prices from $69-$200+ were coming up and I have to tell you, friends, I have never paid those kinds of prices for jeans! I continued searching and did see much lower prices listed at places like Kohl's and Macy's. I will whisper how much I paid at Stein Mart in your ear....($20!!).   Yeah, I think I got a bargain, too. 

These jeans have a really nice structure to them that is kind of making me re-think about higher end jeans. Maybe they do provide a better fit. What do you ladies think? 

For my third styling, I decided to go for the untucked look. I used the belt for a hairband and added some comfy Skecher Goga Mat shoes. 

I like this relaxed style and, as I write this post, I am still wearing this look. I'm not trying to sell jeans but I will provide the link to these jeans in case you are interested. If you search the site you will see a variety of jeans and other clothing by Seven7. 

So tell me, which styling did you like best? Have you worn Seven7 jeans before? Do you like cropped and/or frayed hem jeans? Hope you will leave me a comment and let me know. I love hearing from you! Also, bonus points if you can name the one item I was wearing that remained consistent in all three stylings (besides the jeans and belt)!

Until Next Time,

Debbie

The House That Love Built Part Two

Our Renovated Bedrooms and Baths

Hello and welcome back to Part Two of my series about how we have done a 16 year renovation to our home! In part one, I gave a little history of how we came to be in this house and the extensive renovations it has needed. I also shared our living room and kitchen with you in Part One. Today's post will show a couple of our bedrooms and a couple of our bathrooms. The pic you see above is our master bedroom. You know I love blue and so does the Mr. so we have chosen to keep our bedroom more of a blue space rather than emphasizing the lodge look. We did continue the lodge look with the ceiling fan which features wooden paddles and an elk and pine tree motif along the sides. We also did a similar theme with the bedside lamps.

The shades are quite similar to the shades on the kitchen lights. While I like these shades, they are a little annoying as the leather strips tend to want to come loose along the edges. 

We use rugs throughout the house over our wood floors and we opted for a blue and tan one in the bedroom which coordinates well with the window toppers and the bed quilt. We typically get our rugs from places like Home Depot and/or Lowes. Keeping them fairly inexpensive means they can be replaced if need be, especially if you have pets. Two certain little cats like to sharpen their claws on the rugs from time to time! Amazingly, these rugs hold up to this extremely well. 

We bought this armoire several years ago as an unfinished piece and the Mr. finished it. It matches the other bedroom furniture. The mirror next to it is my "skinny mirror." I call it that because the angle it sits at makes me look more slender. Everyone needs a skinny mirror!

We have two chest of drawers that originally belonged to my husband's grandfather and they were among the first pieces we owned after we got married. My husband refinished them as they were in rough condition. 

You may recognize the heart shaped pillows I sewed awhile back. And, there will always be a pile of books next to my side of the bed! Actually, there are books in every room in our house. 

When we moved in there was very old and ugly beige carpet throughout the house which we removed to let the wood floors shine. We were removing floor staples for weeks on end because they were everywhere holding down the carpet! The bedroom walls were a sort of orange-pink color and the master bath had a baby blue sink and blue and white tiles above a blue tub. Part of the tiles were missing and there were NO electrical outlets in either of the bathrooms. That made for a fun time trying to dry your hair!

This is the master bath now. We went with green Silestone counter tops and maple cabinetry. This room was another "gut back to the studs" by my husband. He built the little nooks you see next to the sink area. I really like that unique touch to the master bath! He installed the cabinets himself and tiled the floor. His favorite job in this room, though, was getting to bust out the old blue tub. He and a friend went to town with sledgehammers and had a ball! They, of course, researched how to do it safely. 

Rather than a tub, we added a walk-in shower which is wonderful to have, especially as we age. The swirls of tan and creme in the shower match the walls and cabinetry well. The master bedroom and bath are not incredibly feminine rooms since they are shared areas for the Mr. and me. We both enjoy the wood features and the Silestone countertop in the master bath and the calm oasis of blue in the bedroom. Of course this oasis was not calm years ago on the night the bat came down the living room fireplace and proceeded to fly in circles above our bed while I hunkered under the covers. The Mr. came to the rescue and caught the bat in a towel and tossed it out the bedroom window! Luckily, years later, this is just a humorous memory now and we joke about the night "Bart the Bat" got into the house!

Now, let's take a peek into a second bedroom and one of my favorite rooms in the house!

This room is a "Debbie room" and it houses a lot of things that I love. It is my craft room, my reading library and my music room. I house some of my clothing and accessories here and I have recently moved my mother's old Singer treadle sewing machine into this room. I love to be in this room as it is cozy and comfortable. The green couch is a sofa bed in case we have overnight guests, so this room also serves as a guest room if needed. But 99% of the time, it is "my space" to enjoy! A favorite feature in this room are the white wall bookshelves the Mr. built for me! Cassie and Garden also like looking out the window, so we have a cushion set up at window height for them. That may be replaced by a cat window seat in the future. 

When we moved into the house we actually used this room as our bedroom while working on other parts of the house. The walls were a drab brown and the wind would whistle through the old windows sending an icy chill into the room. Now the room is light and bright and I love seeing the sun shine through the windows!

The Mr. teases me and says I am "Debbiefying" the space as I add things I love to the walls in the room. Some of these items are my own creations! 

Another room that I have added some of my own Debbie touches too has been our second bath/guest bath. I loved adding lots of blue and white beachy themed items to this room. The serenity sign above the cabinet is a favorite touch. 

Love the seashell rug on top of the tile my husband installed.

It was so much fun working on adding just the right touches to this cabinet shelf.

When we moved in, this bathroom was sort of a drab brown with striped brown wallpaper. UGLY!!!!  No outlets and an oversize sink cabinet that you had to walk around carefully to keep from bumping into it. The Mr. gutted the room back to the studs and started over. My only regret in this room is I chose to go, at the time, with ready made cabinets from either Lowes or Home Depot (can't remember which) rather than the higher quality cabinets we have in our other bathrooms. But, I was in a hurry to have a room finished and I would have had to wait for the other cabinets! A girl can only take so much waiting on construction and I dearly wanted to have this bathroom completed and looking decent! 

I absolutely love the tile the Mr. installed in the tub/shower area and the accent tile along the top is beautiful. We did keep the original tub in this bathroom. You may have noticed that we went with shower curtains in our bathrooms rather than shower doors. We debated this quite a bit. We had shower doors in our previous two houses and, honestly, I think it's easier to deal with shower curtains than doors. I can easily wash shower curtains in the washer and replace them economically when needed. Shower doors can be a pain to keep clean. Others may disagree, and that's OK, but we're sticking with shower curtains for now.

As I close out this second post in the series of our house renovation I'll share a few personal thoughts. As an introvert who blogs, I am always debating on my posts as to whether or not I am oversharing. Whether I am styling an outfit, writing a devotion or, like now, opening portions of my home to my readers, I must admit to feeling a bit vulnerable. My home is my "safe place" and I want to take care in sharing and opening it up for criticism. I realize that my decor may not be your cup of tea, but it is ours. And, as I said in the first post, we live in a home and not a museum, so my rooms may not fit your idea of picture perfect blog decor. I'm not apologizing by the way, just explaining that I believe that all types of homes are worthy of being shared and enjoyed. 

Speaking of enjoyment, I hope you will take a moment to share what you are enjoying so far in this series. And I would love for you to share favorite parts of your homes! Is there a room or space or picture or object in your home that you especially love? Let me know about it, OK?!  And, I hope that you will join me for Part Three of this series, in which I will share come current renovation that is happening and I will also share how I contribute to the renovation projects as well as the "fun" story of our move-in day sixteen years ago. Hope to see you then!

Until Next Time,
Debbie

Our 16 Year DIY House Renovation-The House That Love Built Series Part One

The House That Love Built 

Part One

Hello and welcome to my home!  I've been wanting to write this series forever and today I decided to begin the journey of telling the story of our current house and sharing it with all of my readers. This will be Part One of the series in which I give you some background of our house adventures and share the kitchen and living room areas. Some other areas of the house will be shared in Parts Two and Three. Now, here's a caveat as this series begins: we live in a home not a museum. So, these pictures are not going to be magazine and interior designer perfect. If you are looking for perfection you had best head on over to Instagram. If, however, you enjoy my blog and want to know about the history of how we have turned a very let-go run-down house into a home over the last 16 years, then this is the blog series for you! Grab a cup of tea or coffee and come sit down with me!

This is our present home. It is the third house that we have owned and renovated all while living in the house. It is also the house that needed "the most" in terms of renovation! Believe me when I tell you that the pictures you will see look NOTHING like the house did originally when we moved in. My husband has basically rebuilt the house from the inside out with a little help at times from professional folks who we had to hire to re-pour the front porch, dig up the basement floor to install an underground drain system, and our electrician, heating installer and plumber. The carpentry work, however, is all the Mr.'s own and he had the ability to have the "vision" of what this house could be that I certainly did not have when we bought it sixteen years ago. All I could see was the water damage, peeling paint, moldy walls, windows that fell out if you gave them a good push, orange and black walls (I'm not kidding!!), mouse infested kitchen and weird stuff that was hanging in the trees around the yard. In other words, Little Debbie was not a happy camper when we moved here. I truly loved our second house which was a sprawling brick ranch that we had given a face-lift to over the ten year period we had lived there. It was close to the school where I taught and had tons of storage and living space. But, when the Mr. saw our present house in the middle of a forest, close to the Blue Ridge Parkway, he was immediately sold! His architectural background allowed him to see that this house had "good bones" and that with a little (or a lot!!) of TLC it could be turned into the beautiful home it is today. So, like Lisa Douglas on the old TV sitcom, "Green Acres" it was, "Good-bye city life!" And, hello to living in the woods. I eventually came around and I have to say that, today, I love our home very much. It's been an adventure however, really one that has spanned our 36 years of marriage. Each home that we have lived in we have lovingly fixed up and left better than when we moved in. And, this current house is, hopefully, our final renovation. It is our home....a home built by our love for one another....and our love and respect for making a house better than how we found it. 

Here we are on the front porch. The four columns that you see were all rotted when we moved in and my husband rebuilt them and installed them. We had all new windows installed pretty soon after we moved in and my husband sanded, rebuilt and painted the shutters. 

I love the front facade of our house. It is a comfortable and pleasing entrance. 

Here is part of our foyer. The infamous foyer table is frequently shared on my blog with various decor themes. The slate floor is original to the house. The Mr. will eventually be re-doing our steps and banisters. The renovation is still ongoing! And, we are still on the lookout for something spectacular that will look good on the foyer walls. We aren't there yet, but planning is half the fun!

And here we are in the living room. It is a large rectangular room that provides the sitting area you see here....

And the other half is used for our desk, bookshelves and music area. The Mr. also uses this area for his quintet practice. Garden, as you can see, uses this area for lounging!

In terms of decor, we loosely go in for "lodge decor" with pieces that reflect the "Arts and Craft" style. I love our furniture and lamps which remind me of the woods in which we live. BTW, when we moved in the wall behind the couch housed a wall shelf that was black, gold and orange! Needless to say, the Mr. removed it and we prefer to go with white walls throughout the house. Most of our end tables, book shelves, nightstands and dining table were purchased as unfinished wood and the Mr. finished them. 

Case in point with our lodge decor, these pine cone accented chandeliers are stationed over the kitchen counter and dining table in the kitchen.

Before we get too far away from the living room, however, let me show you the mantel. I know that many mantels on Instagram house a few showpieces, but that is not me. I like an eclectic mix that reminds me of pieces I might see in an interesting store. So our mantel houses rocks from hikes, shells from the beach, lots of cat pictures and cards, old Asheville postcards, a bear sign and a tall framed photo of Asheville, The Biltmore House and The Grove Park Inn. 

We don't make fires in the fireplace, hence the chairs in front of it. When we moved in sixteen years ago we found clothes in the fireplace. I guess previous owners burned them?! When it rained, the water would leak through the mantel area and run down the brick. There were also an assortment of critters that made their way into the house via the fireplace including a bat, a bird, and, somehow, a snake also got in the house! The water and critter problems have all been remedied, thankfully! Like I said.....this house needed a lot of TLC! And I needed a lot of patience and fortitude!

And here we are in our kitchen! This is the true heart of our home and both the Mr. and I spend a majority of our time in this room. We cook here, sit at the kitchen counter, listen to music, talk about our days and just enjoy the ambience. This entire room was gutted back to the studs by the Mr. several years ago. New cabinets, counter tops, drywall, painting and appliances took about 14 months to complete. We set up a little "mini-kitchen" in the dining room and washed dishes in the bathroom sink during that time. Oh yes, I have needed to learn patience on this little house project!

Our counter tops are Silestone which is man made quartz. We love the pattern and the hardworking nature of Silestone. You don't need to ever treat these countertops. They are durable and can take spills and cuts without being marred. 

Our cabinets are a natural maple color and we went with stainless steel appliances. The Mr. did the tiling on the floor and built the wall areas above the cabinets. He also built entrances between the rooms which drop down. 

Like the header you see behind me leading into the kitchen. None of that existed before we moved in.

You can see the wall he built above the cabinets in this picture. We use our kitchen counter for a desk area sometimes, too. I told you these would be "real" pictures!

And, we have our little round dining table in the kitchen, as well, but it is rarely used as the Mr. and I prefer to eat at the kitchen counter most of the time. It's great for company, though!

And this brings us to the end of Part One of my series, "The House That Love Built."  I'll leave you with a sunset view from our kitchen that might help you to understand why the Mr. fell in love with this house originally and why I, too, have grown to love our home. I hope you will return for Part Two when I show you more of our home and tell you about a few more house adventures! If you sign up to follow me by email you will never miss a post! And, I sure hope you will leave a comment. I love hearing from you!

Have you ever done house renovating? Would you want to renovate your home if you could? 

Until Next Time,

Debbie

Daisy Dalrymple Mystery Series

Look What's Growing In My Garden!

I'm delighted to be able to share a fun, new to me, mystery series with you today. I happened onto, "The Winter Garden Mystery," written by Carola Dunn quite by accident while browsing at Mr. K's used bookstore one day recently. Colorful book covers can attract my attention and the 1920's era fashion worn on the cover also caught my eye so I pulled it off the shelf to give it a closer look. When I read on the back of the book that fans of "Maisie Dobbs" would enjoy the Daisy Dalrymple books I was sold!

I can honestly say that after reading this book I am now a fan of this series and will be looking for more. I found the character of Daisy Dalrymple to be strikingly similar in some ways to the character of the Maisie Dobbs series (written by Jacqueline Winspear). Ms. Dunn also sets her books in the 1920's post WWI era and, like Maisie, Daisy is unusual in that she is a woman who wants to be independent. She is a journalist for Town and Country magazine. In this book, she is embarking on a trip to visit an estate housing Occles Hall which she intends to write about in her next article. However, this is a mystery so, of course, there is a murder which Daisy is intent upon solving. Along the way many delightful characters are encountered including her friend, the Honourable Phillipe Petrie, and the handsome Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher. The author takes a much lighter tone with her series, however, than Jacqueline Winspear. The characters are not lightweight in terms of development, but they speak to each other in more playful tones and, although a murder has been committed, it is handled without too much attention to detail which I appreciate. For me, I simply found the Daisy Dalrymple book to be a lighter read. I checked out my local library branch and found that there are many books available in this series, so I know I will be reading more. 

Let me know if you have read or would like to read a book in this series. And, I would love to know what books have been on your reading list this summer! What books are growing in your garden?

Until Next Time,

Debbie

*All writing/opinions are my own. This was not a sponsored or gifted post. 

How To Style A Striped Zip Front Jacket

A Sporty Onque Zip Front Jacket

(Not a gifted or sponsored post. All opinions/writing are my own)

Hey Everyone!  First off, I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who wrote such encouraging and kind comments on my fourth blog anniversary post! Your comments warmed my heart and gave me a renewed zest for blogging which I truly needed. Now on to today's post. 

I've been a fan of Onque brand jackets and pants for awhile now. I have a few pieces of this brand already in my closet and I never fail to feel comfortable and stylish when I wear these pieces. So today, when I saw this jacket on the clearance rack at Stein Mart I snatched it up to try it on!

The fabric is a soft knit and is machine washable. I like the purple and soft peach stripes, the longer length and the 2/3 sleeves which means I will get multi-seasonal wear from this jacket.

It just felt really comfortable when I tried it on and, believe me, I tried it on about 3-4 different times because I wanted to make sure that it would be a good piece to add to my closet. I've mentioned before that I have done a really big closet clean out this summer and I am determined not to add lots of pieces. But on this one....I couldn't resist.....or on the other top I bought. (Wink) But, more on that on a later post!

I debated about sizing up on this jacket but decided not to. I don't like my tummy to stick out but sometimes I think it's more slimming to wear a piece that fits to the body more than a larger size which billows out over the stomach but makes one appear larger. With a pear shape I always find it challenging to fit my upper part and my lower part at the same time. If it fits well up top then it fits more closely against my lower part and the tummy can show. If I get a looser fit at the bottom to hide the tummy/thigh area then it is too big up top. Anyone else have hints on how to handle this issue? Can't wait to hear your thoughts!

If you are interested in this jacket click here. The jacket is on clearance and I was able to get an additional 30% off which brought the clearance price down even more. 

Until Next Time,

Debbie