Summer Destinations from Pinklet and C

Hi Everyone! I'm Lindsey, owner of Lindsey Anne Interior Styling and interior design blogger at Pinklet and C, an interior design blog where I share my inspirations, projects that I'm working on and products I love.

I’m so excited to be here on Dabble in Chic today! Kate has been such a great help to my in the last few months and I was thrilled when she asked me to post for you!

Traveling to new places is one of my favorite summer activities. I love to discover new towns and soak up some culture (along with the sun, local food and some drinks!). Whether it’s an exotic island or quaint beach town, finding new spots to explore is my idea of a perfect vacation!

These places are on the top of my list to visit soon – all very different and will give you a unique experience, but all of them feel like summer to me. Whether sailing around Nantucket, heading to the beach in Mykonos, or swimming in the lake in Lake Tahoe, I’m ready for a summer adventure!

Nantucket

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Mykonos, Greece

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Lake Tahoe

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Are you planning any summer vacations? What are your favorite spots?

Importance of Vacation

There are some things in life that you should make a point to do every year no matter what. Ever since 2009 when Kyle proposed to me, going to Bald Head Island had been one of those things for me. I still remember the first trip. It was February and it was freezing rain, but it didnt matter! We fell in love with the escape the island had to offer, the golf cart transportation, the dense forest, and the beautiful beaches. That summer we came back for a week to "test it out". What would the houses be like to stay in? How easy would it be to get everything we needed to the island? Is this a place we could see ourselves continuing to come back to?
I was hooked! Ever since that summer we have come every year for a week. 2nd summer we were married here, 3rd summer we were here with Dablet "in tow" so to speak, 4th year (this year) it's our first beach trip as a family of three!!! What I love about this growing tradition is how I know we will always find a way to do it, and there will always be people who want to come with us. This year there are 2 houses rented and at one given point we will have 20 people here enjoying what BHI has to offer: relaxation. I have been driving around looking at all of the details on the houses, truly amazed by some of the beach architecture. (I will post pictures when I have found all of my favorites!) And I have eaten my fair share of crab legs! YUM!!!!
This, however, is my favorite part of the trip so far!!!! I'll post more later, but for now it's time to relax some more!!!

Beach Break

If you have been on Twitter or Facebook recently, you may have noticed the large number of giveaways celebrating the Summer season! With Summer comes an amazing uplifting range of color to fashion, decorating, flower, and spa indulgences. Speaking of which, I just had a pedicure featuring this fabulous pinky coral "Trout Pout"

A while back I blogged about the upcoming edition of "Have Baby Will Travel" as I prepared to take on Bald Head Island and the trip is finally here! We are leaving on Saturday with 12 of us and our three big dogs, with another 7+ people joining a day or so later. Normally vacations are a source of relaxation, and I am 100% confident that this one will be as well....once we get there! I'm not usually an over packer, but Dablet had never been to the beach, half of the family that will be there has never met her, and we're dealing with a baby who is teething, has her first ever diaper rash/bacterial infection (fun right?), and Kyle will have to leave me for a couple of days to come back for school. It is a blessing that Dablet's clothes fold up nice and small, because I packed just about her entire closet!

In the second edition of "Getting Ready for BHI" I showed you a look that I was considering for the ferry ride over. While it will not be exactly that, here are some fun finds I have found recently that might pull it together in my own way!

Ferry-2 by kdsessoms featuring strappy sandals

These Tory Burch sandals were a gift from Kyle for our 2nd wedding anniversary yesterday! Other than that, I've owned the sunglasses for over two years, got the shorts with a gift card from two Christmas' ago, the pearls were a Christmas gift from my dad three years ago, and the tank can be any bone, nude, or blush colored tank I might have in my drawer. The only thing on this board that's a "wish list" item is the bracelet from Michael Kors. I LOVE rose gold lately, remember those Sperry shoes?!?!
The next couple of days will be quite crazy, but BHI will provide fabulous photos to share with you, interior decorating ideas (from the amazing homes on the island), and maybe some fun architecture pictures! Also, we will be doing a family shoot with Matt McGraw, who shot our wedding, on the beach and I am SO excited to capture Abby in the sand!
If you haven't visited the "Scents of Style" giveaway be sure to do so and leave a comment for your chance to win $50 Visa Gift Card. I will draw a winner after we return from BHI. An added bonus for all of you peeps while I'm gone is a guest blogger! We're in the process of deciding the exact topic, but I promise it will be summer related and drool worthy! She's a great gal, and guess where I "met" her? Twitter!!
Until Next Time!

Dabble

Loving Grayce-fully

It's not a secret, I love Layla Grayce and Zinc Door. Why does this matter? On my quest to define my sense of style and of self it's fabulous to have brands that I can align myself with that really make me feel "at home". This week has been long...already. I spent over an hour last night in the space between the ceiling of our first floor and the floor of our second floor among the fiberglass insulation. Why? because one of our cats somehow managed to get in there are refused to come out. Three showers later, I am still itchy, bumped, and bruised and in desperate need of a pick me up. This morning I headed to twitter and was "Grayced" with this!

This Bungalow 5 lamp is new to Layla Grayce and can be found here. Like it? be sure to follow Layla Grayce and Bungalow 5 on twitter for more great finds!

Sure, the lamp was a great design pick me up, and spurred me to delve into the Bungalow 5 collection on Layla Grayce's site (sharing some favorites in a second!). The best pick me up was that even after I "threatened" to ship myself in a box to Layla Grayce's distribution center they still showed me some love! Kyle laughed when I told him this, but he may have been concerned that I would never come home if I shipped myself out there! I wonder if Zinc Door ships from the same space...he may never see me again!

Here are my Bungalow 5 favorites:

Polo Etargere

Brigitte Dresser

Marco Side Table

Once I finish my list of "wants" for the home makeover, I'll have to go back and edit it down. You can be sure that some of these will remain in place on that list!! 

Dabble

Scents of Style

There I go again! The English major playing word games, or just showing that yet again spell check doesn't catch homonyms. Anyway, all games aside I do have a point. When you go to style a space, even your own home, the finishing touch comes from the scent of the place. Your home can be designed impeccably, but if you have animals (like we do) and your home smells like cat litter and wet dog the style will be lost on the guests as soon as they enter your home. I've blogged about my love of Yankee Candles and how the right candle can totally change your day!
Any good company that understand this principle will carry a line of candles with scents reflecting the type of environment their furniture and decor would fit in. Obviously you will not have modern clean lines surrounded by scents that remind you of walking into your grandma's house (think ceder, sugar cookies, and heavy perfume). Even if you think I'm wrong on that one, and that's OK you're allowed, no matter what scent defines your space please for the love of design pick something better than wet dog!
People say that smell is the sense connected to memory the most. For me, I can remember my grandfather because he smelled warm. Not just any kind of warm, but warm leather rubbed in machine oil. Not exactly Santa kind of warm. This particular grandpa passed away when I was seven, and still when I see a picture of him that's what I smell. His scent would be the perfect addition to a man cave, or to a garage hang out. Your signature smell becomes part of your personality!
If I'm stressed my home starts to smell like baked goods because inevitably when I've had a bad day I either make brownies or banana bread. If I'm in a cleaning/purging mood I break out the fresh flower smells. Highly successful day? Lavender and lemon (or just the lavender!) I think that's why that particular candle is my favorite. The more lavender lemon candles I go through, the more successful I've been!
Let's play a little game. I've chosen some fantastically styled rooms and I want you to pick the smells that go along with them. What's the perk? You'll receive a $50 Visa Gift Card to indulge in some extra Scents of Style! Over the next few days I will share with you some of my favorite design elements, including some great candle lines! Ready? Let's go!

Living Area

Picture from Coastal Living

Living area off of a kitchen

Picture from Traditional Home

This is a sitting area off of a bedroom 

Picture from Traditional Home

Bedroom

Picture from House Beautiful

Kitchen

Picture from HGTV

To enter the Scents of Style challenge simply post a comment here with your first name and email address and the smell (or combination) you would use to finish the design of each of these rooms. Please number 1 through 5! I cannot wait to see what you come up with!

Until next time!

Dabble

Color Chaos

I don't think it's a secret to anyone that choosing paint colors can be a daunting task. There are color professionals in the industry of interior design for a good reason...someone needs to make sense of all this chaos! I had intended to start this process this weekend, but was only able to play with my Benjamin Moore Color Capture App on my phone, not actually get to the store. Side note: If you have an iPhone "run" don't "walk" to the app store and download the "Color Capture" app. It's FREE and allows you to not only browse all of their paint colors by name/number, but you can take pictures and pin point matching colors from their availability. I recently took a picture of Dablet and it told me that her skin tone was "Ciao Bella". Hello beautiful is right!!

I cannot believe my little bear is 8 months old today!

Anyway, I finally made it to the Benjamin Moore selection at my local paint store and this is what lay before me:

Daunting, intimidating, chaotic (in a perfectly organized way!), and completely inspiring! I wanted to spend hours perusing through the color choices, but I think the nice man working at the hardware store didn't know what to do with the girl and her iPhone app! I made my selections (for round one at least!) and this is what I came home with:

It's probably a good thing that Kyle is at school because what happened next might have caused a few "what in the world are you doing" looks. Everything requires visualization for me, that's just how I pull things together! This fact of my personality is one of the biggest reasons why I LOVE Olioboard, and have recently  gone Pro! Before I start painting my color samples on the walls I needed to at least narrow down the options a bit! 

We have this great little "art nook" in our main entry and with the potential to have soft gray walls around it, I felt that the inside needed just a soft warm color. This is "Opal"

Next Came the half bath on our first floor. The paining in the picture is an original watercolor we bought on our honeymoon in St. Lucia and I have always loved the color combinations in it!

For this the front runners are "Flame", "Hot Spice", "Peacock Blue", and "Capri Seas". Right now I'm leaning towards "Peacock Blue" and finding something in the Coral family for a fun mirror frame.

As with anything design related, the possibilities are endless, and a slight change in the tone of a color can change your entire room. For example, I'm looking at some brown grays and some steel or blue grays. Kyle understands the difference, but with my obsession over grays lately he's expecting our whole house to be gray. A lot of it very well might be....but not all the same tone!

More color chaos to come!

Dabble

My First Mother's Day

Last year I was pregnant for Mother's Day, but I still counted myself as a mother. That's the interesting thing about having kids. From the moment you find out your pregnant, they become the most important part of your life int the most amazing way possible. This morning my day started with breakfast in bed, but not breakfast for me! Kyle got up and got Abby up, got her bottle, and brought her to hand out in bed with me while she fed herself her morning bottle. (I CANNOT believe how big she's getting!) I was then presented with another tech accessory for Mother's Day to make sure that I protected my new iPad in style!

It's perfect! With a chic black and white cover and a coral red inside with slots for business cards and small papers! So much more than just a cover, but a functional cover! LOVING it!!

After that Kyle made a Dunkin Donuts run and returned with coffee and donuts! YAY! This was followed by bacon and eggs while I ate my breakfast with Dablet!

As if my morning needed to get any better, Fairy Godmommy sent me a text with a picture of her Mother's Day gift from her hubby. It was a beautiful boquet of flowers with a certificate entitling her to a round trip ticket to come visit her god daughter in NC! (oh, and some shopping $$ for our excursions!) I was SOOO excited!
Softball brought two losses (not the greatest, but we were missing people) and I may need to go get an x-ray of my hand later this week. I took a BAD hop of a ball hit VERY hard to me at 2nd right at the base of my thumb on my right hand. As if that wasn't enough, I later got a bad hop to the chest. Tonight will DEFINITELY include a nice bath with some Lush Products!
Speaking of Lush Products...we have some giveaway winners!
For our Twitter followers we are giving away a Serenity Gift Box, and for Facebook we are doing 3 bath bombs! The winners are.....
Twitter: @gidgetmel09
Facebook: I got a kick out of this drawing...it's one of my former Professors Dr. Weyler! Hopefully she doesn't cringe over the grammar of my blog!
Congratulations to you both!

To all of the mamas and mamas to be out there...Happy Mother's Day! Make sure to take an extra moment for you!! Coming up this week I'm going to reveal the preliminary color choices for our painting project of the home makeover, show you our new hardwoods, and some recent accent purchases! There is A LOT going on over here so hold on for the ride!!
Until Next Time

 Dabble

When a Godmommy becomes a Fairy

The last several days have been a whirlwind to say the least! When I started this adventure in reinvention (or at least redefinition of myself...not trying to recreate the wheel) I decided that I would put myself out there and let my passions take me where ever they decided to take me. Don't read this as a passive action (in case my former English professors are reading), because if you follow your dreams you are the one getting yourself there! My biggest problem was that I had SO many dreams and passions. After realizing that the best thing for our former printing company would be to sell our production capabilities, I was daunted with the possibility of working on my own.
I interviewed for a fantastic position with a brand that seemed to suck me in (in the BEST way possible). While I wasn't offered the position, the entire process that I went through taught me more about myself and what I REALLY wanted to do and how I wanted to follow my passions. For that I am eternally grateful. Since then I have poured myself into how to define myself as a brand. Dabble in Chic has become more than a crazed working mom trying to find a few moment each week that truly make her feel amazing, Dabble has aesthetic.
Dabble in Chic is now connected to all types of social media, most importantly Twitter and Pinterest. The community I dived into on Twitter is full of incredible Interior Designers who are not only talented, but truly care about each other and the collaborative efforts that can grow out of social media in real life. These amazing people have helped me double my interested followers in the last week.
Recently, I was part of a chat about how blogging defines your brand. Most of the advice was to be yourself, after all when you're a designer you ARE you brand, and to keep your posts short and sweet showcasing your photos and designs. Maybe by a vote I'd be "failing" at the second, but sometimes (as we all know) a design has a story behind it.
When I was pregnant with Dablet Kyle and I went through the process of picking Godparents. He got to pick the guy, I got to pick the girl (and he's had his guys picked out for YEARS). It didn't take me long to decide on the perfect life and style role model for Dablet, someone I knew would teach her all of the important things in life, like where to get discount Tory Burch shoes! Also, it didn't hurt that Dablet's Godmommy has a fantastic sense of style and attention to the details (like these that she pulled together for my baby shower)!

Yes...I finally got to the pictures, but it will all make sense I promise!

As any pregnant lady will tell you, food is KEY! And these mini cupcakes from The Cupcake Shoppe in Raleigh, NC were amazing! (I even had one the day Dablet was born...just not from the same batch, and it was full size!)

Every good shower ends with the person being showered in a hat of bows!

Once all of the mayhem settled down it was time to have a baby! As soon as Dablet was born Godmommy got all of the pictures and heard her make her little noises on the phone and even though we're in NC and she's in NY she couldn't help herself and flew down to escort us home from the hospital! 

Dablet's Godmommy became OUR Fairy Godmommy because no one can make crock pot meals like she can, find the best designer deal, take an iPhone photo that flatters you, lead me to baby clothing sales Dablet "needs", pour me just the right amount of red wine at just the right moment, hide the chocolate chip cookies in the place I'll know to look, watch BravoTV marathons, or understand what it means to balance a marriage, baby, career, home, and all of the creative passions we just cannot live without! So of course, she had to have her own room (the one she's always stayed in) designed with her in mind!

This is everything fun and feminine that reminds me of our Fairy Godmommy from the fabric bed to the pale pink linens and the ruffled light!

All of the items in this board can be found here including some of my favorites from Layla Grayce, West Elm, and paint from Benjamin Moore!

Every room has an inspration, and I couldn't think of a better one than a person who inspires you!

Until Next Time

Dabble 

Front Guest Room Face Lift

So you've seen what we have in our front guest room, and some of the things we have been thinking about putting in it. Now I would like to take you one step further to show you the Olioboard I've created to pull it all together!

Benjamin Moore Paint colors used: 

Plum Royale, Gray Owl, French Lilac

Furniture:

West Elm Tufted Headboard

Orchard Chair from Zinc Door

Regina Andrew Hammered Nickel Lamp

West Elm Aluminum Hexagon Side Table

Accents:

WAC Aurora Pendant Lighting

Jonathan Adler Nixon Charcoal Throw

Kivi Candle Holder

This look gets me all kinds of excited and inspired. I keep visualizing the way a bland and boring room can come to life with some paint and fabulous pieces added to it! When I get this project done, I'll show you the pictures....until then I'll find another room to dabble in!

Dabble

Dablet and Babyletto

Our friends, or more like the really cool girls you gaze at from across the lunch room in high school, over at Layla Grayce and Zinc Door mentioned that we should check out some BabyLetto furniture for Dablet's nursery face lift. So we did! Turns out that these ladies not only know their stuff (as if we didn't already know that), but they're pretty friendly too! Dablet wants me to tell you she's saving her pennies in her cupcake bank! (Yes, her "piggy bank" is shaped like a cupcake because she wanted to be different!)
Here's what my little diva thinks would look great in her nursery with what she already has!

We are in desperate need of a glider upstairs, and this is sleek and looks comfy!

While we already have a changing table, it does transition into a bookcase and could always find a new home in her playroom. I love the drawers on this and think Kyle would like moving an changing table downstairs so we avoid "accidents" on our bed!

 I LOVE tree bookcases!  They would go so well with her modern safari theme, and as the daughter of an English Major Dablet is destined to always need more space for books!

The next find was a collaboration I did with Dablet. She's not always going to be our only as we'll probably have another baby sometime soon (or at least start the "process") so she and I picked out a crib for the new addition whenever he/she decides to join us!

Is it really a surprise to anyone that it's grey? I have been seriously crushing on grey tones recently, and have a strong feeling you'll be seeing them as a perfect designing canvas color on our walls pretty soon! That is, unless Benjamin Moore decides to throw me a curve ball I fall in love with!
Dablet and I hope you like our BabyLetto finds from Layla Grayce and come back to dabble with us soon!

Happy Designing!

Dabble (& Dablet)

The "Great" Room

I've avoided this part of the house because it involves the most commitment. We have a fabulous open floor plan on our first floor with the only doors going to our bedroom, half bath, and a mudroom. We have medium dark cherry hardwood floors and a HUGE two story ceiling in our great room that also has a wall of big windows. Recently I've been dabbling with Olioboard and using their color tool from Benjamin Moore. Through all of this I have been expanding my connections on Twitter and have been loving the love I have received and the advice to be had for our home makeover. Today Benjamin Moore asked me what we already had in our "Great" room so they could give me their opinion on a color choice. So, ask and you shall receive! Here's what we have!

This is the best current picture to show the Lipstick Red rug. It has a pattern like an opening flower. You can also get an idea of some of our large walls.

See our wall of windows?

More walls!

Dark Coffee wood entertainment center

This is a painting we got in Rome last year when I was pregnant with Dablet. It is FULL of colors, and with that, would go with just about anything and provides a lot of inspiration!

With that all being shown, the rug can always move! What will stay for sure is the couch and the entertainment area. Any personal opinions or advice is always welcome and appreciated and we can't wait to see what colors Benjamin Moore comes up with for us! 

Dabble

Consequences of Softball

So Kyle is at an all day softball tournament and Abby and I decided to go to Nordstrom rack (makes sense right?)

I was able to snag three fantastic items and got out for less than $70! First, I had a Nordstrom note so I got these great Tory Burch flip flops for $5!

Then I found this on the sale rack. I have been looking for simple yet textured items to add to my "meeting with clients " wardrobe, and this fit the bill!

Just my chic moment for the day!


Dabble