the arrival of the doors.

bright and early this morning, our new front entry door, back entry door and interior shaker door were delivered! this post is really more of a sneak peak than anything..

james sizing up the delivery truck.

now we have to wait until our contractor has time in his schedule to come by and actually install them - he's busy at the moment, so it won't be for another month or two!! i am very upset about this, as this project has already been almost six months in the making, but that's another story entirely.

how gorgeous are these doors? laying horizontally is the interior door for a new interior wall we are going to put in. we will eventually be replacing every interior door in the house with one of these. the upright one with the sidelite is the back entry. behind it, that you can't see, is the front entry. which is a bigger door without a sidelite, and an additional dentil shelf. none of the doors are stained yet, so we still have to figure out what the stain will be. i'm thinking something dark, but not-too-dark, and warm, but not-too-warm. that's descriptive enough, right?

crystal knob for the interior door (doesn't it just make you swoon?!?!)

entry handle set for the front door (can you spot the craftsman-y details through the packaging?)

the doors are from simpson, the palomar ii (for front and back) and a five panel shaker. we found it a lovely coincedence that the name exterior door we fell in love with is the same name as the hotel we we stayed in when we got married (the palomar hotel, washington, dc).

the pretty hardware is from emtek. the old town crystal knob we ordered is as pictured above, but the arts and crafts full length entry set we got is in flat black, so the hammered look is more subtle. i just can't wait until all this work is done..!

purchased : indoor houseplants.

a year ago, i bought an airplant for the kitchen and put it in the pretty urchin planter you see above. it didn't survive. it made it for about 8 months, but i decided to get two more, and i actually got some more information on them this time, so i'm hopeful these will survive.

anyway, completely separately, we've been on a bit of a plant buying kick, making many trips to our local armstrong garden center to buy outdoor plants. but on one of those trips, i decided to peruse the indoor plants, and kind of fell in love with these spiky tall snake plants.

they're tall and wavy and really low maintenance! and amazingly, after i brought it home, i did a bit of internet research and learned that these plants also generate oxygen at night and filter out formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, xylene, toluene, and benzene from the air. how awesome is that?

we've had the one above the fireplace for less than a month, and it's already showing signs of additional growth. i'm utterly in love!

and since i'm so enamored, i soon bought another one, this one much smaller, to put in the kitchen. it's already doubled in height since we brought it home two weeks ago!

so of course, when we went plant shopping again today, i looked at more indoor plants. i bought a small croton petra that we've placed in the bathroom because it needs humidity and lots of sunlight. i love the pretty reds in the leaves, but hopefully, this will be enough sun for it. everything i've seen online says it calls for unfiltered sun, but we'll see how it goes. this one is the most finicky i've dared to purchase so far.

and last but not least is this pretty peperomina, which i think is also called a baby rubber plant. it gets a place in the bedroom. my biggest fear with indoor plants (after them dying because i have a black thumb) is getting bugs! but i'm sucking it up because i'm really enjoying the bit of greenery and life in the house.