Birthday Present and Office News

A while ago I found some photos online of air plants. They are a type of bromeliad that can grow without being planted in soil. You simply mist them with water every day. A lot of people have found interesting ways to display these little wonders and I happened to stumble across a set of glass spheres that were designed with these plants in mind. I added them to my Amazon wishlist and lo and behold, my lovely husband purchased them for me for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I then proceeded to order myself a few air plants, Alton strung them up with monofiliment, and voila! A really cool looking addition to our dining room, no?

A few close ups of the plants:

We think the one in the second photo is going to have a flower. *fingers crossed*

In other news, we have decided that we can stand to look at the bare-floored, empty office no more. We made a trip to Lowes on Sunday and purchased chair railing, paint samples, and new light switch plates. Have you seen the ones that were in there?

Horrible. The missing screw makes it even sadder...

These are the plates we picked to replace those. (And probably the rest of the lightswitch plates in the house, eventually.)

Alton is going for a dark, manly, pub-like feel in his office. He even used a coaster as his color inspiration:

Here are the colors we picked, with a piece of posterboard standing in for chair railing.

We really like the bottom color and we liked the top color during the day, but after it was completely dry and we saw it at night with no sunlight to lighten it up it was way too dark. Even for Alton. Who wants it to be like a cave in there. So we are going to have the nice people at Lowes mix us up another batch of slightly lighter green and hopefully we will like that one because I am ready to paint!

Alton just happened to be perusing Craigslist last night and came across a nice dark colored desk that he really liked, so we picked that up today as well. It is not assembled yet, so photos will come later. Also, we are going to just buy a large rug or have a piece of carpet bound to temporarily cover the concrete floors in there. So far, the office is coming together nicely.