Impeccable Nest

How to enter: Follow @impeccable_nest  and @shopharveys on instagram, and follow the directions!  Winner to be announced on January 20!

You can win the Streamline Tote/Voyager Bag (valued $138)

DESCRIPTION

The voyager is your perfect travel companion for when it’s more about the journey than the destination.

Horizontally stitched seatbelt fully lined with inner zip pocket and extra slip pockets for storage. Features top carry handles, cross body strap, and zip top.    

12.5" (L) X 14.5" (H) X 3.75" (W) with 10" handle drop  

Detachable strap extends from 25" - 51" 

Recycled plastic bottle interior lining  

Made in USA  

Animal Friendly (Vegan)

About the company:

We are HARVEYS, a group of happy people who love discovering, designing, and making handbags & lifestyle goods in sunny Southern California. It all started in a tiny garage with husband and wife, Dana & Melanie Harvey. While restoring their classic car, Dana came up with the idea to make Melanie a matching handbag with the leftover seatbelts. Everyone loved hers so much they decided to make more for you.

I mean, who doesn’t want to love and support happy people?

Last year I welcomed my second daughter, and since then, I’ve been stuck with feeling bloated, sluggish and cloudy with a malaise which has led me to this very important moment (how funny that it coincides with the new year?): it is time to reset and engage in a cleanse, or renewal as I would prefer to call it.

This renewal is not only to feed my physical self, but I have engaged in a series of personal growth strategies for the past month to build up to this moment.  This moment was the realization that my sweet baby girl is turning 1 next month, and I haven’t done much for myself, and instead I have been “focusing in my business, not on my business.”

That quote is my mantra for 2016: Don’t focus in my business, focus ON my business.  This is the year I can realize my businesses potential (and we have made a lot of positive movement in just the past ten days!!!!), and my own personal potential.  In fact, I’ve grown tired of reading all the mom blogs about how bedraggled people are, etc., etc., and the time has come for me to put words into action.

So...I went to a Female Empowerment/Find your Inner Goddess yoga retreat and it was beyond amazing. A room filled with 20 beautifully empowered women, all working towards being their best self.  I wrote an apology to myself for all the harsh talk it receives, and set my intentions.  Then I went to a meditation/breathing class; again, amazing.  In fact, it is incredible what happens when you can quiet your brain and inner self and feed it positive thought and beliefs.  And  now I am on a 10 day cleanse, to clear out and get my body back to feeling its best.  I have slowly let motherhood get the best of me: lazy eating habits, messy hair, and lack of personal motivation yet expecting and producing the best for my girls.  

Impeccable Nest is an interior design business ran out of my home office with my partner, and mother, Kim.  I also run this business with my two mini-assistants who are 2.5 and 9 months...needless to say, it makes for a creative workday schedule.  The delicate balance between working from home, and parenting at home (or being a work at home mother (WAHM)) is a fine line and battle for balance...everyday.  The struggle is real.  

However, reality has hit this Impeccable Nest hard this week.  My girls have been battling colds, and one has had a fever for two days, which means long hours lounging on the sofa.  Now, while this sounds like a beautiful plan for a lazy day, work is still calling, there are clients to be met, and installations happening all over our fine city.  In fact, I have a couple of MAJOR projects that are in the middle of completion right now, and they need my attention as much as my girls.

So...how do we do it?  Well, I couldn’t do any of this without the support my business partner and my family.  We constantly pass work back and forth between the two of us, which is quite helpful, however when girls are sick, we are stuck at home.  Since there is never going to be a real/true balance of work/life, we have become experts in delegation and in “rerouting.”

I often joke that my life’s motto is “rerouting.”  Since becoming a “mompreneur,” I’ve had to do more “rerouting” than I ever thought I was capable of doing before.  The plight of the entrepreneur is a Type-A personality, but since throwing motherhood into the mix, I’ve found that you cannot maintain that level of intensity, and you must increase your flexibility.  Every single day comes with a new challenge/responsibility for my family as well as for our business, therefore “rerouting” is the way of this WAHM.  The best example of this would be these past two days.  I’ve been running on little sleep, but lots of snuggles and my laptop and cell phone, which have helped us communicate with our clients/vendors/tradespeople and work on our rebranding effort.  We may have had to rearrange our schedule to stay home the past few days, but that’s the best part of being a WAHM, the ability to “reroute” when something comes up.

I wouldn’t trade being a WAHM with anything else out there, but remember:

1. Community/Help is everything: You can’t do it alone, and you need help.

2. Rerouting: It is the most important lesson I’ve learned in the past 3 years.  You must be flexible.

3. Family: They are your everything.  That’s why we do this.

Are your rooms suffering from inappropriate rug use/size?  I’m guessing they probably are.  In fact, most people purchase rugs that are too small and make their oversized furniture seem too large and overpowering for the space.

Well, last night while I was trolling the interwebs, I found these handy design guides for rugs. 

The Living/Family room rug: Perhaps the biggest and most offensive rug violator of all time, and this can be found in most homes.  The biggest reason to buy an oversized rug is to center and create a cohesive space that brings your design together with an area rug. Get on it people! 

For the Dining Room: Ugh!  All too often, this is a design no no I see everywhere!!!

For the bedroom:  And, yes you do need a rug in the bedroom, it keeps your furniture from looking as though it is just floating out there in the open space...even if you have carpeting.

You’re welcome.

I recently came across this article from Lonny.com discussing the types of flea market art to pick up.  It discusses the merits of collecting/picking metal art, portraits, maps, etc.  

The best part about flea market art, is that it will not break the bank, and make a HUGE impact on your space.  We love finding amazing art and other one of a kind pieces at our favorite fleas.  And if you’re just starting out with a new place, why not find something unique, that will make a statement for a small price?Since we have done our fair share of picking, here’s a few fun things we like to do with our flea market finds:

We find these vintage ship/sailing paintings everywhere...and they are usually around $5-$15 a canvas...They are an impeccable bargain!  And we love the aged look/patina.

Vintage map?  Add a quote!  Find some stencils, and get painting (we use the stencils from Target, and then pair it with our own cursive...see there is a reason why we learn it!)

Hang portraits...en masse.  Now, that’s a statement!

Have a sense of humor and add a little whimsey to your room.

Have you fallen in LOVE with Farrow and Ball paints and colors?

Well, I found this amazing color match graphic that gives the Benjamin Moore equivalent (in fact the color match is identical to the eye!).

Why is this chart important?

Contractors and painters tend to work mostly with Benjamin Moore paints.

Farrow and Ball paint is a lot more expensive than Benjamin Moore. Some people can’t afford to shell out $100 for a gallon of paint. Benjamin Moore Regal Select is about half the price and it is easy to get for most people.

Here’s your color inspiration for your Wednesday (thank you English Room!):

I recently had over 4000 photos on my iphone.  I also have not hung any photos of my second child on our walls either (well, they were stuck on my phone and in my computer!).  How many people fall into this category?  I’m sure a ton.

So, I decided it was time to put my youngest on the walls and finally free up some space on my phone, which takes little to no time to do, and it is a task that just eats up space on my to do list.  Therefore, I set aside time to upload, and create a “to be printed” album.  While that wasn’t quite finishing the task, I went on Snapfish’s website and started uploading and selecting sizes and finally ordered some prints.  The best part about snapfish is that there always deals to be found.  In fact, my order was 40% off!

I cannot stress enough the impact large scale photos have in a home, and it is the simplest, most meaningful way to create a home (especially a home on a budget!), when you install your family photos on your walls.  The photos just arrived in the mail yesterday, but I could wait to see them in frames.  As a side note, I always stockpile the Ribba frames from Ikea in my basement for moments like these!  They’re cheap, easy and awesome for gallery wall projects.  I’ll take photos this week of how it all turned out, but here is the progress we made yesterday!

Now she feels like part of the family!  That’s impeccable!