I opened my computer yesterday for the first time in two weeks. It was a painful experience, but regardless of the amount of unanswered emails in my inbox, the break was absolutely worth it. We flew our little family to Florida and it was the best (okay, maybe our first official) family vacation ever! We stayed with family that we miss like crazy. We went to Disney World and watched the girls eyes light up for hours on end.

We went to the beach. We went swimming. We stayed up late talking and eating. It was all so therapeutic. Now we are back and shooting all the cookbooks (eee!!) and the hours are a little whacky–taste testing food at 11:30pm is not always glamorous–but I didn’t want another day to go by without checking in here; it’s been too long!

Before we left on vacation, as in the day before we left,  we got a new rug in the reading room! This room has had me stumped in the rug department since we moved here. It’s a mostly rectangular room, but then it has a rounded wall of windows. Awhile ago, I threw down an old geometric 5×8 we had from our previous home’s guest room, but the rectangle shape left a lot of room near the curved wall. I thought a round rug would be perfect, but they all looked too round for the slightly curved shape of the room. I started looking into irregular shaped rugs online for our irregular shaped room and came across a few cowhides and it all just clicked. I love a good cowhide! 

I landed on this Loloi one from AllModern. Although it is synthetic, it is so incredibly soft! It’s Faye’s new favorite place to lay her little head. I don’t have a rug pad under it right now and it seems to be laying flat and staying put. In real life the browns are mixed with some gray and cream and the color pattern isn’t at all distracting like some hides can be. It was the perfect solution in this odd shaped  room.

I am doing that annoying blogger thing by not giving you a pulled back shot of the room, aren’t I. Guilty. Chris was completely on board as long as it doesn’t end up looking “too Jacksonhole” in here. So, I brought in a few modern elements (a desk! a coffee table!) that I’ll share later this week, too. We are still opening packages that arrived while we were gone–which, unlike hundreds of emails, is a very fun thing to come home to. :)