Curtain Project.

I went shopping this weekend and had ZERO luck finding curtains for our den. The art we have has such a mix of neutrals, burnt orange, lime, and bright turquoise. I ended up buying a few options but none of them felt quite right. So I grabbed these beauties out of a drawer upstairs (the ones I couldn't live without from West Elm, but had no home for), and threw them up on the rod. Not too shabby, huh? The darker shade is a mushroom-ish kind of color with a little bit of brown and a little bit of grey. The in-between color is a light but bright blue. So not the most matchy-matchy, but I think they look pretty good!

We also painted our formal living room (ugh. aren't formal living rooms outdated yet?) a light grey that is really pretty, but it doesn't get a ton of light so the living room almost looks darker than the dining room. But whatevs. I'll pretend that its my favorite paint job I've ever done to save myself from the shame of it looking clash-y.

And we hung three pictures above our bed to the tune of $7.50 a piece thanks to Michael's and their love for coupons. One is of San Francisco, one is of Grand Teton, and the other is of the sunset over Beirut. I'll post a picture of those later (when my bed is made). They are really beautiful.

Slowly but surely we're makin' progress! Now I'm ready to stop working and start new books and catch up on TV shows and cooking endeavors. And also find ways to re-claim the friendships I lost throughout this housing transition. If I owe you a call - I WILL CALL YOU. AND YOU WILL ANSWER. Jk. You don't have to answer, but I do love you and want to talk to you. Badly. So please answer. :)

Love love.

Grey, You are beautiful.

This past weekend we painted our dining room grey. And I LOVE IT. The room has white bead-board around the bottom half and gets tons of light during the day, so I think it looks really classy and nice. I'm pretty sure my mom's jaw dropped to the floor when I told her I wanted to have not one, but two rooms be painted grey. But Pinterest has told me that grey is "in", so I assumed it to be the final authority.

So here is our room freshly painted. I re-stained the chairs so they haven't been added to the table set-up just yet. I'm also working up something great for the walls. And for the table. And by working up I mean I'm spending hours on Pinterest pinning the endless possibilities I'll never be able to afford.

In a dream world, our dining room would look something like this.

And here is the newest addition to our den. Again, sorry for the phone picture. It brings in turquoise, lime and burnt orange which will be great to incorporate over the next few months in vases, pillows, curtains, etc. I wish there was more of a blue palette in the picture but I can't have everything.

It makes me feel good to have some sort of design progress. Slowly but surely this is starting to feel more like home.

In other news, my progress with Lucy the dog has been somewhat lacking. And by lacking I mean to say that I have kind of a terrible attitude about her. How in the world do you paint your nails, re-stain furniture or make dinner with a 52 pound dog nipping at your feet, sitting on your legs, or whimpering when you ignore her? Although most people probably peg me for a neat freak, I do not however like swiffering her fur off the floor every third day. Or lighting candles continuously to mask the smell of our downstairs. Nor do I like having to walk into the wet grass so that she will feel comfortable enough to walk into it herself and pee.

But the good news is Lucy is still alive and happy as a clam. The bad news is that I am not a good sport when it comes to revolving my life around her. When I have other things I want to do without distraction. Like read my book. And paint my walls. And watch reality tv. And craft.

Art Decision

This was my final decision. Judy Paul's "Garden" ordered off of Overstock.com. It is 40 in. x 40 in. so I hope it will be big enough for the gaping hole above my couch. I love the weirdness of it, and I think it will bring some much needed "life" to the room. Later on I might order a second piece from Judy Paul that is similar. She has 6-7 that are this style but with different pictures and sketches and designs. But for now, this will be it!

Thank you for your wonderful patience and advice! I can't wait for it to come in so I can finally move forward on the rest!

Living Room Art

I'm probably going to drive everyone crazy with our living room, but it's the room we spend the most time in so I want it to be beautiful. It's also the room that I feel has the most potential (yet I currently feel its the most hopeless).

I found some rugs that I like, but I'm considering getting some art for the wall first before I get into buying accessories. I need some sort of focal piece to work the room around, and hopefully some art will provide some much needed inspiration (obviously only if I can actually decide on something). A problem I have is buying hundreds of things that I like, but nothing ever going together. When we moved in everyone has told me to take my time with everything, and really make it what I want. But that advice has crippled me from doing anything. I'm so paranoid about stuff working and fitting and being warm and inviting that I can't seem to buy anything but a set of West Elm curtains that are in a drawer because I don't know where to put them. :)

So here are some wall options. I think I like the idea of having lots of neutrals with pops of turquoise and lime, or a variety of blues. Do you like any of these?

Rug Choices

Do you guys like any of these? This rug thing is stressing me out. I just feel a little bit directionless in this living room. But here are some choices I can see myself using (they are all in the 9' range). Thoughts? Feedback? Ideas? Help?

Drab Living Room

So I need help. In a big way.

This is our living room and breakfast area. We currently have a rectangle Ikea table under this chandelier, and the den has a sofa, loveseat, 2 recliners, some side tables and a coffee table. The room is a little bit drab with a touch of manliness. Our recliners are dark green, and all the tables are dark brown. The fire place also has green marble (really? of all colors for a fire place you chose green?). So I'm trying to steer away from the dark green and brown, but I really have no idea what I want. Or how to use the dark green and brown for the time being until I have the funds to buy non hand-me-down pieces. If the room was more isolated, then I think it'd be a lot easier. But since it flows into the breakfast area, kitchen, then onto the dining room- I have to be a little bit more intentional with how I separate the spaces and use the manliness to my advantage. Surely thats possible, right?

Here are 3 different mood boards from Young House Love. Ideally I'd like to pick and choose some items from each of these to incorporate into the room.

In this first picture I love the rug and curtains. I have an ivory couch, so seeing a neutral rug that still stands apart from the couch is great to visualize for me.

I love the colors in this second mood board. And the picture at #3 is beautiful, and guess what, it's a $12 poster! The YHL recommendation was to frame the poster in a sleek dark frame which I think is genius. I've been searching high and low for some art or pictures, and I think I might have found my solution. Its modern, big, and pulls a few different colors. I also love the rug and general color palette.

I love the lamps in this third board as well as the neutral chair. The pop of turquoise and lime is dreamy. Same with the vase.

So those are my ideas. I have no idea how I'll actually execute any of these ideas, but I at least am leaning towards a colored palette. Which is a HUGE step in the right direction. Praise the Lord. Any advice or thoughts you have would be HUGE! I feel so lost.

House and Mirror Redo

Here are some pictures of the inside of our house before we started moving all of our stuff in. I realized I'd only posted 1-2 pictures, so I figured you might want to see a little bit more. (If not, discontinue reading here...) It might make my decorating re-dos a little bit easier to envision.

Here is what the house looked like the day we started moving in!

This is from the formal living room looking into the dining room. These are the two rooms that I'm going to do in a darker grey (dining room) and a lighter grey (living room).

View from the kitchen into the den. Check out the dark green marble fire place (gag). It is really nice, but dark green and brown are so manly to me. I feel like I'm in a bachelor pad in some ways.

This is the really beautiful pink office. NOT. It took TONS of primer, and tons of paint in order to cover this up. They also kindly left us the daisy curtain rod. :)

Kitchen.

View of the backyard.

AND HERE IS MY FIRST REDO OF THE HOUSE! And yes it's small, and easy peasy, but hey- I did something! Let's just rejoice in that.

This is the mirror.

What I used to spray paint it (I taped paper over the glass).

The finished product! Still with the paper...sorry about that. But this will go on the wall in the dining room, and I think it will go really nice with the white beadboard that lines the walls.

I also spray painted a black and bronze lamp white, but I learned quickly that all my lamp shades are ivory....womp womp womp. Oh well...to TJ Maxx I go. Again.

The Beginner Decorater

So we made the big move last weekend! Finally. It was months and months in the making.

It was a tremendous amount of work, but everything is at least IN THE HOUSE now. For the love. I'm still exhausted 9 days later. I'm a compulsive shopper/spender so I was nervous that I'd blow this entire year's budget within the first 24 hours of moving in, but for some reason moving has had the opposite effect on me. All I've bought is two trash cans.

The hard thing about a house is that everything is so p.e.r.m.a.n.e.n.t. I'm terrified to buy something that I may or may not love, or to put a hole in a wall that I'll later decide against (which would then require spackle, sanding and re-painting to correct said mistake). The only thing I HAVE decided on is the color palette for our formal living room and dining room (which is another tough project because it will clash with the other current colors in the house until I find time to fix those).

Our dining room is the first room I'm attempting to envision and decorate. It will be grey and white for the most part, with silver accents. My goal is to have some bright pink or yellow flowers on the table, but I'm not quite there yet (mainly because I only have the chairs, not the table - which would obviously hinder my ability to decorate the table).

This is the material that I have covered the seats of each chair with (and by I, I mean my grandmother). It has creamy white, grey, and taupe in it. The chairs and table are dark brown, so my hope is that they'll blend with everything. (sorry this picture is not great - its from my phone)

These are my dream curtains from West Elm. I'd like to go see them in person at some point before I buy them, but that might not be a possibility. I might spend all of my birthday money on them. WHY ARE CURTAINS SO FLIPPIN' EXPENSIVE?

I am painting the dining room walls this shade of grey. The bottom half of the dining room is white beadboard, so my hope is that the grey won't feel so dark. I love the grey and white combination.

I haven't decided on the wall decor, but here are some ideas or accents I'm open to incorporating somehow:

Our humble abode

So tomorrow we officially close on our house! We did the final walk-through with the realtor tonight, and I'm pumped. It will be so great to have our own space that we actually OWN. It's been 8ish years since I've lived in a house, so I can't wait to not have people that live above me and below me, people that play drums late at night or who get in fights outside our room. But I love the community here, and I have LOVED our apartment complex tremendously. It will be sad to leave the place that Patrick and I started our marriage in, but all seasons come to an end. So my hope is that the seasons will only get better from here!

In other news I'm going to bootcamp in the morning. Yes, bootcamp. A military style workout that starts at 6am and leaves you sore for a full 7 days. Oh man. It's amazing how I go in and out of work-out seasons. I'm so externally motivated that it takes a village to get me to do something active. But once I do it, I enjoy it...I just can't make myself do it alone. I hate breathing hard and sweating, but when I'm with friends I hardly notice the pain. So come on friends! Work out with me! Jk. I don't want to sacrifice fun connecting time with work-out time. Unless you're willing to do both. :)

So stay tuned for house and work-out updates (which I probably won't do because I don't know how to make either of those that interesting).

I'll leave you with a shot of our new house. It will be officially ours at 9am tomorrow morning. This is an old-ish picture, but you get the point. Its really beautiful!