House.

A lot has happened since I last wrote! The biggest thing? Aaron and I are in the process of buying a house! It was such a quick decision and sudden move, but we fell in love with the perfect house for us and we are so excited to move in on July 8th [praying that all goes as planned]. The inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, and should that go well, in a little over a month we will be homeowners! It is such an exciting feeling. Obviously, I will share a lot more about the house, but I'm going to wait just a bit to do that... and start out with just some inspiration pictures for our first floor I've found on Pinterest! 

First up: Inspiration for our kitchen / breakfast nook.

Both are found here via pinterest

I looove the spring green color against the white cabinets, stainless appliances, and wood floors. I also love how well black goes- our kitchen table and chairs are black. 

Next, color inspiration for our living room: 

Found here via pinterest

I absolutely love this color- it is Senora Gray by Benjamin Moore. This is pretty much the exact color I am looking for for our living room.

And, here is a lovely striped half bathroom. 

Found here via pinterest

Those are just a few of the inspiration photos I have pinned on my boards for this house. I can't wait to see some of my ideas come to life! 

Teal Bowl

Last Friday my friend Sarah took me to this place I had never been before, called Uncommon Objects, on South Congress. It was so crazy! Here is the description from their website:

Established in 1991 as a small antique collective, Uncommon Objects has matured over the years into the one-of-a-kind emporium of transcendent junk that you see before you.

Twenty hardworking antique sellers have been assembled under one roof to bring you this very genuine and sometimes quirky slice of American culture and history.

Uncommon Objects has been described as "your eccentric uncle's attic on steroids." And remember, this is no museum. This stuff is for sale.

As the ultimate "green" shopping experience, there is something to satisfy your nostalgic yearnings and peak your sentimental curiosities.

Needless to say we probably spent over an hour in there just inspecting every little thing they had. It was really interesting, and they had some good stuff. It definitely wasn't all thrift store prices, but most of the items weren't outrageous. They also have these bowls full of people's family photos they've collected from estate sales. Believe it or not, while we were in there an older woman supposedly looked down and saw herself in one of the pictures from when she was 6. I heard her call someone and tell them this over the phone. I have no reason to believe that she was lying. So creepy!

So here is what I bought: an old map (for a few diy projects I've wanted to do from pinterest), an old postcard that I gave to my friends, and this $6 brass bowl:

Lovely brass.

I loved the quatrefoil design in the sides, and I knew some bright paint would really bring it out. So a few coats of teal acrylic paint and one coat of sealant later, this is what I had.

It's now sitting on the little ledge when you walk in our door, as a catch all for things. It's currently holding some hardware that needs to be returned at Home Depot, and keys.

Fun and bright!

Wine cabinet from the Salvation Army

Once again, things have been really busy here in our household! I have all of my finals tomorrow, and Aaron finishes up school next Wednesday. We're both so looking forward to a few weeks of having time to spend together and with our friends. I've been studying for my finals for three days straight, and I'm about at the point where I can't do anything else, but wait and see how I do. I don't want to be overly confident, but I am sure that things will go fine tomorrow! It will definitely be a day of anxiousness and nerves, because I do have finals starting at 8 am and going until 7:30. I have 5 hours between two of them, so I am sure I will be a nervous wreck.

Anyway, I'm here to take a break and write about this wine cabinet that we got at the Salvation Army a few weekends back. We saw it the day we bought the chair, but weren't sold on it. The Salvation Army has a furniture price policy where every week it discounts by 10%, so the next week when we went back and it was still there, we got it at 20% off, for around $20.

It needed some cleaning though. It was so dirty and gross.

So I went to work cleaning it, then primed and painted it white. I distressed the edges using sandpaper, and got a pretty green knob at Hobby Lobby for about $1.50.

I love that it has a drawer we can store our wine bottle openers and such in. I lined the drawer with pretty paper.

I also used an empty frame I had lying around from Ikea and added fabric to it, and turned it over into a tray sort of thing. I put our wine glasses on the top.



And now it lives in our dining room! I think we need some more wine to fill it up :)

Chair Makeover Finished!

I'm so excited! This weekend I was able to finish my latest project- the living room chair!

Last weekend we found this chair at the Salvation Army, and it was the first thing I saw when I walked in. I knew that it had a great structure and look that I wanted, but just needed some paint and new fabric. So, that's what I did!

Here is the chair before--

It was only $14.99!

It was a bit difficult to get the upholstery off, because it was stapled in this tiny groove, so I had to pull out literally every. single. staple!



So it took a few days to do that, but finally I was able to prime it, give it several coats of white spray paint, and reupholster the cushion!

Doesn't the white really bring out the detail on the legs?

We went with the Kimono Gypsy fabric, and it looks great.

I'm so happy that I now have a fabulous, one of a kind chair that matches perfectly, and was under $40! Our chair hunt is officially off :)

Lovely cushions

I've been spending a lot of time out on our back porch recently, with the mild temperatures and great weather we've been having. We have a pretty private spot, with afternoon/evening shade so it is great for eating dinner outside or just studying or enjoying a cold beverage in the afternoon.

We have a nice patio set that I bought from Home Depot when I moved into my first apartment several years ago. It's not bad as far as comfort, but it could definitely use some more padding, especially for lengthy use, so I made some!

It was really simple and again, I didn't do any sewing. I am actually thrilled that I can rip the staples out of the fabric and throw it in the washing machine, since it is outdoor fabric.

This is the one I chose, from Waverly's brand new Modern Essentials line.

Isn't the color / print gorgeous?

The teal pillows were a clearance buy from Target last year.



IKEA shower bench turned shoe storage

This project was one of my favorite things. I am not sure HOW on earth I even got the idea, I just know that I was browsing the IKEA website and somehow happened upon this shower bench and decided I should paint it, make a cushion for it, and put it in our entryway to hold our ever growing pile of shoes by the door.

So that's what I did. And here's how.

I assembled it myself. That's right. I was pretty proud of that. It was terribly easy though.

So I gave it a coat of primer:

And then the next day, I gave it a coat of white paint. By the way, painting on a beautiful day is so therapeutic.

And then another:

And then I got to working on the cushion while it dried. I picked up a yard of fabric at Joann's, and this was the one that we both liked a lot and agreed on: a Waverly lattice print.

We also got two of these foam cushions:

The measurements of the pad had to be 15" wide and 32" long, so we were going to have to do some cutting. I put them both together (the 15" wide was perfect, so I just had to cut the length), measured, marked off where I should cut, and just used fabric scissors.

Then, I laid the fabric around, pulled tight, and wrapped it like a present. Don't tell anyone, but I didn't sew a cushion for this- no way. I staple gunned it....

The staple gun = my favorite ever way to do something you would normally have to sew, without having to sew, and making this extremely non-permanent. If I ever want to change the fabric, it will be sooo easy, and the original fabric can be used on something else!

Here is the finished product. Yes, there was a huge crease down the middle, because I am lazy about ironing fabric. Don't worry, because I ended up ironing it after I saw this horrible crease.

So all that was left to do was put the bench in the hallway, plop on the cushion, and fill with shoes!

I took of the pillows in the last photo because Aaron thinks that the embellishment I did to the one is "weird" and "ugly". Haha! The pillows my mom made me when I moved into my first apartment four years ago. I'm still thinking about the pillows... I don't know if the patterns are too much! What do you think?!?!



Recovered Ottomans: The After Pictures

Reasons why we love these so much more than our coffee table:

1. They can be easily pulled up to the couch to act as a foot rest

2. They are soft

3. They can be moved around however we want them

4. They double as extra seating

5. We can change the fabric whenever we want at a very low cost

6. The fabric we bought is "outdoor" which means liquids just roll off- in the instance we have any spills

7. They just make the room look bigger, more open, lighter, prettier!