Our Home, November 2012
I haven’t posted any pictures of what our entire house looks like since we moved in and it was empty. I thought after over a year and a half of living here, it was time for another house tour. I always love seeing how homes and their decor evolve over time. I took these pictures in November, but with Thanksgiving, finals, Christmas break and all that the holiday season entails, I’m just now getting this post together. Our house has been tweaked a little in several rooms since these were taken though, so this is not 100% what it looks like right now.
Our House Tour — November 2012
Foyer Before:
This is our foyer now:
The aesthetic of this room is one of my favorites in our house. I like that it has a good mix of traditional, contemporary, and cottage/farmhouse. I love that it has pops of color, but the color isn’t overwhelming (like in some other rooms in our house). I love how light-filled this room is. Because of the amount of sunlight this room gets, it has the most plants of any room in our house (although almost every room in our house has at least one plant — only the bedroom and laundry room don’t). It is also the most multi-purpose space in the house — foyer/entry, dining room, and Drew’s office.
Curtains are from Pottery Barn Teen (looks like they are on sale right now!), plant/console table we built ourselves, dining room table is from the Nashville flea market, dining chairs are from Drew’s mom (originally belonged to a family friend), rug is from Target, baskets on the console table shelves are from Target, milk glass on console table, small white cabinet and desk chair are thrifted, Drew’s desk is from Craigslist, black lamp was given to us by Drew’s mom, Self-Portrait woodcut is by me, other art are framed engagement photos taken ourselves, and the glass jar candles on the table and console are from our wedding.
Things on our to-do list for this room: sand and paint the little white cabinet (I like it white, but the paint is old and chipped/peeling), sand and either stain Drew’s desk a darker wood tone or paint it (I’m not a big fan of blonde wood), hang art above Drew’s desk, and create a little entryway/mudroom area right inside the door (on the side with Drew’s desk) with a little bench, a mirror, and maybe some coat hooks or something.
Looking from the foyer into the living room before:
Looking from the foyer into the living room now:
Living room before:
Living room now:
Couch and loveseat are from Compass Furniture in New Orleans, television/media cabinet is from Target (can’t find a link for the same one), black coffee table was thrifted years ago (it used to be in my bedroom in my parent’s house), white bookcase is from IKEA, painting was a wedding gift from my sister and her husband (by New Orleans artist Adam Hall), gallery wall photos were taken by me, curtains I made out of drop-cloths, crocheted blanket was made by my mother and I (directions here), most of the couch pillows were made by my mother, “Give Thanks” pillow from here, light blue pedestal side table from Nadeau in New Orleans (love that place!), cream and white damask throw, wire basket (filled with yarn on bookshelf), and wooden @ symbol from TJ Maxx, floor lamp is from Lowe’s, silver table lamp is from Compass Furniture (scored it for $15 with a Living Social Deal!), 8×10 area rug from Lowe’s (scored it for $15!), glass candy dish and basket (on the floor at the end of the loveseat) were thrifted, basket (with magazines in it behind the french doors) was a wedding gift, painting on the bookshelf was a wedding gift (painted my Drew’s mom’s good friend and my 8th grade teacher!), globe was mine from when I was little bought for me by my Mamaw, and the chalkboard message board was from our wedding (originally from here).
Looking down the hallway from the living room before: (This hallway, right off the side of the living room, runs all the way down the house. The kitchen is the first door on the right, my office/studio is the second door and then at the end of the hallway is the laundry room. At the laundry room, the hallway turns to the right with the bathroom straight ahead and our bedroom to the left.)
The hallway now:
Hallway bookcases are from IKEA, little cabinet of drawers was thrifted on a vacation in Savannah, GA, LOVE painting was a bridal shower gift from my friend Tonya, streetcar cross-stitch and ROWLAND sign (made out of photos of tools) were gifts from Drew’s mom (both made by her), small country scene painting was a gift from Drew’s mom (painted by her friend/my 8th grade teacher), the rest of the pictures are either wedding photos (by Stephanie of Stephanie’s Photography), small paintings my me, or random things like framed fortune cookies, a painted piece of wood (not sure why that’s up there actually), or prints collected over time (a couple are from our honeymoon).
On our to-do list for the hallway: we actually bought paint last summer to paint this room and still haven’t done it (a light grey color, to still keep it neutral, but lighten it up and break up all the tan in this house) so we need to get on that, we’ve thought about extending the frame gallery down the wall on both sides because we have a lot of art to hang, but still haven’t decided if we’ll do that for sure or not, and I really want to find a pretty hanging light fixture for in here (maybe thrifted and refashioned).
The kitchen before:
Our kitchen now:
Kitchen rug is by Dash and Albert, checked hand towels are from Target, green utensil holder is actually a plant pot from Hobby Lobby, glass pasta jars, ceramic apple and stool are from TJ Maxx, artwork above the sink is from here, cookbook holder was a wedding gift from Target, baking station cabinet is from Nadeau in New Orleans, small table on the other wall was thrifted.
On our to-do list for the kitchen: curtains! This room is seriously lacking in that department. I want to make some roman shades as soon as I find the right fabric. On the wall with the small wooden table, I would like to find or make a cabinet of some sort that has better storage than the current situation. I would love to have a cabinet with an open shelf or two to display my cookbooks and pretty kitchen things. We are also thinking about making some sort of a hanging spice rack to go on the wall between the pantry and the windows. We don’t have a lot of storage in here and we need a better way to access our spices (right now they are piled up on one tiny shelf inside a cabinet and they are overflowing and hard to get to).
My office/studio before:
My office/studio now:
My desk is from IKEA, desk chair is from World Market, white bookcase is from IKEA, baskets are from Target, tufted pink chair is from World Market (on sale right now), rug is from Target, curtains I made from Heather Bailey’s Pineapple Brocade fabric, white pedestal side table is from TJ Maxx, easel is from Hobby Lobby (I stained it darker), pink curvy glass lamp is from Home Goods (got it on vacation years ago in Charleston, SC), standing lamp is from Target, table printer is on is thrifted, shelf brackets/wood shelves from Lowe’s, big white ornate frame is thrifted, tiered cake stand was made out of thrifted vintage plates for our wedding, elephant print from this Etsy shop, Live Simply print from this Etsy shop, green elephant piggy bank is from Urban Outfitters (on sale now), jewelry stand was a Christmas gift from my little sisters years ago (was from Urban Outfitters), and all the artwork hanging everywhere is by me.
On our to-do list for my office/art studio: goodness what isn’t on my to-do list! This room is a wreak! Since this is my studio, where things get sewn/painted, etc. it is a catch-all for incomplete projects. There isn’t enough storage, so I don’t have places to put everything (which is why things are piled up in the corners!), so tackling better storage/organization is on my to-do list. The curtain rod needs to be hung higher and I need three curtain panels instead of two. I want different curtains anyway, these ones are too colorful/busy for me in this room. (I actually just made new curtains for this room this week that I need to share soon! I also had Drew move the curtain rod up) I would also like to put nice wooden blinds in this room instead of the cheapo plastic ones that are in here. We hung the shelves on that wall right after we moved in, before we really knew what we needed in this room. They aren’t anchored into studs (the walls in this house are crazy), so I’m afraid to put too much weight on them (I’m scared my sewing machine will topple at any minute! ) and they aren’t really very functional. I’m thinking about taking them down and DIYing a whole wall of built-in bookcases along that nook area. I actually already hung a different painting in here (that fits the scale of the room better) above the white bookcase on the other wall. I had to hang that clothesline up to hang up paintings that I was working on for one of my painting classes, so now that can be taken down. I do want to hang up more of my artwork in here (in a more professional looking way), but the walls in this house are crazy and I can’t get any nails into the wall by my reading chair, so I need to come up with a different way to hang things there. Right now this room just looks like an explosion of mess and color, so I’d like to just work on everything about it. (I also took this picture right as I was heading into finals, so excuse a little of the chaos for that reason alone)
Laundry Room before:
Laundry Room now:
The curtains in our laundry room are the same ones that used to hang in my freshman dorm room (originally from Wal-Mart), the laundry basket I’ve had forever (I think it came from Wal-Mart when I was in middle school), the ironing board and cover are from Target, ladder from Lowe’s, vacuum cleaner my mom bought for me several years ago (originally from Sears), my dad bought the washer and dryer for me (they were from a friend from our hometown that used to live in New Orleans –she was moving from New Orleans and didn’t need to take them with her), the deep freezer is from Lowe’s, the rug and the wire baskets on the shelves are from TJ Maxx, and the shelving Drew and I bought from Lowe’s.
On our to-do list for the laundry room: I’m just so happy that our apartment has a laundry room! The shelves were the best thing we ever did in here, they add so much extra storage room for everything — lightbulbs, toilet paper, paper towels, tools, iron, candles, batteries, laundry stuff, cleaning products, etc. Even though they look messy, they are actually organized pretty well. I do think we could pare down our cleaning products a bit though so they didn’t take up so much room. This room is tight, so eventually I might need to add some other forms of organization for things stacked in the floor — like leftover wood scraps and paint cans. The bi-fold doors in here need to go back on my office closet (they got broken when we had guests staying in there). I would also maybe like to add some cheery artwork to the walls in here. Other than that, this room is functional as is.
Bathroom before:
Bathroom now:
Shower curtain from Target, creme-colored rug from World Market, coral-colored bath mat, flower painting, towel rack, and magazine rack from TJ Maxx, and still-life painting and houses plant pot from Drew’s mom.
On our to-do list for this room: everything!? We haven’t really done much in here. I bought the magazine rack to cover up a drywall patch, but it needs to be organized a little better. I want different artwork, but haven’t figured out what to do in here (its a bathroom, so it gets a lot of moisture that would ruin most artwork). This room overall really has no direction. I need to figure out the artwork, then go from there. My favorite thing about it right now is the plants. They give so much life to this room (quite literally, but they also add a cozy factor that makes it feel like a real room rather than just a functional space).
Our Bedroom before:
Our Bedroom now:
Headboard made by us from an old door, floral pillowcases made by my mom, sheets from Target, coverlet/bedspread and lamps from TJ Maxx, dresser from Drew’s childhood bedroom, curtains from the pergola at our wedding (originally from Target), rug from Target and stitchery made by me (in the hallway coming into our bedroom).
On our to-do list for this room: sand/stain/refinish Drew’s dresser (I want it all back to the original wood). FIND NIGHTSTANDS! Nightstands have been on our list for forever! Since this room is small and they have to fit underneath the overhang from the headboard, they have to be a really specific size and I haven’t found the right ones yet. Hopefully soon! I would like different artwork on the wall with our engagement photo on it (the wall with the guitar leaning against it), perhaps some botanical or watercolor prints or sketches. I would also like different lamps, but since these are perfectly functional, I probably won’t get new ones unless they are a super great deal. Overall, I think this room just feels a little blah. It just needs a lot of little tweaks.
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It is so neat to look back and see how far our house has come in the last year and a half! We’ve still got work to do though!
Spring Planting
One of the first things that I did after we moved into our apartment last summer was plant the window box outside the kitchen window. I grew flowers and herbs in it all summer and then took the herbs out and moved them inside during the winter. Although, it never actually got all that cold here this winter, they possibly could have survived out there all year long. Anyway, I still have my basil growing in a small planter on the breakfast table in the kitchen, so I decided for now just to plant some colorful flowers in my window box this spring. We are thinking about adding another window box to the other kitchen window to put herbs in.
It has been warm here in New Orleans for a while now and today seemed like the perfect day to do a little planting. I just wish we had more of a yard to actually be able to plant more things! We’ve thought about building a raised garden bed in the front yard of our apartment to grow vegetables in, but aren’t sure if we want to spend the money building it for our temporary housing here. We might though. I’ll keep you posted if we do. For now, flowers will have to suffice.
Marigolds, Vinca, Petunias, and Dahlias. So colorful and pretty! Oh and how cute is my little watering can?! I picked that little guy up from the value aisle at Target the other day for $2.50. It is the perfect size for watering the window box and the other indoor plants I have. I love spring! :)
Any of you doing any planting lately? Enjoying the warmer weather?
Oh and in case you noticed, that is just paint all over my hands. I was mural painting this morning!
Wedding Registries
I had already started our wedding registries online a while ago, but today Drew and I went into the stores to look around and see what else we wanted to add to our lists and to check things out in person. I’m excited about all the things on our list that could one day potentially be ours, but most of all, I’m super in love with the dishes that I picked out:
From the first time I saw those floral plates in the store months ago, I fell in love. I picked out the other white dishes online, so I wanted to go into the store, put them together and see how they looked together. I LOVE the way they look paired together! The colored plates give just enough color and interest and the white plates keep them simple and sophisticated. The coupe style and the shape and size of the plates are perfect together as well!
I wanted to go with white dishes and colored accent plates, that way over time I can collect different styles/colors of accent plates that I can change out for the occasion or holiday season, while still keeping the neutral white main dishes. I love the wide, deep bowls in this collection as well and the classy silverware collection. The name of the silverware is “Louisiana.” How perfect!
You can find more of the floral dishes collection, here, more of the white dishes collection, here, and more of the silverware collection, here.
More of our wedding registry items can be found at Dillard’s, Macy’s, and Target.
Lamp Refashion
We have this lamp that used to be in Drew’s studio apartment. Now that we are in our new apartment, it lives in our foyer.
Drew’s mom gave it to us, but I’m not sure whose it was before that. It is old and it looks like it too. That crinkled shade just shows its age. Definitely not the decor look that I’m going for in our house. I don’t like the shade or the bronzey-gold color of the base. However, I do like the height of it and I like the shape of the curvy metal base.
Therefore I decided it was time to give it a slight makeover.
I took off the shade, dusted off the base and taped up the electrical part on the top.
Then this entered the picture:
I also taped up a little bit of the electrical cord as well, so that it wouldn’t get painted. This is Rustoleum’s Metallic Metal Spraypaint in Oil Rubbed Bronze.
Then I took it outside and let Drew do the spraying. One coat, thirty minutes later, a slight touch up, tape off and then we ended up with this:
Doesn’t it already look so much better! I love oil rubbed bronze Spraypaint! It looks like a dark charcoal black, but then when light shines on it, it gives off this reddish/bronze sheen. So pretty!
Then I added a new linen-y textured shade from Target, and voila! A whole new lamp!
See, isn’t the oil rubbed bronze so pretty?
It looks so much more modern and updated. I also love that the color and style compliment the living room curtains and rod quite well:
And when the light isn’t shining on the base it looks like this:
I love it so much more!
What do you think? Have you done any home refashioning lately?
End of Summer
Even though the summer weather won’t end here for another month or longer, school starts tomorrow, ushering the end of the summer. It seems like the summer just started. We just moved into our house and I just planted those flowers in my windowbox.
But time must have passed, because those tiny little flowers that I planted at the beginning of the summer, the first week we were in our apartment, now reach out and up and over the box. They’ve gotten so big!
I’m excited for school tomorrow, but I’m dreading the stressful workload that I know will be in my near future. The summer has been a nice time to forget about all that. But I’m hoping that I’m more prepared to handle it better this year. I feel so much better about starting this school year than I have been for the last two. This summer and this apartment have been good for me. I’m really, really happy in our little apartment here. I feel so much more settled in and at home–something I never felt in my little dorm rooms, even if they were all cute and cozy. I knew that they were only temporary, where as this apartment is ours for a while. Although we’ve only been here a couple months, it already feels like home and it has been nice to be able to put pride into its appearance and make it a home together.
I’m in a really happy place in life. I’m very proud of that. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might know that last year was a rough year for me. Figuring things out, working though tough classes, career paths, lots of school related stress and a general feeling of instability. I’m happy that this summer has been a much needed break from that and our apartment has provided me with the stability that I’d been looking for. I think that stability will be a good foundation for a much less stressful school year this year. I feel so much more ready and prepared for it at least.
This is Drew’s last year of college. It seems so strange that we started dating halfway through high school and now we are almost done with college! How time flies! It is my junior year and my last year as an unmarried woman! This time next year, I will be starting my last year of college and I will be married! How crazy!
I just thank God for all the wonderful opportunities that he has opened in my life and how they continue to flourish. I’m so thankful for the peace and happiness that I feel at this point in my life and pray that I can maintain that feeling throughout even the most stressful times of this school year. Hopefully I can continue to remember to enjoy life in the moment and not wish it away because of the stress that comes along with it. Here’s to an abundantly blessed beginning to a wonderful school year. :)
We’ve been in our apartment for three months now and we decided it was about time that we got to work making our living room feel a little more cozy and relaxing. School starts in just a few days and we will most certainly need that relaxing space to retreat to after a long, stressful school day/week. Before this past week, our living room hadn’t changed much at all from the last time that I posted about it, when we got our couch, here. Then when we came home from our trip back to our hometown, we brought back with us our newly recovered couch pillows, here. That little change must have stirred something inside us to complete some more updates.
We started with more seating. Our living room is much bigger than we remembered it was when we picked out our couch last spring. (we picked it out before we even moved into the apartment–so we were just going on our memory from the original walk through of the house) We like our couch, but it is the only seating we had in there. If we invited friends over for movie nights or anything, we didn’t have anywhere for them to sit. I mean, even just Drew and I on the couch together watching a movie was a little cramped. We originally thought about getting a chair or two, but after searching several times over the summer for different chairs, we couldn’t find anything that we thought would go well with our couch. After thinking it over, we decided that our living room was big enough that we might as well just get the matching love-seat to our couch. So that is what we did.
However, we soon realized that in order for both the couch and the love-seat to work in the space, we would have to do a little rearranging. Because they were a little too close and cramped in the space that they were currently in.
Not to mention that we needed to get some organization going on the other part of the living room anyway:
So we did a little switcheroo and ended up with a layout that we liked a whole lot better anyway.
Did you notice that our love-seat came with even more of those ugly diamond weave throw pillows that I very much dislike?
We ended up moving the TV underneath the windows and Drew did a better job of organizing all the electronics this time. We obviously also need a bigger and more efficient TV cabinet to hold all those things in. Instead of that $10 white cabinet that I got at a flea market last summer and intended to sand and re-paint and use to hold art supplies last year. Obviously that never happened. But moving on.
Since the night was still young, we decided to take a little shopping trip to see if we could find a new light for the space (instead of the one in the top photo covered in hanging Mardi Gras beads from Drew’s old apartment) and a curtain rod long enough to stretch over all three windows. The ones above are what we ended up with–both from Lowe’s. We also ended up with two of these:
Two 6×9 foot canvas drop cloths. I’d heard of people making curtains out of drop cloths before and it had been on my list of projects to try in our apartment for a while. I hadn’t quite gotten the inspiration to complete the project until we starting switching things around in the living room. Does that ever happen to you too? One little change and you are inspired to change everything? Anyway, for the living room, I wanted 4 curtain panels to go in between each of the three windows, so I figured this would be the best room to try these out in since each drop cloth was only $12.85. Four curtain panels for our huge windows at only $25–I’m in!
I popped those guys in the washer and dryer and ended up with these nice little beauties.
Since I needed 4 panels, it worked out where all I would have to do is cut each drop cloth in half. I found the best way to do this was just to lay each of them out in the floor, measure out the middle, and cut right down the line.
Although, while doing this, I did realize that my drop cloths were only 69 inches wide on the shorter side instead of the 72 inches that they should have been. I didn’t measure them before I washed them, but since this fabric was made for painting/technical uses and not intended for making things out of, I’d imagine that it was not pre-washed or pre-shrunk. So by washing, my cloths shrunk a few inches. If you decide to make your own drop cloth drapes, definitely make sure that you wash your fabric before you start. (Honestly, a good rule of thumb is to wash any fabric before using it to make anything. That way you never have to worry about shrinkage issues after putting in all your time and hard work.)
I also didn’t realize until after washing my drop cloths, that they had seams right down the middle of the 9 ft length. :( If I hadn’t already washed them and gotten excited about making my drapes, I would have probably returned them and not made them, since no one really wants a big ugly seam right through the middle of all their curtains. Especially such a wonky seam as this one. (the two pieces that they had sewn together were slightly different sizes–hence one is relatively flat here and the other is super gathered.) However, I decided to continue on and see how they would turn out in the end.
Since one of my drop cloths was a little wonky, I did have to do a little trimming to the sides of the top half to get it to line up a little more evenly. During this process, I ended up cutting off all the outside edge hems that came on the drop cloths, so that all my sides would have even and matching seams. This obviously made more work for myself, but in the end, I’m confident that it made them look better.
Before this post, you didn’t expect to be seeing this did you? Especially since sewing something was on my 20 Before Twenty list all year and I never got around to it. Even though this is my first sewing project on this sewing machine and the first one that I’ve completed in a while, sewing isn’t new to me. My mom is an amazing seamstress and I grew up sewing various things. I used to sew much more when I was younger. However, this is my first sewing project that I attempted 100% on my own. (I’ve made many things by myself before, but my mom was always close by to check to make sure I was doing it right. Or more-so to tell me I was doing it wrong and how I should be doing it instead. This time around she was a little more than 630 miles away.)
So I was more than surprised to find that I didn’t run into a single problem the entire time I was working on these curtains. (It seems like with sewing there is always some problem or another.) That was, after I figured out how to get the tension to work, since for some reason it was messed up, even though the knob was on the correct number and after I figured out how to get it to wind the bobbin correctly. The above site was a very welcome one. That was like my fourth bobbin winding attempt. (My mom’s sewing machine that I always used winds them much differently.)
I ended up with a huge pile of thread on the floor from the previous three bobbin winding attempts that I had to unwind. :( But after I got that problem solved, the rest was smooth sailing. :)
Although, I think I spent more time ironing and pressing seams that I did actually sewing. But any good seamstress can tell you that the secret to good sewing is in the ironing. It keeps everything neat and in place and ensures that your stitches are exactly where they need to be and not messed up from wrinkles. In the end, it also makes your product look much more professional since everything lays nice and flat. Plus, if you do it well enough, you don’t have to pin everything. And I for one, would much rather iron than mess with pinning everything.
So I ironed over each seam for the sides of my panels, sewed them down, ironed them over again and then sewed them again. (If you wanted you could double over the seams the first time and iron them, then just stitch them once for the same effect, but since my material was thick and I wanted to make sure to avoid any potential problems, I just stuck to my routine.) Since this fabric is thicker than most normal fabrics, I would suggest using a slightly longer stitch length. I used a 3 on my machine and that worked out well.
That way I ended up with nice, neat inside seams with no raw edges.
And equally crisp and clean outside edges.
Then I repeated the process 7 more times for each side of my four panels.
Once I got to this point, I was a very happy lady. It took quite a while to get all the sides of my 4 panels completed with all the constant ironing. Not to mention that August is the hottest month of the year in New Orleans and the iron was heating up my house like nobody’s business.
Then I pressed over 3 and 1/2 inches to sew to create the tube to slide the curtain rod inside. This end I left raw because I didn’t cut the edges off the 6 ft section of my drop cloths and the ends were already sewn up where they wouldn’t fray. Also because my this point, I was tired and didn’t want the extra work. Plus, it was going to be on the backside of the very top of the curtains where no one could see. I went with just a tube for the curtain tops because 1. it was easier and I was tired and 2. because I wanted a little more of a subtle gathered effect that this provides. If you are doing this you could also make tabs for the tops, you could make back tab curtains if you didn’t want the tabs to show, or if you want to, you could just get rings with clips on them for your curtain rod and just clip them up (I love these clipped up ones from Young House Love).
Once I finished the top hem, I got my first look at what they would look like hanging. It was kind-of love at first sight.
While I had it up there, I also pinned up the bottom to see how far up I needed to hem them. It ended up being just about 8 inches, which was right above our tall baseboards, so I didn’t cut the bottom off and just hemmed them the way that I did the top. If you are feeling really fancy, you can try a blind hem, to make the seam across the bottom less noticeable, but it is really more work than it is worth. No one is going to be paying that much attention to the seam on the bottom of your curtains.
Let’s get to the finished product already. Once I finished all the top and bottom hems on the other three panels and got them up there (and ended up moving the curtain rod supports and tightening them), this is what I was left with:
LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. They make the room look 1000 times more polished, cozy and make it feel bigger.
I absolutely love the soft, billowy, subtle gathers in them. Even though they are made of thick fabric, the light does still shine through them somewhat, which I think is really pretty. I didn’t make them to block sunlight–I just made them to look pretty.
I also think the color and texture is perfect as well.
I think the strong verticals of the drapery panels are the perfect balance to the repeated horizontal lines of the wooden blinds. Plus I like the mixture of textures and the mixture of soft and hard lines.
They are a lot more distinct at nighttime when the light isn’t shining through them. It is easier here to see the contrast with the blinds as well. In the end, each of my panels ended up being about 32 inches wide. I didn’t intend for them to close, I just want them to add interest to the gaps between the windows, however, I think they are actually wide enough that if they were all pulled out flat, they would actually cover the windows. Since we have blinds, there really isn’t any reason to do that though.
Although, as you can see here, the seam that I mentioned before that went through the middle of the drop cloths is pretty noticeable right down the middle of each curtain panel. :( I would prefer that they not have those seams, but right now I love them enough not to care. It is more noticeable when the light is shining through them, but other than that it isn’t too bad. Most people aren’t going to inspect them close enough to notice or care. Plus as inexpensive as they were, I can’t really complain.
We were so impressed by how our living room was starting to look, that we even hopped right in the car to search for a new TV stand to make the living room look even nicer.
We looked at different furniture stores, but in the end liked this one from Target the best. Plus it was a little less expensive and on sale. It is so much better in both appearance and functionality.
Sorry for all the different lighting in all the pictures. I took them at various times during the day. This one shows the morning light coming through the windows.
Eventually I also might put something behind the glass on the TV cabinet doors to hide the DVDs and electronic equipment in there. Maybe fabric? It is a little too much black all in that area.
Even though we have another couch and bigger furniture in our living room, it somehow feels bigger. Maybe because we are using all the space better now? It most definitely feels more cozy, comfortable and relaxing. :)
View in from the foyer. We definitely need to add art on the walls next. :) Eventually, we also plan to find end tables for the ends of the couch, add another small lamp on the opposite side of the room as the current lamp, and possibly upgrade our tiny table to a coffee table or tufted ottoman that fits the scale of the room better. But we’ll get to those eventually.
For now, we are enjoying the progress we’ve made on it so far. :)
Trip Home
Goodness, the last two weeks in my hometown flew by! It was so nice to be back in the country, to see some of my friends from high school and talk about wedding plans and visit with my family. It was a nice break from work and it was actually kind-of relaxing to be back in my house in the country with no internet. But I was also oh-so busy! I barely had a spare moment.
I was home during the county fair, so it was nice to walk around, eat fair food, and watch the demo derby. I also helped my mom out with a craft fair booth for her bow business in one of the local towns around my hometown.
I met a wedding cake baker with yummy cakes to sample and passed out many of mine and Drew’s business cards while I was there as well! If you would like to order one of my mom’s bows or other products, send me an e-mail or you can visit her website, here. (We are still working on her online store, so you might have to e-mail her to order.)
I did lots of wedding planning and shopping while I was home and also went back to visit the winery where we are having the wedding to get better ideas for decoration and layout. (more wedding shopping from my trip in this post)
We celebrated my brother’s birthday while I was home, ate lots of food, got many more engagement congratulations at church on Sunday (since everyone had seen our announcement in the paper), visited with family, ate at all the local restaurants that we miss when in New Orleans, shopped, did wedding stuff, and relaxed and watched several movies. Drew and I both got haircuts, I went to the dentist, the doctor and the chiropractor (I pulled a muscle in my lower back), went to a strength training exercise class that my friend Tonya teaches (that was before and totally unrelated to my back injury), and also went to a wedding while I was home.
It was definitely a busy trip. It is so nice to be home and to be in the hills and the country again, but it is also nice to be back in New Orleans and in our apartment and have our suitcases all unpacked as well. There are definitely traces of our trip home in our apartment though:
Our fruit bowl is full of tomatoes from my parent’s garden.
The table is piled high with cucumbers from their garden as well.
The counter is covered with jars of freshly canned tomatoes and salsa from my older sister and her garden.
Our couch is much softer with the addition of our newly re-covered couch pillows by my mom, the lovely seamstress.
We got our lovely table here with no problems fitting into the car at all!
I love it! It is perfect for our foyer to function as a large desk for Drew and also as a dining table to seat at least 6 or so if we have company over. The only thing that I don’t like about it is:
It got scratched either being put into the car or while being lifted out of the car. However, with a little wood oil it should be fine. That is one of the reasons that I wanted a rustic/farmhouse table–so that if it did get scratched up over time, it would just look well worn and not completely ruined.
I’m excited to be back in our house and to get back to work on home DIY projects before school starts in a few weeks! Stay tuned for some house updates sometime soon! :)
Weekend in Nashville
I hope you all have had fabulous weekends! Mine has been busy!
I flew into Nashville last week to visit my older sister and my nieces. My nieces and I have been playing with lots of dolls (Barbies, Polly Pockets, Lalaloopsies and various other stuffed animals — to be exact) and having tea parties.
We went to the huge Nashville flea market and I bought a pretty, handmade, wooden, farmhouse type table for our foyer to use as Drew’s desk/larger dining room table if we have guests over. I love it! I can’t wait to see it in our house! (I’m a little worried about how we are going to fit it in Drew’s car to get it home though. The legs come off with bolts and I’m just hoping the top won’t be too big to fit in the back.)
This weekend my mom and my younger sisters came down as well. We did lots and lots of shopping! For clothes and shoes and house goods and back-to-school things. My mom even looked at new cars. The main goal of our weekend though was wedding shopping!
I tried on a wedding dress here in Nashville during spring break that I really loved. I’ve tried on others since then, but none that I liked as much as this one. I really wanted my mom and sisters to see it, so we made sure to stop by and try it on again. Which, speaking of places to try on dresses in the Nashville area, if you are around these parts and are looking for wedding dresses, you should totally stop by The White Room. All the people that work there are so nice and they have beautiful dresses. Anyway, I tried it on again and didn’t want to get out of it! It is the perfect color — a soft, antique, light champagne/off-white/almond/vanilla color with the most delicate lace and the prettiest subtle sparkle and shimmer. The best part is— that it is MINE! We ordered it!!!
Since we ordered it, they did allow us to take pictures of me in the gown, but no one had brought our cameras because we didn’t expect to be ordering it then. I did get a few on my phone, but they don’t really do the dress justice, so I’m weary of posting them. Here is a little sneak peek:
I’m getting more and more excited about the wedding the more things that we get marked off of our wedding to-do list. It is making the whole thing a little less stressful and a little more real. Ordering the dress wasn’t the only thing that we accomplished on the list this weekend either! We also bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses!
This picture definitely doesn’t do the bridesmaids’ fabric justice either. It is a creamy/gray linen fabric with a lovely texture. I’m so excited to see the dresses once they are done and paired with bright colored flower bouquets! I can’t wait for the wedding!!!
It is getting closer! We’ve got the date set, the venue booked, the photographer booked, we’ve talked to the caterer, we’ve ordered the dress, bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses—we are definitely getting closer! I’m excited to be getting down to the fun little creative details now that we have most of the big stuff out of the way!
If you’d like a better idea of what my overall vision/inspiration is for the wedding, check out my wedding board on Pinterest!
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