It's A Celebration!

This title is inspired by my sister's boyfriend.  You will only get it if you are me or my sister.  Sorry if that's not you.

I am FINALLY writing on my blog.  My summer has officially started.  Even though the last day of school was a week ago, today is the first official day that I have had absolutely nothing to do.  Coincidentally, I spent it doing tons of stuff.  Mostly outside work.  But I'm okay with that.  

Today is also the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of living in our home.  Yep, we closed on this house on June 15, 2011.  So, to celebrate, we spent most of the day working outside, we had a great lunch and dinner at home, and tonight we will probably watch non-stop episodes of Weeds.  

And to celebrate, I am going to make this Post Number One of a few posts to update you on our lives.  Three posts will be house-related and one about us.  Because my summer mind is thinking "house work house work house work".  I took tons of recent pictures of our house so I will try to split it up into three posts so you aren't looking at 700 pictures at once and so I can get a break from uploading them.  

I figured I would post in 3 sections: downstairs, upstairs, and outside.  Outside has seen the biggest transformation, but we have done some awesome work everywhere :-)

Starting with the living room... Here is what my living room looked like last time you saw it:

And here it is now:

Now too bad, but not too great, either.  This room has been kind of neglected due to "inspiration" issues.  I am terrified of spending money on things if I don't know if I will like them.  Anywho--I got a sewing machine for Christmas (Josh's gma's old one) and I am in love!  Josh's mom taught me how to use it and I can't stop.  That little yellow and white chevron pillow is my first thing.  Don't think it will stay in this room, but whatever.  The curtains are the real deal, though.  I got the fabric online for MUCH less than I would have in a fabric store and I got to work.  I won't bore you with those details, but I will say I'm in love.  Also--the lamp is new.  It's from Target.

The view from the dining room.

How SWEET are these?!  I wanted something cool and funky, but not too in-your-face.

The view from the foyer...

...speaking of foyer... I did some adjusting in there as well.  I have actually never shown you our foyer.  Silly me.  I have been wanting a console table there for convenience sake (as well as pretty-ness).  So when my mom was visiting a few months ago, she offered to pick up the tab and off we went.  We found it at Target...

The view from the living room.

This sweet table is made of REAL wood and it was only 119 bucks!

From left to right: the white candlestick is from a local fabric store; the rattan cup, Marshalls; the blue bowl for keys, Anthropologie; the wooden tray, Target; the white ceramic flower, Michael's; the two glass vases, Goodwill; the planter, IKEA; the beautiful lamp, Target.

I love this palm plant.  It creates oxygen.  That's sweet.  And that lamp even makes Josh drool.

Anyway--enough of that table.  Back to the living room.  Remember this unused and boring corner with my new Target chair?

Well, it's still kind of boring, but MUCH improved:

The sweet curvy lamp is from *surprise* Target.  I made the little pillow from leftover fabric from the curtains.  The white pillow is Walmart.  And the little table is from *surprise again* Target. 

I piled some cool books on the bottom.  The top has another sweet ceramic tea light flower and an awesome flower, which was a gift from a student.  Oh--and a picture frame that still has the models in it.  haha.

The dining room looked like this last time:

And like this now:

Pretty much untouched.  We are still working on some ideas for this room, but they take money, so they have been put on the back burner.  We did expand the table with the leaves company and then were too lazy to put them back.  I did bring some beautiful hydrangeas in from the yard, though:

 

The kitchen last looked like this:

And now:

My favorite ever.  I painted an old chunky frame white and added this awesome lemon photograph that I bought on art.com.

Oh!  And remember the pantry?  I hated it...

Well, look!

I painted it the same color as the kitchen.  It looks soooo much better.  I hung some pots (which I have not planted anything in yet) and added a white frame with free art (from an old wall calendar).  

And see that little white key ring on the wall?  It's actually a small ceramic sea horse.  How precious.

Picture of my niece and an aloe vera plant, which I planted in a dessert dish because I did not have a pot.

 There you go.  A VERY long post about my downstairs.  Upstairs coming up!

Before and Not-So-After: Dining Room

Post #2 in the Before and Not-So-After series.  Our dining room is connected to the living room and kitchen, it serves as a corner to the two.  It is the same yellow as the living room, but for some reason it always looks brighter in the dining room.  We were SO excited to even have a dining room!  We have only ever had an eat in kitchen or no room for a table at all.  TV stands were our dining room table for some time.  So when we moved in, we were excited to make our dining room look like a dining room.  Here is a picture of the first day we moved in:

What we like about the dining room:

1. The light fixture.  It matches the living room light fixture.  I also love the fact that it's not brass.
2. The crown molding matches everywhere in the house, including the chair rail in the dining room.
3. The openness... even though it's pretty small, it opens to the living room and kitchen through large entryways and no doors.
4. The openness continues with a sliding glass door to the deck with a view of our back yard

What we dont like:

1. It's very small.  No big table for us!
2. That's it.

Here is our Not-So-After/Current Dining Room:

Whoops... a little crooked.

The furniture is from my step-dad's step-mom.  She gave us the table and the china cabinet. We are really lucky that we haven't had to buy dining room furniture in the last few years.  But we are ready to have our own furniture now!

Goals:

#1. Paint.  We LOVE the look of grey dining rooms.  And it's something that we both agree on.  And it matches the color pallet that we chose for the downstairs.  We have lots of inspiration photos for grey dining rooms, including:

We really love the grey colors and the contrast of stark white against cool grey with dark wood furniture. I like most of those photos, but we want to go for a much simpler and less elaborate look than what you just saw.

#2.  Buy a new table.  Dark wood.  VERY simple.  Clean lines, pointed corners, rectangle

#3.  Get rid of china cabinet (sad, because step-step-grandma gave it to us) and install white floating shelves like these pics below.  This is where we would have some china, some glasses, some art, and some vases and brightly colored decorations.  Kind of like these:

The dining room will probably be painted before any furniture is purchased.  That's okay with us.  We are going to try to take our time and buy stuff when we can afford it.  Plus, it's not a huge priority because we already have a table to eat on. 

On a sad note, I start school on Monday.  This is going to be a super duper busy year full of making money, spending money, going to grad school, working a few extra jobs (more on that later) and balancing a home/social life.  YIKES.