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: Kitchen

I just realized that I haven't shared the kitchen since we moved in.  Well, that's because it looks pretty much the same.  We like the color  A LOT, so we are definitely going to keep it.  We like the color of the cabinets, and there really isn't much wall space.  We will do some little things in the future to make it more personal, but for now we are happy.  The kitchen is also very difficult to photograph because it is narrow and small.

Before:

 

And after:

I bought that fruit bowl at Wal Mart (it was brown) for $5 and spray painted it white.  We like the curtains above the sink (for now), so we will keep them.  The picture on our window sill is one we found underneath the refrigerator while cleaning.  We have no idea who she is so we named her Ava and her semi-permanent home is the kitchen window.

 

We now have our coffee pot, tea kettle, and spice rack over here.  Thankfully, we registered for all stainless steel and black appliances and it just so happens that they match very well :-)  We added some wine bottles that were extras from our friends' wedding.  They might be there for a while.

All we did over here was put that monogrammed grocery list on the side of the fridge.  I would REALLY like a print of lemons and limes or some sort of fruit over on that wall.  I am desperately trying to bring more "nature" into our home.  Still looking...

I found these at Big Lots for $3 each and loved the print.  I really like leaves and I really like canvas.  Plus, they were the first step in bringing nature inside.

I thought it would be a good idea to hang them in different directions, but I have changed them since.  They are both hung the same way.

They do look greener in real life.

And I bought this cute thing at TJ Maxx when shopping in Morgantown a while ago with my mom.  I pictured putting three daisies in it, but this seems to work for now.  They are leaves and berries from one of my bushes outside.

There you have it.  I have a few ideas to make the kitchen more personal, but will probably wait to tackle those.  For now, I am still working on bringing nature inside :-)