Our Home: The Bathroom

Happy Monday and Happy Tax Day! I hope you had a great weekend. We had a ton of fun with our family celebrating my sister's birthday. She's getting old... quarter of a century! :) Just kidding. Love you J!

Anyways, I thought I'd share with you a quick fix of our bathroom today. Just what you want to see on Monday morning right? :) Our house has one little bathroom and I can't wait until we have a place with two! Luckily we have different shower schedules, so it isn't too big of a space problem.

It's amazing what a difference a simple shower curtain can make. We got this camouflage-like shower curtain for our wedding. I really liked it but it's been four years, and as you can see by the lovely shade of yellow on the walls, it made the small room look even more yellow. By the way, this yellow color used to be the color of the kitchen too! Not my favorite. Since we are just renting, I am less than enthusiastic about painting the bathroom, so we are leaving it as is, yellow and all. Here's the before...

And here's the after. Much better, no? See how just having the gray pattern tones down the yellow? Makes it much more manageable. Plus, I do love the yellow/gray/white color story these days.

That's it! A quick and simple fix to change the whole look of our bathroom. How often do you switch up shower curtains? Have you made any quick (and cheap) fixes lately that make a huge difference?

Our Home: The Kitchen

I want to share with you guys a little tour of our kitchen today. I love the kitchen in our house, except for the fact that it is a little small. It actually has a lot more storage than our Arizona kitchen, but it's still a ways from my dream kitchen. It also works really well with all my aqua kitchenware. In any case, the kitchen works for what we need now and is the next stop on the house tour!

First, I did a quick update to de-clutter the kitchen window sill. Here's what it looked like before. Clutterville. Sure, I like all the pieces separately, but all together they were not working.

And here's the after. Much less stuff. Much more style. I love the cow creamer (from Target) and the vintage salt and pepper shakers Zach got me last Christmas.  The faux plants are from IKEA and the little metal buckets were from the $1 section at Target!

Here's the rest of the place. I really do love the white cabinets. They keep it light and clean. And I'm still diggin' my twelve dollar shelves. Such a great way to use that otherwise wasted space (and add lots of storage!).

One downside is that the laundry is also in the kitchen. But at least we have a washer and dryer and at least they are new and don't take up a lot of space!

Some items on my list that I'd still like to update:

- Make some no sew roman shades for the window
- Get a new rug with some color and pattern

I also painted the kitchen back in December - it used to be yellow ala our bathroom (more on that coming soon). The gray is much much better. Since we are renting, there's not much more I want to or really can do.

Do you like your kitchen? What's one thing you would change about your kitchen? What's your favorite part (I really like having the window to the back yard and the white cabinets!). Do tell!

Twelve Dolla Shelves

I love me some twelve dolla shelves. Especially since we are in a rental, or else I might have put a little more in to getting some longer-term more stylish shelves. But with these bad boys, it was like Bob Barker calling my name to come on down on the Price is Right because let me tell you, the price was right. 

Let's start with the little space where we put these up. There is an awkward little space in our dining room/kitchen/laundry room (yeah, it's all together up in there) that looked kind of like this. That's our living room to the left and our "laundry room" on the right (which is really just an upright washer/dryer combo right next to our fridge in the kitchen).

Straight on, our kitchen to the right.

And from the living room.

And from the dining room/kitchen. There. I think you've seen it from every angle possible.

Mostly, it's a cute little nook where we keep the Buster Boy's food and drink. Let me also explain that we don't have a pantry in our kitchen. Our kitchen is small and tiny and minuscule, and the only thing I really like about the kitchen is the white cabinets that I think somehow make it feel bigger. That and the window. Anyways, this little nook was basically dead space in our little house, and I wanted to fill it up. Especially since we are so desperate for some storage. Cue IKEA! 

Trusty IKEA always has a solution on the cheap. These shelves were $3/shelf plus $0.50/bracket. Don't worry, I'll do the math for you. That's twelve dollas!

I wanted a plain white finish, so I used some white primer I had from this project. After a couple coats, it was as good as white! The shelves were the perfect size for the little nook. I liked the staggered look, so I let the hubby do his thing to install them (with my helpful assistance of course). I like how they are off center and not perfectly spaced (well, we made sure they were level, but other than that...). We put them high enough up to leave room for our little DVD shelf underneath, which is the perfect spot to store Buster's leash, collar, and harness while not in use. It also doubles as our wine rack :).

I'm kind of in love with how it turned out. Not only does it give us more storage (and cute storage at that!) for some of our food stuff, it's colorful and cheery and I love just walking past it. Yup, I'm a dork like that. Don't things like that make you happy too? :) My lovely husband makes fun of me since this was supposed to be our sort-of pantry and mostly for food storage. But of course I couldn't fill it with ugly cans and boxes of food, so I put pretty things up there! Like one of my favorite pictures of us from my friend, Kim's, wedding. And this cool retro chevron canvas I painted. 

For Christmas, my mom got me these sweet vintage thermos' (thermosi?). They came in this red plaid bag and I love them! OK, so I haven't actually used either thermos yet, but they sure do look good up there.

The shelves were only $12, but I guess I did spend as much on these glass canisters (also from IKEA) so we could stylishly store our grains. $12 shelves, $12 storage.

And that, my friends, is a super cheap storage solution for you. Please tell me one of you walks past something in your house and smiles silly like I do when I walk past these shelves? No? Just me? OK then. :)

I Love Lamp.

Specifically, this lamp.

Isn't she pretty? So golden yellow and cheery. I must admit, I feel a little bit more like a grown up. I've never bought a nice, big, stylish lamp before. Seriously, every lamp we have in our house is either from IKEA or a hand me down from the 90s. Not stylish. 

I may have gone a little over my allowance this month, but getting this lamp makes our living room feel more complete, and that makes me happy. It's the little things during busy season.

At first, I bought a different shade. It was the same yellow color, but with a pattern that I loved. It looked great in the store when the light wasn't on...

...but once I brought it home and got it all lit up, it was not as pretty as I had pictured. Darker, and the white pattern didn't look as great as I thought it would.

What do you think? Yellow pattern? Or soft subtle white and wavy? I'm partial to the white now (obviously) but still think the yellow one is pretty too (just not all lit up). Have you guys purchased any nice grown up lamps lately? Or still rocking the IKEA lighting?

Our Home: Bedroom

As I promised last week, here's a little bit about our bedroom. Oooh la la. Not like that... come on! For some reason, in two out of the last three places we've lived (three different places in three years!) we've created a funky bedroom set up right when we move in and then don't get around to updating the layout until months and months later. Well, we are at about the six month mark and finally made the change. 

Before, our bed was the first thing we walked into when we came in the door. I had to walk right-left-left around the bed to get to my side. Not good flow at all. One of the reasons we had it that way was because that was the only full wall in the room that we could put our headboard against. The opposite wall has an off-centered window that was cramping my style.

I really don't like our dressers. Not one bit. Oh, IKEA. You get me every time with your cheap prices and cheaply made products. Anyways, back on point. We switched it up. A big old Flip. Flop. How did we remedy the off centered window on the other side of the room? We put a bird curtain on it of course!

We took the two green IKEA curtains from each window and combined them on one long curtain rod to cover most of the wall. It gives the perfect backdrop for our neutral headboard.

Since we never really used that window, I didn't mind covering it up and making it look like it didn't even exist at all. Not having as much light doesn't bother us either. You know... since we only go in there to sleep. I love how it turned out. The best part is that it totally works a lot better for the flow of the room. Now husband can keep all his clothes on the floor by the window instead of right in front of the door where I used to step on them. :)

I've got big plans for the blank wall across from the bed and for the dresser. It involves a scarf and a frame. Still working on putting the two together. Right now the dresser is kind of a holding place for all my frames. Since we don't have much display storage in our house, the long dresser is the spot until we get another solution (which might be soon!). I also added some sheer IKEA curtains over the remaining naked window since the green curtains got moved behind the headboard. 

It's so dramatic. I love the added color too. More of the green and less of the blue on one wall that came with the place. I like the blue (it's the same color out in our living room) but it doesn't really go with the whole green color scheme we have going on. 

Any re-arranging in your world lately? I love how it gives you the feeling of a fresh start. Something new and exciting. At least for a little while. 

Our Home: The Living Room

If my Grandma was reading this, she would be so happy right now. She lives down in Portland and doesn't get the chance to come visit very much (just wait til you're in your 80s!), but she loves seeing photos of where we live. So, here goes, Gram! I'm finally getting around to sharing some pictures. It's our little tiny house, so it might go quick, but I'm going to start with the living room (probably the room we use the most). 

Last weekend we got the spring winter new year cleaning bug and decided to switch things up. Since we moved in to our little house last August, we've had our big sectional sofa broken up because our living room is pretty small. Our sofa's L shape goes the wrong way and we didn't think there was a way to fit it together and still have enough space to walk across the room. 

Here's a little trip around the room to show how we had it before, starting with the view from the kitchen.

While I didn't really mind having the sectional broken up (at least we still had a working couch), it had been starting to bug me recently. I missed our huge comfy couch! And not having an arm on one side of the couch was just weird to me. So, we finally got our butts in gear and switched it up! 

First, we tried putting the wrong-facing L along the picture frame wall. That gave us about 6 inches of space to get to through to the hallway. Not going to work.

After that, we decided to try and keep the main couch how it was and just move it across the window  (towards the picture frame wall), then bring the other half directly over and reconnect the two. It was like  reuniting long lost loves. Two peas in a pod. Twins separated at birth. And when they reconnected, it was glorious! 

Now we have our huge sectional back together and I. Am. Loving. It. It just feels complete. Plus, now we have a cute little reading nook (that we will probably never use, but I still like it).

Don't mind the cords... we had to rearrange how our TV (and all the other electronic junk) was hooked up. 

Oh, also don't mind the nice black smoke stains on our fireplace... we had a little trouble getting our fireplace to work properly, but now it works fine!

We still have about 3-3 1/2 feet of walking space between the end of the chaise and the fireplace. Just enough to have a little walkway. 

So that's our little living room. It's cozy and now it feels more complete. 

Have you done any re-arranging lately? Got the new-year cleaning bug like us? There's more where this came from too... we re-arranged our bedroom too! Coming soon...