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It started with curtains
Before we moved into the new house, we knew we would need new bedroom furniture. Matt didn’t want to buy anything while we were still in the townhouse, since we had no clue what our new bedroom space would look like. We ended up getting my old bedroom set from my mom and have had that for a few years now. It was a decent size in the townhouse but we figured it would be too small once we moved.
We’ve been in the new house for over a year and the bedroom just doesn’t fit. The furniture is too small and the room as a whole was feeling kind of blah. I told Matt the time was coming for a makeover. I will hopefully have a little money from my grandmother and I told Matt part of that was going to redoing our bedroom! Well, I’m still waiting to see how much money I might have but the bedroom makeover is under way. It all started with curtains.
I ran to Home Goods at lunch one day looking for a few more baskets for my closet. I hadn’t planned to buy new curtains but while I was there I decided to see what they had. I figured finding 6 curtain panels, in the right size, at Home Goods was probably impossible so I was SHOCKED when I found 3 pairs. That I LOVED! Needless to say the curtains came home with me. We got the curtains hung and I was in love! They were so light and airy and made the room feel much more cozy. Of course, now the bedding didn’t match. I found a set at Stein Mart I liked and mom was able to get me a discount. With new bedding and curtains, the room was coming together. I’d decided I wasn’t crazy about the pics I had over the bed though. Not that that was a necessity at this point but I had causally started looking.
The other day I ran to a junk store by my office. It was recently purchased and the new owners have taken it upon themselves to start sprucing the place up. When I first started going, it was a total hole! Now it’s almost like a real store. Anyway, while I was in there the other day I saw a painting when I walked in. I glanced at it and kept moving. As I was headed back to the front I noticed someone carrying it around. I started talking to her and she ended up giving it back to me. Whoops. I really loved the frame but was a little disappointed the “painting” was only a print. I ended up buying it with thoughts of removing the print and painting something myself. I went as far as to find all the paint supplies I needed on Amazon.
I got the picture home and waited for Matt’s reaction. He was very “meh” about the whole thing. While he was playing golf on Sat morning I propped the new pic up above the bed and immediately decided it was perfect! I hung it on Sunday and it really adds to the room. The pics are kind of hard to get a good feel but so far everything is coming together beautifully! Now we just need the big stuff, like new furniture!
If you are interested in the bedside tables, you can find that post here.
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Falcor?
Yesterday I bought my first decorative piece for the new bookshelf in our den. I ran to Marshall’s at lunch in hopes of finding something to get me started. I had seen a cute Owl a few months ago at TJ Maxx, and I am still kicking myself for not buying it, but I thought Marshall’s might have something similar. No such luck on the owl. What I did find was Falcor, you know the dragon dog from The Neverending Story. When I first saw it I kind of chuckled to myself. Then I checked out the price, $16.99. The price wasn’t bad, actually it was less than I thought it would be. I put it back on the shelf and continued browsing. A few minutes later I came back to Falcor and decided he needed to come home with me. Now Falcor, or as a friend said “it’s a luck dragon”, is living on our bookshelf. This is the first piece of many that will adorn this space. Hopefully this will inspire me to get it decorated.
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Houston, we have a bookcase!
One week later and our new bookcase is complete! I like it! I think I did well picking one that would fill the space. It’s stylish and modern yet has a ton of storage space. It’s not quite as study as I would like but Matt is going to brace it to the wall. Normally I wouldn’t care but Julio has already been climbing all over it so I feel like a brace is necessary.
I’m looking forward to all the decorating I can now do since I have more space. Woo hoo!
~k
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Christmas decor
Here are a few pics of our holiday decorations so far.
Our Tree
The Mantel with my Nutcrackers
I am now collecting Nutcrackers. I need more!
Wreaths for the windows
I think I really need to do all 4 windows. Mom said she would pick up 2 additional wreaths if I wanted.
I have a few printables sitting around plus a few nutcrackers that I printed on old book pages. I saw the idea on Etsy and feel in love with them so I ran to Goodwill a week or so ago to find used books. I didn’t really find what I was looking for but it works for now.
~k
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Guest bathroom – a sort of makeover
Over the weekend I was apparently super productive, okay not really but from the pics it looks like I was. 😉 A few weeks ago I decided I wanted a new shower curtain for the guest bathroom. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what color I want to paint the guest bathroom so I decided a new shower curtain might help. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the one I had, but I just wasn’t really digging it anymore.
Matt and I were at Target a week or so ago and I decided to browse the shower curtains. I pretty much knew I was coming home with one but I was surprised at the assortment they had. The one I originally had my eye on just didn’t compare to a few others I found. I finally decided on a tealish blue one with geometric print. I really really like it. I feel like it really brightens up the bathroom. I plan to keep the brown rug but I am going to replace the decorative towels (shhh don’t tell Matt). Then I need to paint. And then I will accessorize. So basically it’s like half done. 🙂
Before 
After ~k
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From drab to FAB!
I mentioned that Matt and I went to Southpoint on Saturday. After lunch we headed towards the mall part, it’s kind of an indoor outdoor mall, but I wanted to stop by Anthropolgie on the way in. It’s super pricey and I never even look at the clothes but I do like to look at the random housewares. As I was browsing I noticed 2 big shelves full of knobs. Oh heck yeah! There’s a desk in our foyer I’ve been planning to refinish but I wanted to find new knobs.
Anyway I probably stood there looking at all the knobs for about 10 minutes. I asked Matt about a couple but he wasn’t very helpful. Then he noticed there were a few buckets of clearance knobs. These knobs were all 3.00 a piece instead of 8.00 – 10.00 for the regular ones. Don’t get me wrong 8-10 bucks a knob isn’t bad but for 3.00 a piece I could get 4 knobs for the price of two and don’tcha know that’s exactly what I did. 🙂 I found 2 sets I really liked but I couldn’t choose so I bought both.
Thankfully I am a procrastinator and I didn’t want to paint my desk last weekend because it was too hot. Well this weekend was amazing and a bit cooler so Sunday morning
afternoonI started working on the desk. First I sanded the top and sides with my mouse sander. Then I grabbed some course grit sand paper and began working on the legs. Legs are such a pain when they are spindley. Since I was going to paint the desk I knew I didn’t have to do a great job with the sanding. I just needed to knock the varnish off.I spent about 45 minutes sanding down my desk before I decided it was good. I picked out a bright blue paint so I wanted to make the piece look distressed and old. As I started painting on the top I found if I did a light enough coat I could almost dry brush the paint on. This was kind of giving me the effect I wanted so I continued. As the paint dried I touched up a few spots here and there but over all I think it turned out pretty good and I didn’t have to use any sandpaper to the finished paint job. 🙂
Before:
After:
~k -
Aww we’re growing up!
On Saturday Matt and I went to Mebane to the outlet mall. We found a few items but nothing great so we stopped at Southpoint Mall in Durham. I really wanted to go to Crate and Barrel and look around. I ended up finding a great bookshelf for the living room. I’ve been on the hunt for a new one for the past couple of weeks but I couldn’t seem to find the right size for the right price.
As we were perusing C&B I found a great “ladder” type shelf which is kind of what I was looking for and the price was great, for C&B. 🙂 I mentioned to Matt I liked it and we kept walking. We were about to leave the store when he asked if there was anything I wanted, the shelf of course. He said to find someone to check us out. WOO HOO! Thankfully we were in the Q so the shelf fit just fine. 🙂
That night Matt put together our new shelf and I must say I love Love LOVE it! I finally have a place to put stuff. You see before Matt I actually had decorations and what not sitting around. When I moved to his house there wasn’t much space for my awesomeness so I’ve had things tucked away for a while. As soon as it was up I immediately ran downstairs to grab some books. Then I went upstairs to grab a few other items. Before I knew it it was almost full. I just need 2 small plate holders and a pic of Matt and I for a frame and I think I will be good for a little while. {He told me I couldn’t buy anything for it.} Such a decorating bah humbug that Matt is. hehe
Before – the UGLY ass CD/DVD holder, which will no longer live in the den. It is being banished to somewhere that is not in the house!
After – Awesomeness that actually looks like a real adult house. 😉
~k
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It’s like a new room
Only it’s not. Over the weekend Matt and I FINALLY painted our bedroom! WOOO HOOO! This was the last “room” that needed to be painted before new carpet. We started Sunday afternoon with the expectation it would take us 2 days. I mean we even went to Lowe’s and bought a ladder.
Anyway once we got started, the paint flew on the walls and before we knew it we already had the 2 larger walls done. Two coats done. At this point I think it was probably only about 3pm and we didn’t start till after 1. With that we moved the furniture around again and started on the other 2 walls. Matt taped and I started painting the trim. You see, we’ve figured out the secret to nice lines, is a thin coat of white (or your base paint) on the moldings. Give it a few minutes, or half an hour, and begin painting. Before we knew it we were done with the whole room and it wasn’t even time for dinner. We’ve definitely gotten better and quicker. 😉
By 7pm the room was back to normal, all the paint stuff was put away and Matt was grilling dinner. We couldn’t believe just how quickly the painting had gone. But man was it nice to know we would have Monday free.
*You can’t really see the color but it’s the same as our spare room, which apparently I never blogged. 😉
As we were putting the room back in order I made Matt put our “ugly” chest up against the wall a different way which puts it behind the door and man oh man does the room feel different for me. You see the “ugly” chest had been pushed up against my bedside table for forever! When I moved in we ended up putting all my furniture in our guest room. That left Matt’s room with a bed, one bedside table, ugly chest and a TV stand and TV. Of course I hated this arrangement so we bought some bedside tables from Walmart and my mom gave us my old bedroom set, like from when I was a kid. Now our bedroom has a light colored bed and ugly chest along with black chest of drawers, dresser and beside tables. This is really not ideal and we will be getting new furniture shortly after we get new carpet.
I also decided it was time to change out the prints above the bed. You can see the originals here. I have to say this is one of the cheapest and easiest projects I’ve done. For the cost of 4 frames and couple of pieces of scrapbook paper you can make art. And then change it should you paint the room, move to a different place, relocate the pics. Whatever! It’s simple.
So that is kind of what we did over the holiday weekend. We actually got a lot done. 🙂
~k
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Our weekend – in pics
Okay so I really have no inspiration right now so you get videos and pics! 😉 But in my defense we did a lot this weekend and I think pics are really the less boring way to get through this.
As I mentioned we bought a new patio set and I love it! It is just what we needed. The deck isn’t that big so we didn’t need a really big set. In fact I don’t think we really even needed 4 chairs, hence we bought 2 (see Friday’s post for pics.)
Then on Saturday we painted our guest room, finally! I feel like this was one pain after the other. First, I’m an idiot and got the wrong color. Oopsy. Thankfully it is a color I absolutely LOVE! It’s our downstairs color called Tempered Allspice by Valspar. I had planned to paint this room our all over color, Mesa something I think. Then we ran out of paint about halfway through the second coat. Luckily we had 2 more cans downstairs. Unluckily, we noticed the old can of paint seemed to be just a touch lighter. Grrr! The only thing we can think of is the first coat had primer in it but the second didn’t. I didn’t think that would affect the color but clearly I was wrong so after 2 coats I was done. Well Matt is totally anal and decided by the time we ran to Lowe’s to get another little can with primer he could just repaint the whole room. I told him I did not like this idea and I wasn’t helping. And no I don’t feel bad. We could have gone over the edges later. Anyway here is the almost finished product. I just need to change the bed skirt and hang curtains, which I have.
On Sunday I planted some begonia’s out front. We have this weird little strip between the driveway and the porch so I decided it needed a little color. I think they look great. Now I just need them to live. 🙂
And a cute pic of the daredevil himself. This is where I found him when I came inside last night. And no, this is NOT where he should be!
Happy Tuesday!
~k
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The last one
Monthiversary that is. We are finally to month 11 and wouldn’t you know it’s on Friday the 13th. Matt and I decided to make this one a little extra special since we will be in NYC next month so I popped open a bottle of bubbly (a bottle we received as a wedding gift) to go with our Five Guys. That’s right, we are keeping it classy over here. 😉
Once I got home Matt and I ran to Lowe’s to pick up some more paint and to buy a new patio set. Thank you AMEX! We had some more cash back so we decided to buy a new table and chairs. It didn’t hurt that I almost died the other day when I sat in one of the old chairs. The bottom literally fell out. Oopsy. I love the cushions we got too. They are reversible and very bright, and not to mention cheap.
I should also mention Julio decided to see if he could fly tonight. Yeah, he decided to jump off the deck. He seems to be fine but I had to chase his little ass all the way to the end of the buildings. Needless to say he got spanked and he won’t be going out, even on the deck, without his harness from now on. Crazy cat!
Happy 11th monthiversary Matte! You are the best husband a girl could have and I am thankful each day I found you. Even when times are tough you are amazing and I love you more each day!
~k
