A Purge & A Plan

This past Saturday was our church's annual yard sale where all the money goes towards our missions contribution. I haven't participated in years past because the timing just hasn't worked out but I was happy to finally be a part of the festivities and get rid of lots of stuff.

I was especially excited to clean out our guest room (if you can even call it that anymore) by donating the full size bed, green leather arm chair and purging about half my closet. Now that the room is cleared out, I am making room for the desk that currently sits in our living room for Taylor's studying/work space. The trick to truly using the room for studying or work will be to disguise the dog creates. I have searched for ideas on Pinterest, Google, Apartment Therapy and HGTV and although most ideas are cute or relatively practical, most are for small dogs and our crates are huge.

For inspiration, I loved sifting through Apartment Therapy's ideas on small work spaces (transformed from closets!!) and this room transformation in particular caught my eye. My plan is to be as thrify as possible, using items we already have around the house. Since some purchases were necessary I picked up a table top with adjustable legs and a shelving unit yesterday at IKEA. Wish me luck as I attempt to assemble everything without losing my sanity!

// Image sources: 1. Apartment Therapy, 2. Apartment Therapy, 3. Apartment Therapy //

Coveting Ikea

I've had an Ikea gift card burning a hole in my wallet since Christmas and I'm excited to finally head to Atlanta this week [for meetings]- which gives me the best excuse to make a trip to Ikealand! Here are a few items I plan to pick up for the house:

Our living room is in some desperate need of curtains. Ever since we got a new couch (light tan sectional -score from Craigslist!) I've been needing to bring some darker hues into the room as our walls are light too. I would love to use industrial piping for the curtain rods instead of something traditional and more expensive too and I plan to round out the dark tones on the couch through accent pillows and this throw blanket.

I am slowly making progress in our dining room by hanging art (pictures coming soon) and keeping a steady flow of flowers on the table. My plan is to swap out the light for something more fun like the pendant lamp above!

Another slow process has been the transformation of our guestroom/office/dog shelter. Just kidding about the dog shelter...but seriously with two crates it's beginning to feel like one. In my dream world we would have a mud room to designate for the crates, but that is just not the case and if I want the room to function beyond storing the dogs, it's time to move the guest bed out (no one stays there besides my sisters) and put our work desks in here. The room will need more storage and this simple shelf should do the trick.

I'm hoping to make my gift card money go as far as possible so I will have to save bigger purchases (like this and this) for another time :)

P.S. Can you tell I'm obsessed with neutrals and terrified of color?!

just add coffee

A while back I shared about my plans for our kitchen, the brief process of painting and now here is just a small peek at one piece of the make over.

I pride myself in the fact that I have converted Taylor into a total coffee lover since getting married and now he's better at brewing than I am. We installed some open shelving and since this space is mainly used by Taylor prepare my daily cup of joe, I thought why not devote the shelves to mugs, tea cups and the like.

My in-laws gave us the witty sign as a Christmas gift and it always makes me smirk thinking about what Taylor has to deal with in the morning (me, Mrs. Grumpy Pants). While sipping on my cup of coffee, I thought I would start a little wish lists of things I would like to add to our sweet & simple kitchen:

Wood + glass storage containers

How do we not own a French press?

I love these mugs

A single serve blender for all the fruit smoothies we want to make

xoxo

dream home {bedroom}

I haven't been daydreaming about our new bedroom as much as I've been anticipating our living room, dining room, kitchen, guest room and bathroom. But I'm never one to pass up an opportunity to gather design inspiration on this little blog. One of the biggest adjustments we will have to face is the size of our bedroom. If you remember from my house tour, our bedroom is massive and offers plenty of space for a king size bed, night stands, two dressers and a seating area. Our new bedroom will probably be half the size.

Although there will be less furniture, there isn't too much I want to change for the overall look of our new bedroom. The most important decision to make for our little retreat is the wall color. Even though the living room will be gray, I like the look in bedrooms as well. Perhaps we will try a hue between a gray and a blue.

The next decision will be layout. What layout do you prefer for a bedroom- the bed facing windows or facing the entrance of the room? With two sets of windows we can still use our current drapes from Ikea (similar ones here) and spruce them up with rope accents. I also love the idea of homemade rope bowls for jewelry, keys or keepsakes.

I also love the thought of a soft, furry rug as soon as my feet hit the floor. In college my friend Erin had one of Ikea's sheepskin rugs by RENS. So fluffy between your toes!

 And if there's room for a woven basket with extra pillows and blankets, I'm there!

// Photo sources: 1. from Design*Sponge, 2. from Design*Sponge, 3. from Design*Sponge, 4. from Design*Sponge, 5. from Design*Sponge. 6. via Pinterest, 7. from Design*Sponge. 8. from Ikea, 9. via un petit baroque //

a house tour : part two

Part of why we chose to live here was because Taylor can walk to work. And my drive to the office is only 5 minutes, so we're saving lots of cash on gas. One cool thing I read about Normaltown was that it was the first area of Athens to be wired for electricity in 1896.

Let's continue on our tour, shall we.

Walk In Through Closet: 

Our house has two closests and one of them is actually just a small room you walk through to get to the kitchen...Practical? No. Do boys care about a practical closet? No. I meant to hang long curtains in front of Tay's clothes, but it just never happened. I did buy a curtain rod though.

Kitchen:

Our kitchen is located towards the back of the house and although it has almost no cabinet space, it does have a pretty impressive pantry. It also doesn't have a dishwasher (hence why my loving husband is washing all our dishes by hand). We bought the little island from Ikea to store our pots and pans and to have a place to sit for meals. It's a quirky room, but it has served us well.

Office/Laundry Room:

Taylor likes to joke that this is both our office (he works at the desk and I work on our laundry). But this has been a nice room for extra storage. It's a hodge-podge of furniture- most of which I'm looking forward to getting rid of or revamping. That back door leads to our porch and would be the perfect spot for a hammock.

Bathroom:

Last but not least, our bathroom. Located in the front left corner of the bathroom is an uncovered water heater. I started to build a cover for it, but never finished the project. I'm finding my common theme of unfinished projects to be somewhat depressing. However, I am determined to make projects happen in our new house :)

So that's our home! If moving within the next two months works out, I'm sure I'll be sharing lots of design inspiration.

P.S. I found a pretty cool blog about Athens too...

a house tour

On Friday I mentioned sharing an update on what's been going on in my life, so here it goes. We're moving! Well, we're trying to move. As much as Tay and I have enjoyed our first home together, we really want to get a dog and that's just not possible in the house we're in now.

With that being said- we're currently praying for a sublet by the end of March. Before we pack up and head out, I thought I would give you a little tour! Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. We're renters.
2. We're poor & young.
3. Some of our furniture were gifts. Some were leftovers from our college days.
4. The wall colors were not our choice because [see #1].
5. We have more space than we can fill because [see #2].
6. The set up of our house is not conventional. At all.
7. The house is actually split into 3 different units.

I read online that the house was built in 1935, but I'm not sure when the leasing company  (or landlord) decided to split the house into three units. Anyways, let's go on a tour!

Living Room:

This is the first room  you enter from the front door. It's a great size, but since it's only heated by that little gas heater under the window, we haven't spent much time in this room during the colder months.

Dining Room:

The living room and dining room are connected by pocket doors. The couple who lived here before us actually used this room as their bedroom. Recognize that book shelf? As much as I love this room, we really only enjoy it when we have others over for dinner.

Bedroom:

How do I put this? Our bedroom is HUGE. And it's in the center of the house (i.e., no privacy). You enter from the dining room into our bedroom through pocket doors again. Since the house doesn't have a set bedroom, we figured we might as well pick the biggest room with the bay windows!

Check back tomorrow for part two!

// Top photo via Center City //