Holiday Home Tour 2015

Hello everyone! I hope you're enjoying the month of December so far. It's only day six, and I already feel like it's passing by too quickly. This is the time of year that I look forward to all year long. I'm sad when it ends, and then summer comes and melts us all away with the heat. It's actually warmer today, about 80 degrees, but it should be back to the mid-sixties in a few days which to me is the best weather possible!

I'm lacking on recipes because we've still been eating a lot of random meals. The other night I fixed my spaghetti and meatball recipe (found here) and the night before we had chicken pot pie soup, I also have a recipe for that. I've been working on Christmas decor around the house, so I thought I would share a little home tour with you. I'm not completely finished with the house, but this post will focus on my family room and dining room. Nothing too fancy really! I follow so many talented bloggers on Instagram, and honestly sometimes the beauty of their posts gets me down. I feel inadequate knowing my home will never look as beautiful as theirs. I don't have the money to buy all the decor items, and I don't have the skills of an interior stylist. But I'm here to show you that you can still decorate your home on a budget, and you don't have to go overboard. Comparison can be a horrible thing. Instead I want to focus on how cozy and beautiful I've made my house for my family to enjoy, and I hope it brings you some enjoyment as well!

Fall Decor and Mini DIY

We bought our house last year, and moved in right before Thanksgiving. I didn't decorate at all. The most I did was pull out the tiny fake Christmas tree we had and I slapped on some ornaments, nothing fancy. This year I'm definitely having so much fun decorating the house! I kept meaning to post this sooner, but I kept buying more stuff to decorate with. Now that's it's been at least a week since I've changed the decor, I figured it's time to share what I've done. Warning! Lots of pictures to follow!  I won't write a whole lot about everything, it's all pretty self explanatory. My biggest source of fall decor was Michael's craft store and reusing items I've had for years. Hope you enjoy!

Kallax Unit for Hidden Storage

I have the Ikea Ektorp sectional in my living room, and end tables would be great except my toddler loves to climb. She loves to climb so much I can't leave the room for long or I'm afraid I'll hear a big thud. She's only 1-1/2, so she's still learning about boundaries. And gravity.

But I digress, the point of this post is to show you how we've turned our sofa table into functional storage. Because the Ektorp is fairly tall, a standard size sofa table would have been pretty short. My husband and I wanted a table that would come up as high as the back of the sectional, and fit the length as well. Looking at furniture on Ikea's website, with the sectionals measurements in mind, I realized the Kallax (formerly Expedit, which we have three of) are nice and tall but also thin. It would be the perfect "table" for behind our couch, the only downside was the 8-unit Kallax wasn't long enough. But if we took the 8-unit piece and combined it with the 4-unit Kallax the length fit the couch perfectly. We did this months ago, and it's worked great since. I don't know why it took me a few months to realize that we had 12 cubbies of storage, completely empty, sitting behind the couch. We have hardwood floor, and the bottom of the Kallax units have felt pads which makes them easy to slide in and out from behind the couch.

Easy DIY Crib Canopy

Recently I painted my daughters nursery and I've been working on the decor since then. When we bought the house her room was a bright blue, and I tried for seven months to like it but ended up painting it a dark gray. With the darker walls they felt a little bare, especially above her crib. I loved the name banner I put above her crib, but the walls still needed something special! When I was a little girl I had a canopy above my bed, just the kind you get on a hoop and it's called mosquito netting and meant to drape around the bed. It wasn't fancy, but it was really cool when I was little. I wanted to do a canopy for Isla so naturally I went on Pinterest. I started seeing that people were using bed crowns and shelves to make theirs, so I decided to give it a shot. This project cost $35 and took about an hour to complete. For not a lot of time or money I think it makes a major statement in her room.

DIY Farmhouse Tabletop

I am so proud of how our new dining room table turned out. I love all things farmhouse decor, and I wanted a farmhouse table for our dining room. The downside was definitely the cost. Instead of buying a farmhouse table I thought why not build a top for an existing table that would make it look farmhouse inspired. I've seen it all over Pinterest so it was really easy to get inspiration. I do plan on sharing as many steps as I can to help you build your table top. A lot of what I saw weren't actually tutorials. Some blogs had a couple of progress pictures but most didn't specify the size or type of wood used, what screws they used, and how to assemble the table top. This project took a lot of time because we had to do most of it in stages, but it's completely worth the time. My husband and I really love our table and it's such a great focal point in our dining room.

Kallax Door Hack

This is an extremely easy and affordable way to give your Expedit/Kallax more of a custom look. I realized while shopping at Ikea that one of the Kallax door inserts was the same price as buying one of their seagrass baskets. I thought instead of having four baskets that also having a couple of doors would look great. 

Painting a Bench with Chalk Style Paint

When my husband and I were building the table top for our dining room table, we knew we wanted a relaxed feel. I didn't want to buy six of the same chairs instead I wanted four chairs and a bench. Benches are great for children because they can be wiped down, and you can line up three kids!  It also helps save space since you can push the bench in when it isn't in use and get around the dining room easily. Everything I do has to be on a budget. Of course it would be so fun to go on over to Restoration Hardware or West Elm and pick out whatever bench I love, but realistically I just can't justify spending so much on furniture. I was looking at Ikea and realized all the benches were either too wide or too low. Next I checked out Target online and I found a great solid oak bench for under $70! The only downside was the finish. The legs were stained black, and the seat was stained an orange hue. I didn't love that look, but that's where homemade chalk-style paint comes in!

12 Frame Gallery Wall for $25

This is an easy way to style a wall if you're on a budget. My dining room really only has one wall that can make an impact. One wall is a big window with curtains, and the one across leads into the dining room and is very small. The wall behind the table is quite large and I knew I wanted a gallery wall. The only problem was even inexpensive frames from Ikea in the size I wanted are $12 each, and I wanted 12 frames so that's easily $144 just for frames alone. 

I found these Malma mirrors for $1.99 each at Ikea, and I saw on a couple of other blogs people printed pictures and used Mod Podge or other glues to adhere the pictures to the mirrors. I love the look of the chunky white frame and the small picture, plus I saved a lot of money because I printed six pictures on one piece of paper. You can use regular printer paper, but I have matte photo paper that is great for printing on. I chose 12 of my favorite pictures from tea parties that I've hosted, and I printed them in grayscale. I cut one picture until the size was perfect, then used that to trace and cut out the remaining 11 pictures. I didn't secure the pictures with anything because there is a gap between the frame and the mirror, so I sort of shoved the edges of the pictures in that gap and they stay put perfectly. As great as the idea is for this gallery wall, the way I hung the frames is really what is wonderful. 

DIY Crate Centerpiece

I wanted a centerpiece for my table where I could display some greenery. Vases with flowers are so beautiful when you have fresh flowers, but that doesn't happen all the time. And I didn't want a big bouquet of faux flowers because I really like the natural look of plants. I also didn't want to mess with real plants indoors because I can barely take care of my garden in the front and back yard! I had a crate from six years ago that I got when I ordered organic tomatoes online. I kept it and it was usually used to store cleaning products or whatever we had extra of at the time. It was just a plain crate, all I did was stain it with the same dark espresso stain I used on the dining room table, then went over it with the same gray stain. It absorbed the stain really well and I like the weathered look I achieved. I'll break it down here in steps.

Dining Room Reveal

When we originally viewed our house, the previous owners had the dining room painted tan with a dark brown accent wall. The crown molding was an off white color with little paint splatters on it. I saw so much potential and the thought of having a formal dining room was a definite plus. I say now that that room is finished, but I know I'm never really finished with a room. I'm so excited to share the changes we've made, so even though things will probably change in the future I'm happy with it right now.

This is what the dining room looked like for the past seven months. The table was tiny, walls were bare, and the only item with any style were the curtains. Here is what we have for now:

House Update!

I haven't updated much about the house, so I thought I would share some before and after pictures of a few rooms. If you have no idea what I'm talking about you can read a bit more about the house here. Honestly I feel like everything is taking forever. Dramatic, I know. I was so motivated right before we moved in, and right after we moved in. My husband and I would stay up late painting, cleaning, and unpacking. Then he got busy with work and school, and I kind of lost my motivation there for a while.

So far we've managed to paint the kitchen, dining room, living room, entryway, hallway, master bedroom, and laundry room. And I've pretty much, on my own, repainted the crown molding and baseboards as well as touched up the white molding around things like closet doors and doors. We also used a product to restore the hardwood floors. We did not refinish them; it would have cost too much, and we didn't want to take on that big of a project. So we basically cleaned the floors really well, stripping off any previous residue. Then we used microfiber bonnets on a couple of sponge mops to apply the product. The results were amazing and the floors are holding up really well. 

I'll go ahead and get into some of the before and after pictures. I, stupidly, forgot to take a before of every room before we changed anything. So some of the pictures were taken after painting had already begun.

Apartment Redesign: Updating the Bathroom

The longer my husband and I have lived in our current apartment, three years now, the more things I notice that really need fixing. It's hard living in an apartment with ugly doorknobs, bad paint, or hideous carpet. Luckily being a renter doesn't mean you can't make some changes of your own.

Doorknobs can certainly be swapped out, just not the front door! We went and bought a new doorknob with a lock for our bedroom door when we moved in. I'm home alone 3-4 days a week, and it makes me feel safer. When we move out, we'll just swap it with the original knob. There are also little cosmetic things you can change like the knobs on cabinets, the paint (if your complex allows it), new light switch covers, and putting down a rug to cover ugly carpet. The closer we get to baby's arrival, the more I want to change. 

The Nursery

Good news! I can finally start planning the nursery now that I know what we're having . . .

DIY: How to Hide a Thermostat

Normally thermostats aren't a big concern, in our apartment the thermostat was awkwardly placed off center to the middle of the wall. To top it off, it's crooked. We only have a gas heater, no air conditioning, which means we only use the heat a few months out of the year. The rest of the year we have a crooked off white thermostat in the middle of the couch distracting from any art. Originally I had hung this poster from Ikea off center of the couch because I couldn't hang it over the thermostat.