Pining for Dining

About a month and a half ago while my husband and I were waiting for the house to close I decided we really needed a dining room table! I had been looking online and at several stores. Then I realized that I didn't really want to spend $800 on a table, so I started looking on Craigslist. Once I spotted the ad for a dining room table and six chairs for $120 I was pumped! I clicked on the listing to check out the table and saw that it was nice and seemed to be in good shape. So I sent a message to the seller to see if it was still available. She told me that someone was going to pick it up that evening. I was pretty disappointed. I called my husband and told him I felt like we were missing out on a great deal -- that's when I got an idea. I text the lady back and asked her if we could have it if we gave her $150 and picked it up that night. She said yes, if we picked it up that night.. so that's what we did. The Craigslist lady said she paid upwards of $700 for it when it was new... crazy! I believe she got it from the Room Store. Apparently she didn't use it anymore, so her loss was our gain! Without any further ado here is our dining room:

I've been thinking about staining the table a dark wood tone or possibly this ebony stain by Minwax.

This is a close up of our table decor. It's all from Ikea -- and I sewed the table runner out of this fabric also from Ikea.

Future plans for the room include getting new dishes. I've really been wanting all white dishes. I think they would look great with the color scheme I have planned for the room. And even if I change my mind they could go with any color. So hopefully I'll update one day soon showing you my new white dishes! :) 

Another Point of View

 If you view my living room from the back door you'd probably notice that this side of the room needs some work.

So I decided to compile a list of things that I would like to add/change in this space… a personal to do list of sorts:

1. I want to add a large piece of art or a couple smaller pieces of art above the sofa.

Maybe something like this, which I saw here.

I can never really find anything that I love though... so the search for art goes on!

3. Replace the love seat with one or two accent chairs. I'm not talking about chunky recliners -- although my husband would probably love that. I'm talking about smaller pieces with nice lines because I think our current furniture doesn't fit well. I hope replacing the love seat with pieces with a smaller footprint will open up the space. Walking into a house and being greeted by a large rear-view of a love seat isn't very appealing.

I like these deep seated chairs found at this site.

Or maybe something fun like this chair from Target. I <3 Target!

And then there's this sleek, chic option. Oh the choices!

4. I would like to replace the current black split cover on the sofa with a new grey separate seat slipcover by SureFit. I'd also like to replace the pillows on the couch.

The tile separate seat sofa cover.

The herringbone separate seat.

5. Buy a bigger rug since our current rug looks pretty small in our living room -- it worked well in our apartment but that living room was probably half the size. We may be able to move that rug into the dining room, which would be wonderful! I haven't really nailed down any serious options but I am thinking I'd like to keep it in the black, grey, blue or neutral color spectrum.


6. Table lamp for the end table by the sofa and a freestanding lamp for additional mood lighting. I've always like side lighting better than overhead lighting. It just feels softer and more lively.

A colored glass table lamp from Pottery Barn.

These little branchy lamps make me smile!

Whooo! This was my longest post ever! But stay tuned… I plan to talk about my dining room soon…plus details on how I scored a $700+ table for only $150!

Attention Hog

The living room gets most of my attention these days. My to do list for the room grows every day. I've learned that going from 980 sq. ft (our old apartment) to 1,800 sq. ft. (our house) means you need a lot more stuff to fill the rooms! Here are some pictures and details about our living room:

Above is a view of our living room from the entryway. The "art" on the wall above the fireplace isn't actually art at all (although a few people have said they thought it was our attempt at modern art)-- it's paint samples. I think we are going to go with the dark blueish teal color in the center for the wall with the fireplace on it and a nice creamy white for the other three walls. This picture doesn't show the color of the paint well so here is a picture of the paint chip- Aqua Dance by Valspar------------>
Unfortunately our whole house was painted this very yellow-ey orange-ish neutral. Not something I would've picked because it gives everything a slight yellow tinge (which is very evident in photos). But oh well, we'll be repainting all of the rooms soon anyways.

By the way, if you're wondering about the blurry figure in the picture... don't worry it's not a ghost and our house isn't haunted, it's just my best friend.

If you are sitting on the couch this would be your view. We plan to mount the TV and do a few other things to this wall. Including removing/replacing the huge alarm system box on the wall to the left of the bookcases. It is big, ugly, and looks like it was made around the time of the first computer!

Well that's about it for this post. I'll share a few more details on this room later this week. 

A Starting Point

Today I realized that if I don’t start somewhere with this blog that I’ll probably never start… so here I am… at a starting point. I’m pretty excited about blogging— it seems pretty simple—I get on here talk about what I’m currently interested in, share projects, and house updates and maybe one day people will actually enjoy following along with me (bad grammar and all).

I decided that I wanted to start this blog when my husband and I were in the (frustrating) process of buying our first home. Well, we’ve officially been in our house for a little over a month now and I can’t think of a better way to start off, than by sharing a few pictures of our house before we moved in.

View from the street

The living room as seen from the entryway. Check out that double fan! We love it!

The kitchen…  : )