The New

Sunday was a pretty exciting day for us.

We hosted for the first time ever, a family dinner. My mother (who is amazing btw) was so excited, she brought me over some house warming presents.

I had told her that for the kitchen I wanted little pops of red, so she bought me this beautiful bowl, that I will probably fill with fruit. 

She also bought me this amazing table cloth and this basket. I'm not quite sure exactly what I'm going to do with the basket yet, but I love it and am excited to figure it out! Anyone have any suggestions? 

We also picked up our new bed! 

It was a house warming present from a friend of ours, who wasn't using it and was basically going to donate it or try to sell it anyways. 

Plus, remember that cute duvet I posted in my bedroom inspiration post? 

Well I'm getting it for my birthday next month!! Won't that look cute? 

Plus, since we have a new bed, we only thought it appropriate to buy our girls new beds as well, since we won't all fit on the queen. 

They love them. :-)

I'm really excited! Slowly but surely things are starting to come together. 

Here's a shot from my entrance way of how the front room is looking. Our first priority for the front room is to buy a chair to replace that awesome camp chair that boyfriend's been using as his gaming chair :-p. 

~*Erin*~

Inspiration- Living Room

Well, my living room is still looking pretty close to the same as this photo:

With the new addition of this on that far wall corner to the right of the blinds

We're not quite 100% certain on the direction we're going to go, but here's some inspiration and idea's that I have:

I basically am wanting the room to be soft, with more grey's, white's, teal's, blues, and soft natural greens/plants. I'm thinking I may also take the "furniture" direction more into browns and woods, rather than blacks. I'm not sure about the couch yet, boyfriend wants to keep the red, but I'm thinking more of a brown or grey or something. We may try out a cover or two to see what direction we'd like to take it. For now thought, I'm just trying to soften it up, not that I don't like the red, just not the direction I picture the house taking. :-)

And, as always, you can also check out more thoughts, ideas, and inspirations on my "new pad" pinterest, found here

~*Erin*~

Project and Inspirations- The Bedroom

Wow, I can't believe we've already been in our apartment for a month! 

For today's post, I thought I'd share with you some idea's I have for my least shared room, the bedroom. Color scheme: Grey and Yellow

I am determined to make this sign. It will absolutely be one of my projects. 

I'm also thinking that I may do kind of like a little bamboo themed table next to my window. I don't know yet though, just tossing around the idea. 

I'm so excited for our new bed to come so I can get started on doing things with the bedroom!

You can find links to all of these ideas off of my pinterest board, found here

~*Erin*~

Inspired Bathroom

I don't know about you, but I have a pretty awesome family! My lovely Aunt shared with me her most recent project, her girls Bathroom. 

I apologize for the lack of before photos, she didn't realize when doing the project that she'd be sharing photos and whatnot, but here's her story:

"My two girls share an upstairs bathroom. It is the standard construction installed vanity with ugly counter tops and horrible white tile flooring. So, when they were gone for two weeks my husband and I did a little 'mini makeover' to brighten it up a bit. 

A few years ago I had found a cute beach themed shower curtain dirt cheap at Ross, which I used as our starting point. We didn't want to spend much money, so we tried to use mostly things we had on hand. We painted with leftover paints that we combined into a pretty turquoise. 

The biggest issue in the bathroom was storage, there is always stuff all over the counters. To combat this, I purchased two 11 x 14 frames at the Dollar Store and painted them white." 

Quick Tip: When painting items like this, don't forget to put push pins in the bottom to suspend them while you are painting, it will keep the frame from sticking as it dries. 

"Once the frames dried, I added cork board to one and a left over piece of screen my husband painted to the other. It is a great way to keep all the earrings accessible and looking tidy. Underneath that, my husband slightly distressed a piece of board from the garage and added some knobs from Walmart ($2 for 4!) to round up all the necklaces and bracelets. 

Since neither of my kids know what a towel rack is used for I removed it out and added towel hooks instead. Believe it or not, the towels actually end up on the hooks and not the floor! To make it look good, my husband painted another piece of wood and added the BEACH letting in the same color we had used on the walls. I found orange 'beach' towels at WalMart for $3 each and an adorable hamper in the same orange at Marshalls ($12). 

I also have a nice big orange floor mat to cover up some of the white tile ($12 at Target). One of the better organizing ideas we used was to hang a shoe holder behind the door. This holds a manner of headbands, hair clips, body spray, lotion... you name it! I had the shoe holder in the garage for some reason, it is pretty heavy duty. I have had the plastic ones fall apart on me pretty quickly, but this one is very sturdy. 

All together I spent $42 and the bathroom is a lot nicer to be in and has honestly stayed much neater." 

Thank you Aunt Louise for sharing!!

She has a lot more projects coming up and has graciously agreed to share as they come up, so expect several more posts featuring her. 

~*Erin*~

Treasures to Use

As you probably remember from my last post I bought a few awesome treasures from the garage sale.

Well, here's a little update of what I've done so far and what I plan to do:

First, the $2 painting which I thought would look amazing in my laundry room, well it does.

I'm thinking that right below it we're going to make a wood sign that says "WASH" in cursive. I think that will look really nice. 

As for the wine rack, well I saw this really cute bar idea off of pinterest, you can find that here. 

I had the perfect bookshelf in mind, but it is currently being used as a bookshelf/entry table. But then I remembered I had another one. So after moving it around in the apartment it found it's home next to the sliding door in the living room offset to the kitchen. The wine rack happened to look pretty good on top of it as well:

It will be a project of ours. Boyfriend want's to refinish both of the woods, stain them a little darker and gloss them. I'm really excited for the end result, but for now I don't think it looks half bad. :-)

As for the entry way piece that I bought, that will have to wait until another payday or so, so we can buy the paint and brushes that I'm looking for. 

~*Erin*~

The Garage Sale

The other weekend, actually, last weekend, I went to my parents neighborhood garage sale. 

Usually, when you think of a garage sale, you think of a single house, looking something like this:

But, what you don't know, is that my parents neighborhood hosts the largest garage sale in all of Southern California, so it looks a little more something like this:

And this:

It's like a huge garage sale street fair!!! You can even get food! Things usually get started around 530/6 in the morning, we didn't get going until about 7 because well frankly, I wanted the extra hour of sleep and 7 is early enough to still find pretty good stuff.

One of the things that the garage sale is famous for is the egg rolls, this year the woman who does the egg rolls brought in a few thousand, imagine, a few thousand just from a freaking garage sale!?!? The line was to long for us, I mean, after all it's not like we don't have them yearly, so we decided to try out another vendor

The taco stand was located on the other side of the neighborhood, but boy was it good

Love carne asada, despite the fact that it was only like 9 in the morning. You reach a point where it almost feels like noon ha!

I did find some awesome finds for my new home as well!

This painting I saw and immediately pictured it hanging up in my laundry room. Especially for $2

Walked by this wine rack and was like, hmm, I've been wanting/needing a wine rack, and for $1, why not?

The best find of the day though was this beauty below:

I saw this and immediately fell in love. It will be one of my projects and I plan on hanging it right in my entry way. Thinking of painting it like a distressed teal and adding hooks to the bottom. I pictured it immediately after seeing it, which never happens, especially for $8.

~*Erin*~

Settling

It's amazing of how even old furniture and decoration can look so much better in a clean, open space. We have several upgrades that we'll be making to the apartment, but even to know that my place is so much cuter than what it used to be with the same old stuff is comforting. 

Here are some photos from Day 2, when we pretty closely finished unpacking. 

Right now we're using our bookshelf as double for an entry way table. It looks nice, especially since we've added some decor to the top and have added the books, but it won't be there forever. I promise to post an updated photo soon.

As time goes on we'll be looking for a new couch. Not that I haven't loved the red, it just doesn't quite go with the color scheme I'm wanting. We'll also be looking for a new entertainment center, this one looks fine from afar, but really is old and is really just the bottom of a taller one that broke, plus the underneath was designed for VHS... thinking upgrade is definite.

OK, seriously, I can not describe to you how much I love my kitchen, especially the bar area!! Thinking some high bar stools would be amazing.

Just wanted to post a close up of my Martini set. It was given to me a few years ago, but I never had space for it to go. I absolutely love it!

I really do love that table. It's circular but two of the ends fold down which gives it a nice bistro look. Does need some TLC though... thinking project in it's near future. 

Our desk area. Not much now, but I'm going back to school, so discussion of a shelf have already ensued. Plus a proper desk chair would be excellent. 

I apologize for no photos of the bedroom. I thought about this last night but got side track with the Olympics and reading 50 Shades of Grey.. which is an excellent book by the way. I know, I know, some of you try to stay out of the main stream must read books scene, but every time I try and end up picking it up I end up loving it. Plus, not to mention, I pretty much helped start the Hunger Games fab. I started reading and talking/posting/recommending that book before the second one was even released, so trust me, 50 Shades is pretty dang good.

Until next time!

~*Erin*~