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*~

The Home

For the past 3 years I've been in kind of rut. We lived in this apartment that was just always dirty no matter how hard I cleaned it, it had a horrible floor plan, literally, guests had to walk through my bedroom just to get to the bathroom, ugly wall coloring, ugly floors, and a small very cramped kitchen. I admit, I completely gave up on a lot of aspects on my life, especially my living space. But, I really try to be optimistic and at last we decided to strap down and really take our lives in a positive direction. I decided that I wanted to go back to school and go into a career that I'd dreamed about since I was a child, boyfriend got a job that put him on a career path that he never imagined, so we decided it was time to move. This time, we didn't rush, we took our time, and looked.

Oh boy did we look, we saw small spaces, big and expensive spaces, spaces just to see spaces, and then when we found our apartment, everything just clicked, and we knew we had found our next home. July 14th, with the help of some of our dearest and greatest friends, we officially said good bye to the depressing place we used to live, and embraced our new life in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.

First, let me introduce you to the empty spaces of our new home:

The Entry Way

Living Room (It's bigger than it looks, I'm not standing in the entry way, sorry for the poor angle)

To the right of the living room, that little door on the right hand side that you can barely see is the laundry room

Pretty much the most amazing room ever

Desk area

To the left of the living room is the dining nook

Kitchen

Bedroom (again, bad angle)

Closet is huge!

Toilet area of bathroom

Other side of bathroom

Cute shower curtains

These photos were all taken day 1. Come back tomorrow for Day 2 photos. 

I also apologize for those of you who've already seen all these photos on my other blog, thedistilledreview.com, since that's a blog about drinks, I wanted to shift my apartment posts over to this one. But hey, at least you have some sneak previews of what's to come!