Oversized Art

Decorating small spaces is always a challenge, especially when the desired end result is not only a beautiful room, but a functional one. More times than not, small spaces get over-decorated and feel cluttered. One way to avoid that is to try choosing larger pieces of art that expand the space visually.

This is one of my design goals for the new house, and below are a few inspiration images I'm loving.

Apologies for the late post today, John and I are in Tampa for my cousin's wedding this weekend, and the morning was spent traveling. We have a fun-filled weekend planned with family and friends and I'm so excited. But I can't wait to get back home and start working on our large art. I found a few canvases at the flea market this past weekend that I'm planning to use and I'll definitely be blogging about it every step of the way.

Have a great weekend everyone!

*All of these images are taken from Pinterest and original sourcing is unknown.

Stage 3: Placing Furniture

I'm a self proclaimed addict to rearranging, so really there could be infinite numbers of stages in this process, but today I'm just going to talk about furniture placement for Stage 3 of our new home. Seriously though, some people will leave furniture layouts for years, while I have to move things around every few months. I thrive off change, so this is as small, stable way to incorporate change into my life.

I tend to start with the common areas of the house when decorating, and this house was no exception. The living room and kitchen are shaping up nicely, but the bedrooms still need major attention. Especially that pesky little Guest Room/Office/Craft Room/Storage Room. With one room requiring so much functionality, there's a lot of pressure.

But onto the living room. The room is long and narrow with openings and a closet door on two of the four walls and multiple windows on the other two walls. We initially decided to place the couch (our only large seating -- hallelujah! placing two couches in such a small space would have made things far more difficult) on the window wall, sandwiched between the windows.

This was mainly decided because I had envisioned hanging nine frames above the couch with black and white photos in them since before we moved in. (The frames themselves are hard to see in these photos since they're white and so are the walls. They'll eventually get a makeover -- I'm thinking a nice bright gold will do the trick.)

The rest of the room kind of fell into place from there. I have two vintage trunks I stacked to become our "bar" and the small bookshelf (the one I previously blogged about that was an original upper cabinet in my parents home) found a home underneath the built-in bookshelves.

You can't see the bookshelf below the built-ins in this photo, but I'm planning on sharing my thought process on styling these shelves soon. Plus, I'm thinking about getting rid of that red. Maybe I'll paint it a deep blue, or possibly upholster it using a pretty fabric! 

On a side note, how cute are these bookends? I got them for a quarter each at a yard sale and sprayed them gold. They're some of my favorite accessories!

Of course, being the constant rearranger I am, the room looks a bit different now, but as I said in yesterdays post, I want to show the true evolution of the room, so I'm trying to keep the stages, and subsequently my thought process, in the order in which they unfolded.

What about you guys? Are any of you also addicted to rearranging? Please tell me I'm not alone!

Getting Settled In

No matter how many times you move, it never gets easier. Your packing gets more organized as you go, which makes unpacking a whole lot faster, but the actual process of moving is incredibly draining. I've never hired movers, and I don't think I ever will, unless we move across or out of the country. I guess it's the heart of a DIYer to do everything yourself. After all, money saved not hiring movers can be put into future projects!

With that being said, once the moving part is over, the fun begins -- the decorating. It is such an exhilarating feeling for me when I look at four blank walls in a room and I get to do whatever I want with them. It feels like a puzzle initially, figuring out furniture placement, but once you get to incorporating colors, fabrics and accessories -- I could play all day. And sometimes I do.

So here is how our house is starting to shape up. (Remember this was all about a month ago, so things have changed quite a bit since then, but I want to keep the blog posts similar to the actual steps of design to show an accurate depiction of the evolution of the rooms).

Please be forgiving, I'm keeping these posts very real. I haven't really ever shared rooms that weren't clean and organized, so this is definitely a little scary!

The Kitchen Stage 1:

The Living Room Stage 1:

Our Bedroom Stage 1:

Hall Closet Stage 1:

Guest Room/Office Stage 1:

There wasn't really a method as to where furniture was placed initially. We mainly just focused on putting things in the rooms they would eventually live in a somewhat organized fashion. I'll dive more into the reasoning for layouts in stages 2 and 3, which will come later this week and next week. Of course, I have lots of fun projects to share along the way, so stay tuned!

Starting Fresh in a New City

After an extended holiday hiatus, which included some much-needed time spent with family and friends, a move from Atlanta to Gainesville, Florida, and a new roommate, in the form of my boyfriend, (to say the least, I was quite busy) I am happy to be back blogging on a regular basis.

We packed up my stuff and moved down to Gainesville just over a month ago, and in the chaos of the move I lost my camera cord that connects to my computer, but luckily I found it this past weekend. Posts without pictures are just no fun.

With that move, of course, comes a new house, and I can't wait to share it with you guys. I feel like I'm living a dream. A whole new house to decorate is very exciting, and something I'm accustomed to, having moved more than 10 times in the past 10 years. But this is my first time having the entire space to make my own, I mean our own.

Before I show you all the new house, lets take one last look at the old house on moving day. With all the craziness of moving, I only had time to snap a few pictures as we were finishing up. John is in good spirits in this photo because we were FINALLY approaching the end. And all.those.stairs. were just as bad moving out as they were moving in. Note to self, never move into another home that has lots of turns and stair sets, they will make your life hell on moving day.

Now onto the more exciting stuff. Here is how the house looked on day one, when we moved in at one o'clock in the morning after driving down from Atlanta with a huge Uhaul. Our new landlord was so sweet to welcome us with a heated house, a poinsettia and a box of goodies. Apologies for the poor lighting in the photos, as I said, it was one in the morning. (Warning, the rest of this post is very picture heavy).

The Kitchen:

 The Living Room:

The "Hallway" 

 Our Bedroom:

 The Guest Room/Craft Room/Office:

 The "Laundry Room":

 Hall Storage Closet:

 The Bathroom:

After about a month of unpacking and shuffling boxes and furniture from room to room, we are now residing in a livable state, but we are far from finished. And I'm ok with that, I want to take my time decorating this place, because it's our first place together and I want it to feel extra special.

Be sure to check back in tomorrow as I'll be sharing stage one of the decorating process.