Goodbye Apartment: Our Living Room

Today I'm showing a mini before and after of our living room. We got our apartment in November of 2008 and had to make a lot of changes and updates right away. 

Here's the window in our living room that looks out into our front yard. No blinds. That needed to be fixed quick.

What a difference almost 3 years and a camera makes. 

Here's the long wall to the right of that window. You can't tell but there was no ceiling in this apartment!! That we didn't fix ourselves, that our landlord did. lol 

Here's the long wall now. It's funny cos we first painted the living room blue and after 6 months I hated it and than painted it a new color that seriously resembles the original color. 

When we saw the apartment, I was in love with the fireplace. It's non working but I was just souped I had a fireplace to decorate for holidays. And NOW you can see our no ceiling! That thing leaning on the fireplace were the broken blinds we had to take off to replace. 

We kept the fireplace white but took those wall shelves off on the left and just made it a look "mail center" nook. I'm really going to miss having our fake fireplace. 

This is the first wall you see when you walk into our apartment. 

A new Yankee Candle is placed on the table every month [this month is Pink Sands. So Good!!], along with our photo booth pictures from the wedding and our wedding guestbook along with other books. 

This is our picture rack placed above our TV. I bought those 2 dog paintings at HomeGoods but everyone that comes thinks I paid someone to paint them of our dogs. lol You got got!!

This is our bookshelf next to the TV. I believe it's coming with us to my moms for some extra storage but instead it's gonna be flipped horizontally. 

This is our little "reading" corner. I LOVE that mirror. And we love that chair.

Our newest additions to the living room I added not too long ago. The rug and the white coffee table, which was such a great punch to the room. And Lando laying down on the rug in the shadows. 

And I recently spoiled our living room table for the first time with flowers! Peonies! I loved them and have decided they will be a constant in our room at my moms. 

I had a little mini photo session with those flowers. Hmm, would you buy THIS print from my shop?? 

Ch, Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

We did it again. We changed our living room again. lol I feel like I just wrote this post last week. But Jose really felt we needed some kind of change in there. So he decided [on his own] to move our furniture around. So it went from this

To this! [and notice how it's obviously darker because we've had nothing but rain so it's not so bright out] The furniture move was awesome and gave us a ton of extra room in the living room. Buuuut it wasn't enough. And we knew why.

We needed a pop of color somewhere. And then there's this coffee table we've been eyeing at IKEA for a couple weeks... plus we needed a punch of pillows too while we're at it.. BAM!

Hmm.. do you spot the difference? Even with an obviously new white coffee table, it doesn't look much different in these pictures lol but I assure you... HERE, it feels like a brand new living room! And we fucking love it!

Especially our new pillows :D ::coughcough::ikea::coughcough::

And notice one of my favorite wedding gifts so far on the table.. the white ruffle bowl from Crate and Barrel. 

I don't know what it is... but we are feeling nice and calm now. Which is good considering our wedding is 24 days away!! Oh and we did a TON of wedding stuff lately but I'll post about that later :) Can you believe I'm not that stressed yet?? Maybe cos it STILL hasn't sunk in. I dunno.. I've been living with Jose for 2 and 1/2 years now. How's marriage gonna change our daily life?? Any married ladies got tips?? Should I be nervous?? lol

Ahhh... this is MY living room :)

Yesterday I showed the steal of a chair we got in the as-is section at Ikea. And I complained about ordering my new rug and waiting for it to arrive. Today, it came! And I love it! So let's look at a before of the living room...

 And the AFTER!

 The room feels so much brighter with the chair and rug these much bright pieces than what we had.

I got the rug from K-mart [can you believe that??] for $82! Everything's a steal here! We've really learned to become bargain hunters lol I must say, I'm very proud of Jose & I! We weren't good when we first moved in 2 years ago at "buying cheap" but we do it and we do it good!

HOLLA!! Now I'm waiting for Jose to get home so he can tell me what he thinks [since I basically bought the rug without his looking at it] All we need is some nice springy pillows on the living room and bam! DONE!

Why you sittin in my chair!?

I'm ALIVE!! I'm still dealing with a nasty nasty cough from having the flu and yesterday was a hard day back to work [dizzy and weak ALL day long] but I made it! And finally - my computer is cooperating with me and letting me post something. Well I've been souped since Tuesday over here. Why?? Cos we are finally making progress in our living room. I ordered a brand new rug [where the FUCK is it!?] and am patiently waiting for it... and we just bought a chair we've been eyeing for a while. Since Christmas a corner of the living room has looked like this...

Yeah nice and empty. Then we go to IKEA on tuesday [in the middle of the Northeast ice storm. BEST time to go to IKEA by the way :)] and to the As-Is section, our favorite. When suddenly I saw it... the $200 chair we've been lusting over for $75 bucks! I told Jose GRAB A CART! WE'RE TAKING IT! and Voila bitch!

I fucking love it. Jose does too. Hitchcock obviously loves it. And yesterday to my suprise... Riddle jumped up on it. So Riddle loves it [but he's not allowed on cos he ruined our last piece of pleather]

Note the look of dissapoint on the dogs face when I told him NO!

All we waiting for is this dang rug and boom! We got ourselves a nice, bright, springified living room. Yes... thats the plan! Think warm thoughts, receive warm weather!!

The faux fire is so delightful

Booo... it's Monday! Whatever! My weekend was OK! I did some Christmas shopping, watched some Christmas movies with Jose, entertained my sisters at my house & just relaxed. But I wanted to share something Jose & I did a week ago. Soo... we live in our apartment. Our really old, crappy apartment that we try to make do with. And one thing we REALLY wanted to do was clean our non-working fireplace and do SOMETHING with it. So first Jose cleaned it [with my pink gloves on!]

 Riddle supervised

 And it was clean! So we grabbed some logs from our friends yard [with his permission] bought some battery operated lights and BOOM!



Oh and we fucking love it. Finally - we no longer have an empty ass fireplace!

Gotta get away from this Stone Cold Floor...

Sorry just singing some Queen! Hollla!!

The other day our darling little dog Lando peed on our living room rug. Remember.. Landos' our pit bull/black lab mix. He's a big boy... with ALOT of pee. So he nearly ruined the rug. It curves up now and STINKS! and ever since, I've been dying for a new rug. To brighten up our dreary looking living room. I dont know... it feels too dark.

Yuuuup totally watching my Entourage DVDs :)

And with all our brown furniture [our couch is brown suede] minus our little accent chair it needs a POP! And I thought the only place I can do it is with a rug and... new coffee table! The one we have now was only $20 bucks from IKEA so not a big loss. But I don't just want a coffee table. I want some new textures and something totally different. Then I saw this gorgeous footstool at IKEA...
Yuuuuum! I measured it and its basically the size of our coffee table, just more square! And I am seriously convinced it would satisfy my design needs. Also went searching [and searching and searching] for a neutral rug with a natural kind of pattern and found this kick ass one at JCPenny for $50 bucks! Not baaadd

And if I got some kind of tray.. whether lacquer or a natural texture I KNOW it will be my finishing touch. These babies from West Elm are out of my price range [$60!? WHAAAT!??] but I'm keeping my eye out for something similair

But is it making sense?? Does anybody out there think this is going to work?? Am I loco??

Every Picture Tells a Story!

I realized the other day I have MAD pictures in our living room. I like being surrounded by pictures... of us, of family, of our pets, of places we've been. I am all about pictures. But for some reason all of them are in my living room. lol I am constantly changing things in our apartment so before I change em again I wanted to take pictures of our pictures lol

Below is our "photo wall". Its the first thing you see when you walk straight into the house. We got all the frames from IKEA, Target & CVS [believe it our not]. We are realllly into black and white so we have black and white frames everywhere lol The photo wall is all pictures I've taken [I'm the photographer in the house] and they are pictures mostly from places we've been together. The middle picture you can't see is one my sister took of us when we moved into our apartment and it says OUR FIRST APARTMENT lol i love it! And the bottom five pictures are of Jose's band Ground to Machine [we actually set up the frames by how they stood on stage!]

This collection of frames is just of our pets :) The loves of our lives! I got these frames at Kohls for like $5 each! And when you walk into our apartment, its right to the right of you so you can't miss em. I'm thinking of moving them though lol
Than the other collection we have is over our [non working] fireplace. On the mantel are just some frames of us and of Hitchcock and Riddle but I'm going to switch out the pictures. Hanging on the wall is pictures of all our family members and the animals. [There are holes because I still need good pictures of my sisters and their families]

And than we have a little bit of "artwork". It was made by Riddle when he was 5 months old for our anniversary from me to Jose :) He loved it. Whenever people come over, they ask what it is and I tell them and they think it's awesome. I actually got this idea from Young House Love and think its genius!! I knew I was going to do it before we even adopted Riddle lol and Riddle is a fucking artist!

The Living Room Transformation: Big Updates!

My Birthday was great! But more on that later...

Hitchcock is sitting on the brand new addition to our living room.

And he looks so handsome on it.

And my Aunt gave me a Target gift card for my birthday :) So with that gift card we took our old living room rug...

And bought a new one for 50 bucks!

We like it because before our living room seemed a bit bland... and now we got a nice pop of color. And it blends very well.

The Living Room Transformation: In A Pickle

We are in a pickle over the FINAL touch to our living room! [which is why I have not mentioned it in a while]


The Final Touch is our accent chair. Jose and I are going back and forth trying to pick one! Both are from Target [naturally] so I need help!!

Here is the paint color we selected from Benjamin Mooore:

Here is a little teaser on our wall:

Now when I presented this idea of doing over our living room to Jose this is the chair I had in mine. The Dolce Lounge Chair will totally put the final touch on our living room - I am convinced.

But he wasn't too sure. He thought it might be TOO creamy [I try to convince him that this is a chair that naturally blends into the room it's put in - I've seen it in action!] So than we went to our local Target and they had this beauty out on display. The Avington Slipper Chair in Vine. I have to admit it was very nice looking - and totally was down for buying it. So we did!

But than we brought it home, Jose put it together and the one front leg was WAAAY shorter than the rest and it wobbled. And Jose was totally done with this chair. I say Hey, we can get another one and hopefully the same problem doesn't happen OR we can go back to my original chair. Now we are both up in the air over what to do!


Soo...


What should we do??

The Living Room Transformation: Picking the Color

Before I could do anything to my living room - the wall color had to go! Jose and I moved in together November last year and in February I was officially grossed out by the living room. It had no personality but I decided to think about what I wanted in my living room.

Here is the best picture I could find to show off our living room color:

I don't know why but I just did not like it! So I went to Benjamin Moore and checked out their paint. I usually use Valspar paint from Lowes but this time decided to go with Benjamin Moore. I took a couple swatches home to show to Jose and after staring at them day and night, comparing it to our dining room color and seeing which we ones we liked the most we narrowed it down to three.

Than it was up to me to figure out which would go best with the existing furniture we have and what we could work with best. In the end I picked SQUIRE HILL BUFF and both Jose and I are VERY happy with the end result!

Yes this is all you get to see cos my living room is still not done! Hopefully soon! All we need is our extra seating and we are basically done!

Ahh... this paint color makes me so happy :)