All right, folks. This post is a loooooong time coming. Do you remember a couple months ago when I talked about how I was finally going to paint the hutch we’d inherited when we got married? Well, two months and many, many steps later, it’s done.
Why I’m Scared To Say I’m “Creative”
If you had asked me to describe myself as a child, I probably would have chosen one word: smart. I was a part of my elementary school’s gifted program and did Honors/AP classes all the way up until I went to Davidson, a college known for its nerdiness and crazy-hard academics. For most of my life I’ve identified myself as hard-working, intelligent, and a perfectionist at just about everything. In other words…I’d probably say I was pretty nerdy.
But creative? Definitely not one of the words I’d use to describe myself.
Source: Haley George Photography
How To Make A Ribbon Garland (For Less Than $20!)
After heading to Mexico last week, Jordan and I flew to California for my younger brother’s wedding. My brother and his fiancee met in middle school and got married on their seven-year anniversary. How awesome is that? It’s one of my favorite things in the world to tell that story to my middle-schoolers and then remind them that they could be sitting next to their future spouse. Gets ’em every time.
Anyway, when we arrived, my understandably overwhelmed mama asked me to take on decorating for the rehearsal dinner. They were doing a more casual dinner at a local park and wanted a few things to dress up the park shelter and make it a bit cuter. I spent an hour wandering through Hobby Lobby (one of my favorite pastimes and my husband’s least favorite pastimes) and threw anything burlap, gingham, and lace into the cart that I could. And y’all, it all turned out so cute!
How To Make A Patriotic Burlap Wreath
There’s something so pretty and cozy about a front door with a wreath on it. I’ve always admired women who can whip up beautiful, colorful wreaths but felt a little nervous to try something that seemed so complex and “advanced” for a beginning crafter like me.
Last fall, I finally got brave enough to try my hand at a burlap bubble wreath, following some tutorials I found online (which I’ve since gotten a new computer and lost the links to!). I tied on some burlap autumn leaves from World Market using pipe cleaners and hung the whole thing on our apartment door. Every time I came home it made me smile a little to see my own handiwork looking so cute on our door!
Decorating in Seasons
When Jordan and I bought our house this past January, we jumped full force into decorating. We spent an entire week painting for hours every night after work, so eager and excited to make this space feel like home. Once we moved in, we spent more hours arranging furniture, hanging things on the walls, and dreaming of what we wanted our space to look like and be for people.
Some spaces came together quickly. I had dreamed of a gray dining room for a while, so my vision for this room was already pretty set. We had bought the dining room table and chairs on clearance at World Market because they had a scratch, the world map was my Christmas present from Jordan that year, and the chandelier was a spontaneous purchase when World Market had a flash sale on lighting. It all came together so quickly, and this room is maybe my favorite in the house!
Home Inspiration: Painted Kitchen Cabinets
When we were looking for a house, one of my biggest priorities was a big, open kitchen. I learned to cook in our tiny apartment kitchens and was tired of stacking cutting boards, bowls, and pots on top of each other in an effort to get multiple dishes cooked at once. When we found our current house, the kitchen was one of my favorite parts.
Ikea Rast Hack: A Nightstand Makeover
When a brand new Ikea opened up in Kansas City a few months ago, it became THE cool place to visit. I grew up about 15 minutes from an Ikea, so I didn’t quite get the craze until my husband and I visited for my first time as an adult. Let’s just say we walked out with a lot less money in our pockets and with a trunk full of affordable and super cute furniture/decor items! Our biggest purchase was this Ikea Ektorp sectional which we LOVE. It’s super comfy, fits perfectly in our space, and it’s slipcovered for easy cleaning (although let’s be real, I’ve yet to actually wash all the covers since we got a few months ago. Maybe that can just wait for when we have kids?). We were pretty sold on Ikea after our successful couch purchase.
Next up on my Ikea list was the famous Ikea Rast dresser. The master bedroom in our new house was a bit bigger, and we needed bigger nightstands to fill the space around our bed. These little dressers are only $35 a pop, so I figured they would be a great, inexpensive way to try my hand at my very first Ikea Hack!
This is the Ikea Rast dresser in all of its untreated pine glory (and exactly how it looked when we got it). Noooooot my style.
After hubby assembled both of the dressers (I won’t even try to explain that process here. Ikea furniture assembly is a mystery to me), I got to working! As much as I loved the many Ikea Rast Hacks I’d seen that involved adding additional pieces of lattice wood or a larger piece of wood on top, my carpentry skills are seriously limited. I also don’t have much experience with wood staining, and didn’t think pine would be a good wood to start with. I wanted a way to upgrade these dressers that involved nothing more than a paintbrush and some other supplies I had on hand. We might add more someday, but a paint upgrade is always a good first step!
Our New Home – The First Tour
For a more updated home tour that gives you a sneak peek of some changes we’ve made since I published this post, check out our merry and bright Christmas home tour I shared this holiday season!
In the two years since we got married, Jordan and I have moved four times. FOUR times. We had two horrible experiences with cheap apartments (chain smokers below us and feral cats in the roof above us. #apartmentlife). Our next home was a small, two bedroom town home that we loved and felt more comfortable inviting people into. And now…drumroll please… we bought a house! Is there any sentence that feels more grownup to say than that? We are homeowners. And it sure is fun!
We moved in during a beautiful, rare, fifty degree weekend in January, and these last three months have been a whirlwind of painting a million walls and miles of trim, thrift store/Ikea trips, and convincing my husband to hang yet another picture frame I will probably want to move 20 minutes after he hangs it. He’s a trooper.
Decorating a space as big as our new home has been an exciting and exhausting process. Although moving to three different spaces before this one has helped me to develop a sense of my style and what I want our home to look and feel like, having a blank slate with about twice as much space as our previous homes has been overwhelming at times. Over the next few months, I am excited to unpack some of the things I’ve learned about developing my own style and embracing imperfection, about DIY and starting scary new projects, and about the steps we’ve taken to make our home a place where people feel welcomed and loved.
I’ll eventually post some more detailed pictures of rooms before and after we moved in, crafts, and DIY projects that have come together to make our house a home, but for now, I’ll give you the big picture. The only real “before” pictures we have are from the online listing of our home when it was for sale, so keep in mind none of those decorations or furniture items are ours. I’m hoping these more professional photos combined with my iPhone snapshots will give you a picture of our space and what we’ve done with it!
And now, without further ado…here’s a tour of our work-in-progress nest after three months!
