Starting to Look Like Home

I am so pleased to finally be able to say that my sad empty apartment is slowly turning into a much more comfy inviting home. In case you all have forgotten the sad state of things, you can refresh your memory with my blog post from November - The Grand Tour. Since that time, I am so excited to say that I have picked up a few more pieces of furniture and even hung some things up on the walls. Its amazing what a couch and some pictures can do to make you feel so much more at home.

2nd Bedroom/Craft Room

Living Room (complete with original artwork by Andrea Gentile)

Living Room - this side still needs some help

Kitchen

Dining Room

Antique Store Finds

As part of my quest to decorate my apartment, I have become somewhat of a antique/thrift store junkie. Lucky for me (and maybe not so lucky for my bank account), there are several stores in Mason itself and then I have found a couple other quality establishments within a half hour drive. A lot of the stuff I end up purchasing are things that need a little TLC mainly because they are generally within my limited price range and because I do love a good craft project. So far, I've re-painted and re-upholstered one chair, re-used an old photo frame to make a place to hang multiple pictures from, and sanded down two wooden chairs that now need a coat of polyurethane to finish the job. Last week, our friends Danton and Paige introduced Kev and I to the Mega Mall which is a huge building with tons of little antique booths inside it. You can walk literally for hours up and down the aisles. There is a lot of junk there (aka a whole wall full of Beanie Babies - remember when you thought yours were going to make you rich one day?), but there is also a lot of really cool pieces of furniture and little trinkets and the like. I ended up purchasing an old bunk bed ladder which I'm going to turn into a display shelf of sorts for some old bottles I have.I also bought an old window that I'm going to try and beautify with stained glass to hang over my sink in my kitchen and that way I can pretend I'm looking outside instead of staring at the blank wall.

This whole super crafty phase is also stemming from the fact that I have been on semi constant DIY duty for the wedding. I had spent some serious time browsing DIY bridal blogs, Etsy, and Pinterest and had all sorts of fun ideas for everything I wanted to do for the wedding. And then I got super overwhelmed by the whole process and the expectations people have for you and all the decisions you have to make and just the whole big process of getting married. Let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. I'm 100% sure that Kevin would vouch for me completely on the fact that I might have been a little crazy for a minute there. But after some serious re-focusing and reading of the book A Practical Wedding by Meg Keene (P.S. I highly recommend this book to anyone getting married; in fact in about 72 days you can have my copy), I was able to hop off the crazy train and decide on several projects that meant the most to me. In the interest of keeping some suspense with the wedding, I am going to resist posting pictures of all the fun projects for now except for the button boutonnieres myself and my sister Andrea made that I am completely in love with.