Our New Home!

Remember when I used to blog here?  I'm on maternity leave, and I feel compelled to reflect on 2020 and share more about how we've been.

We moved from Tennessee to my hometown in Indiana early this year, and we bought our first house as a family!  So many things came together to make this happen, and it felt really great to move from apartment living to a house with a yard for a growing toddler.

We found a lovely house just 15 minutes from my parents and my office, as well as walking distance to a great paved trail.  The yard is perfect, it has a paver patio which we hope to furnish and enjoy more over time (we used it for a kiddie pool mostly this year!), and the previous owner who built it ensured we have pretty landscaping year-round.  The perennials he planted delighted us all spring and summer.

We did make a few updates to the house, which was built in 2008.  The downstairs had three flooring types: laminate, vinyl, and carpet.  We put engineered hardwood the whole way through the downstairs, and we painted the whole house.  It really spruced things up and gave us a blank slate, as we did also need to add some furniture for the downstairs mainly.

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We would like to redo the kitchen at some point, adding an extended island, painting cabinets, and updating light fixtures.  This house really only required cosmetic updates for our personal preference, which made it perfect for us!  We did a U-Haul move, and we hired movers in Indiana to help us with the heavy lifting.

The upstairs has three bedrooms and a loft, the latter of which we converted to a playroom.  We made quite a few trips to IKEA to furnish the house, and Dan has basically banned me from it.  But combining what we had from our apartment with the new items, we really have made it into what we had hoped!

I've embedded a number of Instagram photos in this post, so you can swipe for Before/After images of what the house looks like and what it looked like in listing photos.

Living Room

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Kitchen/Dining 

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Playroom 

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Master Bedroom

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Modern Map Art Pillow

I received a free Modern Map Art pillow in exchange for my honest review.

The images, text, and opinions expressed are my own.

The folks at Modern Map Art e-mailed me to let me know that they had posters of the street grid and map of my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana.  Modern Map Art was created last year, inspired by world travel during the founders honeymoon.  They turn city street maps and trail maps into wall art and more.

While some of the bigger city maps would make fantastic wall art, I wasn't ready to dedicate that much wall space to a Btown poster yet.  So I opted for something that remind me of home, but adds a little pop to my living room: a pillow!

The pillow is soft, and of good quality.  It also has a zipper for washing.  It's probably not as firm of a pillow as I would expect for the $40 price tag, but you could also take the map cover off and place it over a better pillow if you want.  I don't mind paying more for something unique and special, individually printed and made in the USA.

It's not always easy being so far from family, but little things like this pillow can be subtle happy reminders of home.  I can pick out on the pillow where I worked in high school, where my business school is, where my mother works.  It's a nice little touch of Btown!

If you had a map pillow, what city would you feature?

Things I'd Been Meaning to Do

A couple of weekends ago, I had a day with nothing planned...  so I did things that I've been "meaning to do"!  Firstly, I wanted to clean up our porch and recover the cushions on our rocker.  Now that Dan has quit smoking (and polluting the porch), it's finally worth the effort to get the space in shape for us to use now that the weather is nice.

Yes, you're looking at an old nursery glider.  They come on Craiglist for very cheap!  But as I told my Facebook friends, don't get excited that this means there's a baby on the way.  I've had this thing on the porch for years, and it's too dirty to ever bring indoors again really.  I simply took some outdoor fabric I got at JoAnn's, traced the old fabric pieces, and sewed them up (rather quickly) making this a fast project with nice results!  Dan helped me tack the fabric onto the ottoman, and I think the overall improvement is really nice!

I also promised Dan that I would attempt to make ice cream.  It's been years since I made any, and I had the Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams cookbook to guide me.  I made my favorite, the Brown Butter Almond Brittle.  I made the brittle first, and it was seriously tasty.  Hard not to eat it before adding to the ice cream!  The ice cream itself turned out a bit darker in color than the store version, because I think I browned the butter a little longer than I should have, but Dan loved it.  Per the instructions, we put it into a container to freeze for a long while, as Jeni's ice creams don't get eaten right out of the machine.

This post may seem a little dull or trivial, but looking back at these photos brings me some joy.  It reminds me of a weekend where I had nothing planned, and I got to do the things I'd been meaning to do... and that made it worthwhile and happy work!

What have you been meaning to do?

Aerogarden: 1st Month

I've tried and failed to maintain any sort of plants before, but I've been wanting an herb garden for the longest time.  It's not easy in an apartment that only gets light on one side of the porch, with limited space.  I don't really have much patience for green thumb type things.  But one of my best friends is a gardening expert, and when I went to visit her I noticed her indoor Aerogarden.  Her mother sent me a discount code, and before I knew it I had one in my guest room.  (Note: I purchased this all on my own!  Just reviewing it here for others who might want an easy herb garden.)

The Aerogarden is very easy to set up.  You get a certain number of "pods" in the starter kit, and you can order custom herbs as well.  That's why I did.  I started my garden off with two types of basil, parsley, thyme, oregano, chives, and sage.  You set it up with water, as well as some plant "nutrients" that you feed from time to time.  On my model, everything is dictated to you in digital messages, so it's really dummy proof.  The lights turn on and off automatically.  You add nutrients and water as needed.  You raise up the lights as the plants grow.  Simple!  Fun!  It was cool to see little spouts with the first week!

The domes stay on until the plant almost touches the plastic, then you let it grow without.  Sage was definitely a major frontrunner.  You can see how much it grew in just the first couple of weeks.  I followed instructions and guidelines online as to how to clip the herbs the right way to encourage more and more growth.  My friend said Month Two is when you really start harvesting and using your herbs the most.

A sad thing happened on Day 19... the cats killed Thyme.  They got the pod and spout out of the garden; I replaced it with a Cilantro pod, and all it grew was mold or something.  No plant, a dud pod.  So now I've got a vacancy for a new pod, depending on what I decide to do.  For the time being, I moved Parsley up to the front because it needed more room, after the last photo in this set.

Now that the garden is getting bigger, it's getting to be really nice and fragrant.  It's in "High Growth Mode" so I definitely have to remember to raise the lights (so the leaves don't singe!) and add water much more frequently.  I'm really proud of this little garden!
The only downside is that the light is really bright and needs to stay on a long time, so it's disruptive to my overnight guests.  But you can just hit the light to turn it off, and it'll be fine while you have people there.  Overall, I'm excited that some of my plants *are* ready to be trimmed for use in cooking.  I've successfully gotten plants to live for a month, which is more than I've ever done!
If you'd like to follow my Aerogarden's progress on Instagram, follow the hashtag #aubreysaerogarden to see it grow!  I'll hopefully come back with an update in another month.

Guest Room 2.0

I've been in the same 2BR, 2BA apartment for almost three years now, and we really like it.  We're in a great spot in the complex (courtyard overlook, close to gym/pool/mail) and near downtown Franklin.  We dabbled with the idea of househunting, and then decided that we'd rather settle in where we are for a while longer.  That included making the guest room a more functional space.\

BEFORE

The problem with the guest room beforehand?  Firstly, we were storing the bicycles there.  We recently got a garage in our complex, so all of Dan's car and woodworking equipment, as well as the bikes, went downstairs to the garage to create more space.  Woohoo!  Secondly, the guest bed was not accessible from both sides, which sucks when couples stay there.  Lastly, I have been doing more homework and actual work from home, so I was already in the process of creating a more functional "office" space.  I had already added a wireless Canon printer (so nice!) and a Dell monitor so I can plug in both my work PC and personal Macbook for viewing.

Pay no attention to Bear ruining the photo.  He likes the new bed positionnig.

For starters, we moved the guest bed and added a headboard.  (Um, actually Dan did all of the work, I just did the shopping.)  Doesn't that headboard make a huge difference?  We bought the headboard on Overstock for under $200, with free shipping.  We felt like rather than buying an expensive guest bed, adding a headboard to our cheap (like, $50) bed frame made it feel less transient-looking.

AFTER

I also rearranged the bookshelf, cube shelf, and TV.  Isn't it crazy how moving things around made a big difference?  You can see my new Aerogarden, since I don't have a garden or sunny-enough porch to grow herbs.  My parents got me a luggage rack for Christmas, by request, so now I have a great space for them to place their suitcases!  I also added an IKEA napkin holder to serve as my laptop "dock" so it can be stored vertically, as well as a lamp+organizer to hold pens and things without taking desk space.  The desk lamp makes a big difference  in that corner when I'd rather use mostly natural light and not the overhead.  (And yes, those are still the shower curtain DIY drapes that I made in 2013!)
I'm already noticing that the TV is in a better position and that we use the room a lot more often.  I am more productive in here for sure!  I don't do as much laptop homework or surfing from the sofa anymore (yay for iPad/iPhone) and I don't set up all my crap on the dining room table either.  Everything is better-organized, which makes me really happy.  We also got all of Dan's books onto a bookshelf instead of having them scattered around the apartment.  I really feel like we now use all of the rooms in our apartment in a functional way.
Now, the only thing I want for the guest room is a new office chair, one that is less bulky (but butt-friendly) and does not have armrests.  I've been looking at this one from Overstock.  I could also probably add some kind of "art" above the guest headboard, but it's not a priority right now.  I put the little bitty piece of art from Arizona above the Aerogarden, because that thing will rise up as the herbs grow, so it will help fill the space.

P.S.  We just got an At Home store in Franklin, and I'm obsessed.  I went the day after it opened, and I spent $150 that weekend:  three gold trays, two floral accents, a tall coat rack, a candle, and a mail organizer.  ALL OF IT!  It's like HomeGoods on steroids.  Some of it is cheesy, but it was a great way to spend a little and get a lot of stuff and benefits.

Target Threshold Bar Cart "Hack"

I've had a longtime crush on the Sedgewick bar cart from Society Social, but its $700 price tag was not something I could justify spending at this point.  Then my friend C tipped me off that there was a Threshold gold bar cart at Target on sale that could be the perfect match for me... and I snagged it for $100!  It came in one piece, no assembly required.

The Sole Society Cart //  My Threshold Bar Cart

The downside to the Target bar cart was the lack of storage for stemware and wine, which helps make use of some of the vertical space between the top and bottom shelves.  I found a stemware holder ($25) and wine bottle holder ($15) on Amazon made to go under kitchen cabinets, and I got a can of gold spray paint ($5) to make them match the cart.  You can buy the holders in other colors, but I chose whatever color was cheapest and qualified for Amazon Prime, which in this case was brass and a dark bronze.  Dan painted the pieces for me., and it turned out to be a great match!

After the paint dried, he screwed the pieces into the cart, under the top shelf.   I am not worried about the stemware holding up, but I do want to be sure the two wine bottles don't overstress the shelf; I put two of my cheaper bottles in to test the strength.  I will report back if I have any lasting concerns, but so far it looks pretty good!  I needed that extra space to store glassware in my apartment.

I haven't had time to style/stock the cart yet, but I'm getting excited at the prospect.  I will have to share the results when I do.  But all in all, I'm very happy with how my $145 investment in a bar cart turned out, especially compared to the $700 price tag on the inspiration.  Maybe someday I'll upgrade, but for now I'm proud of this little "hack" of sorts!
Update (8/16/2015):  No issues with the bar cart to date!  Here's a peek at how it looks today.  The wine bottles have been there ever since, so no issues if you install the hardware well!

Apartment Decor Blues

We love our apartment.  So much so, that we've signed a lease for our 3rd year in the same unit.  But since I didn't know we'd be there that long, I never painted the walls.  That means we live in a sea of beige walls and carpets.  I'm happy with the artwork and photos in our apartment, but I feel like a few things are missing.
Problem #1:  Dining Set.  My dining set is very basic and cheap, and it only seats four.  I'd really like a set to seat six, but I can't justify buying one right now.  I've been waiting to move to a house before investing.
Temporary Fix:  I think painting the table and chairs some bright colors, like the photo below, might be a good temporary fix to perk things up.

image source

Problem #2:  Beige Carpets.  And there's not much I can do about those.
Temporary Fix:  Area rugs!  I have a cheap one from IKEA in the dining room, but the grey color does nothing for the room with my cheap dining set.  I think one in the dining room and one in the living room could really pop.  One with blue and green (like my sofas) with a soft feel would be great in the living room.

I like this for a dining room. (FloorsUSA.com)

Problem #3:  Coffee Table.  I am not a fan of my cheap coffee table, and I'd like something with a wood look that fits our style better.
Temporary Fix:  I think I could have Dan add wood as a topper to the table (and maybe change the paint color) to make it look more in line with our style.

image source

Anyone else have any tips to spruce up an apartment?

Cozy Wall Art Review

A while back, the super nice folks at Cozy Wall Art let me choose a vinyl wall decal to try out.  I'm a fan of these decals because I don't feel like painting (and upon moving out, repainting) my apartment, and these are a really great way to jazz up your walls.  I chose a little family of owls (owls remind me of my Great Aunt Marie and Harry Potter) in brown to complement my guest bathroom.

As you may recall, we keep our toilet paper in Tupperware... LOL

For a long time, I didn't put the decal up (sorry!), because I thought I would need Dan's help... and then I felt awful for waiting so long to do this post.  So I decided to take the project on myself.  And you know what?  It was WAY easier than I thought!

Reading instructions

Cozy Wall Art includes detailed instructions on how to make things go smoothly.  At first, I wasn't having luck getting the decal to stick; then I saw their note about textured walls, and trying a soft cloth over whatever you're using to rub it on the wall.  IT WORKED!  Even those little eyes and that little flying owl that aren't a part of the main big piece were a breeze.  Perfect!

During application...

Cozy Wall Art is also on Etsy, so you can browse (and customize colors) to your heart's content.  They have quotes, animals, shapes, and can even do custom names.  I feel like these are perfect for nurseries and kids rooms (where kids might outgrow a design and want to peel and change them out over time) or apartments where you're looking for something to be an easy on/off addition to your walls.  Great for renters!  They even have CAT designs.  Cats, people!  Meow.  Check out Cozy Wall Art for more design ideas.

Mission Accomplished!

P.S.  Thinking of adding some art to your walls?  Don't forget about my poster giveaway, ending this Friday!

Wardrobe Organization

Out of sight, out of mind is true for my closet.  I don't wear things if I can't see them when I'm making my daily outfit decisions, and I sometimes even buy items that are nearly identical to things I've forgotten I have.

Things I've done this year to get my closet organized...

• DOWNSIZED in a big way.  I have sold or donated away over a dozen pairs of shoes, bags upon bags of clothes, and even culled my handbag collection based on what I actually use.  I can really see what I've working with.
• Turned my hangers backwards, so I can see what I haven't worn yet this year.  Things that don't get worn after 3-6 months will be donated or sold based on seasonality.

• Switched by my shoe, belt, and scarf organization with some help from Pinterest and Amazon.

• Got my jewelry at eye level instead of in a jewelry chest.

This organizer was $20 on Amazon!

• Kept only pajamas that had matching sets and let go of the rest.
• Tossed out old socks and bought new running socks for marathon training.
• Reorganized my workout clothes by type, so get me excited about cute gym outfits.

Workout clothes and socks/hosiery... old shoe boxes are great for organizing!

• Seriously cut back on the t-shirts I've kept.  If you know me, my drawer once held 2-3 times as many shirts.  It was an emotional parting.

I am not big on New Year's resolutions anymore, but as an organizing fanatic (you haven't even seen my Levenger binders) I am seriously giddy over my wardrobe now.  There's so much to choose from that I didn't even know about!  I think I'll continue to downsize the closet (I'm looking for quality over quantity) and try to use my budget for worthy pieces.  And when I do go trendy, I hope to do it on the cheap!

At Home: On the Walls

I am not an interior decorator.  But living in an apartment with beige walls, I wanted to add things to the space to break it up a bit and make it feel more at home.  I actually have more stuff on the walls than I did when I had a house!  Duke and I both like having quirky walls.

Here are the latest new additions...

In the Bedroom:  I had Kaelah create a quote from one of Duke's favorite books for our room.  The wood look is very him (he loves woodworking) and it added a nice touch to an otherwise-feminine room.

In the Living Room:  These are wacky, I know.   But when we saw the art prints that the Russian Hermitage commissioned in honor of their resident cats, we decided it would make an awesome installation for our living room.  These hang behind the couch, so they are a little surprise!  The middle one looks like Bear a bit.  We ordered cheap frames from Amazon, and the art prints via DeviantArt from the artist, Eldar Zakirov.  The prints were VERY high quality and well-priced, so I was impressed!  We have named them, from left to right, Grigori Catsputin, Wolfington Bearovic (after WolfBear), and Mikhail Baryshnikat.

In the Dining Room:  I had this wine glass rack made from recycled wine barrels already, but then I found this old barn painting that a family friend made.  It was in my parents' basement storage area, so I stole it and added it to the top.  I love the look, and it reminds me of Indiana!

In the Kitchen:  I loved the sign that Kaelah made for our room so much, I decided I needed a little series of them for the kitchen.  The signs are a conversation featuring Lucille on Arrested Development, and it just felt right to make our kitchen a little more "us".

In the Guest Room:  This is where I had ZERO stuff on the walls and decided to step it up.  It really brings the whole room together, though it is admittedly "my" room.

The little wooden unit it another steal from my parents' basement, and the items on it are mostly from my grandmother's sewing room.  I keep it there to remind me of her.  The little prints featuring Flapper Girl in her cat-loving goodness are from one of my favorite bloggers, Kate Gabrielle at Scathingly Brilliant.  She had a great sale on Flapper Doodle prints so I got them for $1 each, then added Dollar Tree frames.  $6 install!

I got these two plates while I was in Iraq; they're hand-painted from Turkey.  They were so pretty, but I worried that on the mantle they would get knocked over by Bear's climbing antics.  I got a couple of plate hangers from Amazon to put these safely on the walls.  If I feel froggy and collect more pretty plates, I may just hang a collection of them in the kitchen above my cabinets... but with only two, these look better in the guest room.

I had a ton of vintage sewing patterns that I thought were so pretty...  but they weren't showcased in any way.  So I took six of them and put them in Dollar Tree frames, with wrapping paper in the background.  Should have used scrapbook paper for ease of working with it, but it fills a huge empty void by the guest bed.

Do you have anything interesting on your walls?