Today, we are superstars, Ok our kitchen nook & dresser are

Like most bloggers out there, I read a lot of blogs.  

My Google reader has over 60-plus subscriptions, that keep me engaged daily, while I try to look busy at work.  My likes are all over the place, since I read blogs about a lot of topics: mommy, cooking, couples, singles, travel and design/decorating. Some are super funny, some are super serious, some are REALLY political, and others are work related. But, if I have to choose any particular one, I love the cooking and the decorating/design blogs that I subscribe to, because, secretly I want to be a decorator who publishes a cookbook and totally get shot to stardom. And then I don’t have to come to work every day and take 2 hours to write my post during working hours and make it look like I’m doing official work related stuff.

Yeah, I’m weird that way.

Anyway, one of my all time favorite decorating/design blog is these 2 super adorable couple with their super adorable dog and their super adorable house. And I totally want to steal their life.

And…I have to stop now or they may think I’m totally blog-stalking them, and may block me and I totally need to covet  their pictures, ideas, decorating tips and design advice every chance I get, so lets move on.

Today, as I pulled up my reader list, I saw their new post and casually clicked on it, AND I did a double take, because THERE.I WAS! Or actually my kitchen-nook, dresser was…THERE! Featured in their monthly Reader Redesign.  Side note: Their reader redesign is all about posting how stalker readers, like me, send their design before and after and they totally give us praises for mixing paint and getting it right without killing anyone (or anything) in the process.

A couple of months back, after my friends and I went all crazy and decorated our new rental home, I  was so proud of the way it turned out I submitted my makeover to them to see if I hit it a home run… because, you know, I needed validation that I was not crazy for using crazy colors and  I live better when I get heavy praises from strangers.

Because, I’m weird creepy that way.

But now, now we are superstars!

Ok, ok, the dresser and kitchen nook are superstars.

Beautification Project, Take one

This past weekend the NYBoys and the BFF descended into my town to help me put my house to rights.  For the past 2 months, since we moved to the new house, I been freaking the hell out and shouting to Tom every chance I get  “Don’t put it there, its going to be moved by the design team”… “Wait, don’t hang that there, its going to be moved by the design team”. I’m surprise he did not loose his shit completely and left me.

But this weekend, the design team arrived and we set to work.  You are probably ready to see some major before and after pictures right?

Sometimes we don’t get what we want.

The pictures you are going to see are those of “AFTER” only. Because, during the moving, shoving, painting, drinking, eating, and painting the designer toes black, I totally loss my head and did not take “BEFORE” pictures. YES, I’M a total DOUCHE-BAG!  So, yes, Internet, I’m short changing you on this one. You will not be able to see how badly the before was.  But the AFTER?  Holy sweet baby Jesus – it’s BEAUTIFUL.

Let’s start by telling you that the house has a weird layout, the stairs to access the bedrooms upstairs are located smack in the middle of the house, dividing the living room/entry into two weird, long areas. One, to the left of the front door, and the other to the right. Originally, my thinking process was that the area, closest to the entrance was going to be a library/sitting area, and on the other side of the stairs, the living room, or in our case the TV room.

After not much debate we got to work and it was decided the best course of action was place the dinning room in the original sitting/entrance area… and the living room was just going to have a major overhaul.  Here is the new dinning room:

The new Dinning Room

The table was Tom’s, the chairs were our housewarming gift from the NYBoys, as well as the carpet, both bought at IKEA(where else!) and both a super bargain, they look way more expensive that what they paid for.  The bookcases are also from IKEA, and the rest of the trinkets are from all over, TJMaxx, Marshall, Homegoods. 

I love the way the room came out, we had dinner and breakfast during the weekend and its cozy, bright and perfect.  We realized that we could actually fit two more chairs, and eventually we will add them to the set, sitting for six is always better than four.

Next up is the other side of the room, which is the Living/TV room:

The TV/Living Room

Now this room holds more meaning to Tom, mainly because there is a full wall of his drawings and he has never had his artwork fully displayed before, so he is a bit in awe that we choose to go that way.  I personally LOVE the wall with his drawings on it, its my present to him.  Here is a close up of his black and white.  The colorful painting above the IKEA chair on the other side of the room, next to the palm tree is also his work.

Artwork

Again, in this room we bought the TV stand from IKEA, the couch (my contribution to the merging of household) color is actually white, but with 4 animals in the house, it showed a bit of wear and tear, and with a limited budget, we could not go out and spend the money on the couch we wanted (at least not yet), so Target came to the rescue with the stretched furniture cover in Teal.  The white pillows will be covered with a print fabric that we got in IKEA and I can not wait for that, since it will give it an extra punch.

The next room was the kitchen area.  Since we placed the dinning room in the entry way, we needed to fill up the nook in one of the corners of the kitchen.  Let me tell you, this is my favorite room in the house.  I love to have people in the kitchen with me while I’m cooking, and naturally most of my family and friends gravitate towards this room anyways.  So it made sense to have a sitting-get-together area in the most beloved spot of the house.

Here we did major overhaul on a piece of furniture that Tom brought from his bachelor days.  It use to be his bedroom dresser and I sort of took it and converted it to a kitchen cabinet, where it holds our dishes, platters and other kitchen stuff.  I originally wanted to paint it bright RED, but then opted to use a dark green color.  This is what it looked like before we started:

Say Cheese!

After 3 coats of paint, lots of wine drinking and no paint fumes (the new BEHR, paint with primer, totally worth it - we love, and I mean LOVED that paint and of course saving the step of priming before hand) this is what it looked like:

Pretty!

This is how we dressed it up:

All Dressed up for the ball!

The mirror was a previous present from the NYBoys, and they got it at TJMaxx for peanuts!  The lamp is my favorite lamp in the whole house and it looks great in the corner.  The fish was the BFF contribution, we saw it in Z Gallerie and could not pass up the 40% discount.  And it looks like it was made to be there.  The coconut cake was for Saturday’s dinner party and I’m sorry to say, its all gone.  This ensembles makes part of the Kitchen nook, as I like to call it, and the finish space ended up looking like this:

My spot

Out of all the areas decorated, this is by far my favorite (do I keep saying that?).  The love-seat is comfy and I love to sit on it and browse cookbooks, plan dinner parties or chill while Tom is in the kitchen cooking.  It’s again bright (the best part of this house, there are windows in every room) and cheerful and a great place to just relax.  As you can see the designer and Maggie took a snooze when we completed the project:

snooozing...

So after 4 days, that is what was done to the downstairs of the house.  We love all the changes and the feeling we get when we get home now.  Everything has a place and the feeling is amazing.  We are not done yet.  We are planning on painting the kitchen cabinets, and the back room needs to be completly organized, right now its pretty much the dumping ground of everything that still has to be placed on the outside shed.  We still have our master bedroom to do as well, but we are now super confident that we have the chops to complet it without the help of my lifeline – the NYBoys and the BFF.  Now I know why those people cry when they see their finished projects.

And if you ever wondered why Interiors Designers get paid the HUGE chuck of money… I can tell you it’ss because they ARE TOTALLY WORTH EVERY PENNY.

Decorating Frenzy coming up

In 2 days, I will have my personal decorating team (my friends) arrive from different corners of the country to help me polish up the new house. 

Code Word: BEAUTIFY!

I’m super excited, not only because I will see my NYBoys and BFF, which of course will only mean, lots of wine, margaritas, food, laughter, teasing, practical jokes and all that jazz that getting together with your core friends will incur. But I truly foresee, lots of furniture moving/re-positioning, friendly disagreements, color palate discussions, hard work, shopping! Organizing!, painting!, hanging stuff up!, and all the jazz that a quick house facelift will need.

Did I mention I’m SUPER excited?

But the really plus of all of this? I’m taking TWO vacations days off work.  Meaning that I’m not going to be a work for TWO FREAKING WHOLE DAYS.  Instead I will be with my buddies, doing all I mentioned above plus LOTS OF DRINKING and that is WAY better than sitting at my office desk, doing spreadsheets.

Can we please do a happy dance around the room… yes – thank you.

Kitchen Island, Boxes and Jell-O shots.

Today is the 1 month mark since our moved.

Shit, we are BONE TIRED.

Over the weekend, after 4 weeks of boxes all around, and building and doing projects here and there, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – barely, but ITS THERE!

Last night Tom and I actually got around to moving furniture around in order to “decorate” a space. (One down, 5 more to go) Mind you, we are still stump and we are not overly happy with the results, but, it looks ORGANIZED, because well, it does not contain one single moving box! And DUDE, that is the most triumph we have felt in the past 4 weeks – we were not going to spoil it by noticing that the other space, the one right after the arch, on the other side of the wall, still had boxes.

And this proves to me that once I set my mind to something, or I’m totally fed up (which ever comes first), I will usually accomplish what I set out to do. After weeks of sort of opening a box and being frustrated because I lacked the space or the creativity to put it someplace (ANYPLACE) this weekend I decided that I was going to tackle the boxes and if it killed me (it did) I was going to unpack at least 50% of them – I did more – hooray for my goal oriented self.

It felt awesome to get that much done. The house is coming together, slowly but surely. The best thing that happened this weekend was finding the furniture piece that will become the Kitchen Island. And let me tell you its AWESOME! Out of all the purchases we have done for the house, thus far, this is the best one yet. Because well we found exactly what we were looking for, and when does that ever happen? NEVER! But, this time, the universe was correctly aligned and BOOM, there it was, perfect… and the best part, we paid less (way less) for it that we had allotted ourselves, which made it even sweeter.

In other things we got invited by our next door neighbor to their 4th of July celebration. Since we have moved they have been super friendly – always saying “hi” when they see us, or making small conversation. All in all they are good neighbors (so far). And, for Tom and me, that have not had that since – gosh, NEVER, it’s been great. On Thursday, as we were getting out of the car, they made small talk and then extended this invitation:

“Hey, come on over on Saturday for our 4th of July annual celebration… where pool rules, food fuel us and Jell-O shots keeps us sane!”

I mean how in the hell can you say no to Jell-O shots? It’s like going back in time to my twenties! and if there is anything that I want to do more than ever is feel young again, drink myself under the table and then wake up with a total hangover the following day.

Guess what we did on Saturday night?