Our Room for Dining

Just like every other room in my house, the dining room is very small. Luckily the dining room, living room, and kitchen are all one open space. This is helpful with making each space feel bigger. Our dining room (like most other rooms in our house) has come a long way since we moved into our home.

My style is contemporary with little touches of traditional and earthy mixed in! I like rooms in my house to feel comfortable and calming. That is why I chose the tan (earthy) and the light slate blue (relaxing) for the wall colors. I also like to make sure my rooms have a little pop of an accent color, and in this room I have chosen lime green with the green apples! We just put in our hardwood floors a few months ago, and still need to trim out the upstairs (so just ignore the missing base board ;)). I love our new table and buffet! We purchased it from a local furniture store. It is an Ashley Furniture collection, and the best part is the table has a fold out center leaf that allows the table to go square and seat up to 8!! The three wall shelves were purchases at Ikea, I love Ikea! I made the curtains myself, and I love how they turned out! Again the rug was a hand-me-down from my mom, and I am currently looking for a new rug for this space!

This is a picture of how the dinning room and the living room come together. And to the right of the table is the kitchen :)

Here is a picture of the dining room standing in the middle of my kitchen! I have rearranged a few of my accessories since I took this picture, but for the most part everything is the same.

Here is a close up of the curtains I designed and made :) The total cost for 7 panels was $40!! Plus the $850 it cost to have a quilting needle scoped out of the stomach of my puppy Max who apparently will eat ANYTHING!

Headboards, Get Creative!

In my eyes headboards are a neccessity to a bedroom! The bed should be the focal point in the room and without a headboard it just looks unfinished. I have made a few headboards for the beds in my house, and I would like to share with you some ideas for inexpensive headboards I have made!

Headbaords do not have to be expensive! They can be made out of things you have around the house, or just a piece of upholstered plywood. The first headboard I made for my house was made out of an old interior solid panel door that we had replaced.

The next headboard I have made has a little more to it. It is not any harder, just more time consuming. It is made out of plywood, 2x4s, some batting and trim!

I hope showing you a few headboards that I have made for my house will inspire you to make one for yours! Take a look around your house, there is headboard potentially in many things just lying around! Remember, be creative!

Our Room for Relaxed Living!

This is my newly decorated living room. I love almost everything about it. I am still in the process of figuring out the best look for the space. It is a very small living room, and with it being upstairs everything has to fit through the stairway (which is a HUGE challenge!)
So for this room we could not find a couch that would fit through the stairway so we decided to go with a love seat and a chair. About 85% of the time it is just me and my husband living here so we have plenty of seating. When picking out the furniture for the room I didn't want to go with everything too "matchy-matchy", so we went with a cream leather matching love seat and chair from Value City Furniture, and two accent chairs from Target.com. I LOVE the accent chairs! They are super comfortable and sturdy, and the price was just amazing! Only $130 a piece. The best part is you can get these chairs in several different upholstery patterns! They are a great deal and I recommend if you are looking for a nice inexpensive accent chair for any room in your house that you check out Target.com!

My next favorite item for the room is the TV stands. We purchased these stands at Ikea for $90 a piece (there are two total), and I found the canvas cube's at Target and they fit perfectly! With the rooms in our house being so small, we do not have a lot of storage space in closets and cabinets. These cube's give us so much extra needed storage, and they still look nice!

Things that I am still a little unsure about and are thinking of changing include the blue accent wall and the curtains. I am thinking the room might look more put together and finished if I eliminate the blue wall and paint it the same color as the rest of the room, and then add blue curtain panels instead of the tan ones that blend a little too much with the wall. I am still currently looking for some throw pillows and a rug that will pull the room together a little more then the current ones. The rug was a hand-me-down from my mom, and the pillows were just some that I had. The challenge is finding something that is not too plain, but does not compete with the busy accent chair pattern. But all-in-all this room has come a long way in the right direction!
Here are a few Pics of the room before we started the cosmetic remodel :)

Our Room For Fun!

This is our Rec room! This room has taken the most work and money, but it has also made the largest transformation! When we moved in this was actually a very long skinny rec room and a fourth bedroom. We received the pool table as a gift, and it became the inspiration for the whole space. With a budget of around $1500, we took this room from a wood paneling nightmare to a contemporary up-to-date space!

We started the demolition off by removing the wall between the existing rec room and the fourth bedroom. This gave us a very nice open space. Then we removed the wood paneling and dropped ceiling, and dry walled the entire space. Then the fun began by adding laminate flooring, paint, and accessories. I wanted to keep the room neutral and with the natural light from the two large windows, I knew the space could handle a darker color on the walls. I also accented with green to pull the felt of the pool table in the overall design.

This is the old bedroom which has now become our movie/media room!

The room from the other end of the pool table.

Our Master Bedroom...Needs more!

Our master bedroom has got to be one of the smallest I have ever seen! My husband and I are both very tall people, so a king size bed is a MUST! It has taken many trial and error arrangements to get our bedroom to where is is today!

Our master bedroom went from this:

To this:

I do love my master bedroom much much better then I did, but something is still missing to me. I need more texture, and more design. So I have been doing a lot of searching lately for some finishing touches to add to our room. I have some up with a lot of possibilities...now I just have to save up some money so I can purchase my findings :)

Here are a few items I would LOVE to add to my master bedroom!

I love damask print! I feel like adding it to my master bedroom would give it another dimension! Also, I would be able to add accent pillows, a rug and some curtains and they would all be cohesive.

I also Love all of these prints. As you can see I am wanting to add a bold black and white print to my room. The first one I actually found in the store and it is very reasonable at $70 for a 5x7. I like spending less on items because the designer in me always wants to change things up. Make it fresh! So if I spend a little less on my accessories, I wont feel so bad making changes. The second rug is actually in the same "set" as the accent pillows I have on my bed. And I like that one too. But, I think I would have a tough time finding other accent pieces (like curtains and pillows) to go along with these prints. Decisions! Decisions!

I am also wanting to repaint the room. I like the strip on the wall, but I think it might be too much with the prints that I am wanting to add to the room. Also, I am looking for a shade that might match my bedding a little closer. Again, so many decisions to make! Stay tuned to my blog to see which direction I chose to follow :)