Fabric Fun

 I've been hating the curtains that came with our apartment since the day we moved in. Ugly. Beige pleated canvas against a white wall *shudder*. Pinterest came to the rescue once I saw 365 Days to Simplicity no sew Roman shades. Hello beautiful. Of course our windows are juuuust wide enough that fabric won't quite stretch, so we put some ribbon on the edges with iron on adhesive. We followed the directions from the link using hot glue to attach the blinds on the the fabric.

In the last picture you can see the storage ottoman that we reupholstered the top of. The pleather had melted from Speedy's tank. We just took the top off by unscrewing the hinges and wrapped it like a present. Stapled with a staple gun and we have a whole new ottoman!

Thanks be to Goodwill

Goodwills in Oregon are amazing. Well at least the ones I've been to. We picked these babies up last weekend.

Fab mirror for $20

Lamp I am in love with - $6

It's a nice mirror, but it needed something more. Something....yellow.

Add in a cheap shelf from Home Depot painted a glossy gray

Meeko helped.

Put it all together and what have ya got?

I love it. I really just want to stare at it all day.

Back to the lamp. Billy found this link on making a lampshade out of paper. I had actually just been to JoAnns and bought a poster board, a metal 8" ring, and some some wire. Billy folded the poster, we hot glued the ring inside the top and wired around the ring to it would hang on the lamp.

It's perfect!

Resolutions

Resolution update!

1) I've been going to the gym 5 times a week and feel really good about it. I had a session with the personal trainer testing out my "fit score" (hmmmmm) and have another one next week where we can figure out a good work out system for me. Also I went to Zumba last night and LOVED it. So much fun. So yay working out!

2) Organizing-- well mostly we're been focusing on making the living room, but I hope to have get the office pretty before next weekend.

3) Crafty a go go! making the living room pretty is totally getting to my craft receptors!

4) Reading- I got bored with my book. Oops.

5) School- I've been researching some school and job options. I should be getting apps together this week!


So far so good. Here's to you, New Year.

Art! Making the house into a home

Bill and I were unhappy with our living room. Ok I was unhappy with the living room. I don't really know if Bill had a problem with it. We rearranged some furniture around which helped, but it needed something more. The art we had on the wall that we had made this summer wasn't what we really wanted. Then I saw this and loved it. So that's what we did! Instead of canvas we used crafting plywood. Each piece was less than $5. We painted a light coat of cream colored paint, watered down enough that we could still see a little grain. Then we taped our trees and painted away! After drying we hot glued wooden blocks on and stuck some sawtooth hangers on the blocks. Tada! Art!

Setting up. 

Bill taping the trees and getting inspiration from the original.

Cutting out branches.

Trees!

Paint!

Hot gluing the blocks. 

The finished product. 

Welcome to Oregon

We've been here 6 months now. It's hard to believe that so much and so little time has passed. On one hand, it seems like just yesterday Billy and I were hanging out with friends in San Diego, but on the other our little life here feels so normal.

There's still a bit of growing up and growing into our apartment to do though. I thought, what better way to start off the new year than be totally cliche and have a million New Year's Resolutions and start a blog to hold myself accountable!

The Resolutions:
- Generic "get fit." So far so good. I've gone to the gym 4 days in a row and then went hiking yesterday. Back to the gym tomorrow after work, I actually felt weird not going today. I have a personal training session on Thursday which will hopefully figure out exactly what goals I have and a plan to reach them.
-Cleaning and organizing and making this apartment home. eeehhhhh this one hasn't been as good. Hopefully this week I'll get started.
-Be crafty. Well Billy and I made some art tonight, so that's a start. I got a bunch of craft supplies for  Christmas and I want to use them all.
-Read more. I've gotten lazy. Finished one book yesterday (The Square Root of Murder by Ada Madison) and have started a new one already (The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child) which I did not realize was the 7th in the series, that would explain some of the confusion.
-Get my shit together for school. I need to figure out what I want and do it. I've had too many false starts.

So let's see how far I get on this list this year!