guest room - re-do!

So our guest room, aka the future nursery, is kind of a disaster right now. I bought a great plain fabric headboard for $50, but have yet to find the perfect fabric to upholster it in. At least the walls are neutral... I bought navy and white bedding that I'm already bored with, we have old Ikea furniture that I'm dying to get rid of (the only pieces of furniture from our old apartment), and on top of all that, Brian uses the guest closet for his clothing since our master is full with my stuff, so there's clothing and shoes spilling out. Ugh, it's just a mess! I'd really like to update it since it will probably be another year or so (boo...!) until we make it a nursery. The only guests we ever have are Justin & Ethan and... guilt trip guys... they hardly ever stay with us!

So, here I am at work, pretty bored, and I decided to make my very first mood board! It's basically my ideas for the room, jumbled together. What I'm in the mood to put in this room! It's not all exactly what I want, but you'll get the idea ;) (I'm going to work on more at home, but photoshop will be more of my friend than picnik.com was for this!)



I'd like to have the bed sheets in all white, and that way I can add color with pillows (that's what I forgot to put on the mood board!). We already have the sunburst mirror, so I'll work that into the room. I want to get rid of all furniture, and just add in a side table and a bookshelf--both I have on here are great! I'd like more lighting, so if the lamp doesn't give enough light, I'd love the hanging lamp or something similar to this, with a pattern. Lamps Plus has a ton of styles! (They're pricy, though.) I love the velvety headboard-- I've been trying to find a velvet fabric for the headboard we have in a deep raspberry color. The vacancy photograph is awesome-- but, I want to take my own picture to frame and hang in the guest room. Cute idea, don't you think?

That's it's for today! Just a little decor for thought ;)

Home Sweet Home... finally!

Many apologies for taking SO long to post about our new house! It took us forever to decorate and get around to taking pictures that were worth posting... but here it is... our first home! :)

On July 15th, we officially closed escrow on our townhouse! The sellers rented back from us until the 25th because they needed more time to get into their new house, and as soon as they were gone, the renovations began! We wanted to wait until we had the house together to blog, because we thought it would be fun to post before and after pictures-- especially for those of you who may not get a chance anytime soon to come see the house.

*A big thank you goes out to Sandy, who worked for us pro-bono! haha Pays to know people in high places :) She helped us find and buy furniture, and arranged ALL of the work we had done on the house... and man, was there a lot to do! We did more work than we planned, but that is much thanks to Sandy, because with her help we were able to get more for our money... and all the work was done within 3 weeks! So thanks Sandy, for being our 24 hour on-call interior designer, problem solver, and go-to gal! :) (And also to Sandy and my dad for letting us be their temporary roomies for a few months!)*

We officially moved into our house on August 23, 2008!

In a nutshell, the work we did was: scraped the ceilings (got rid of the popcorn), replaced the flooring everywhere except for the kitchen and bathrooms, re-tiled the fireplace, re-tiled the entry/step, remodeled the kitchen cabinets and countertops, replaced the lighting in all the bathrooms, painted the bathroom cabinets, painted every single wall in the house (+ the ceilings), replaced the railing on the wall going up the stairs, replaced the baseboards in the kitchen, and replaced the old fluorescent lighting in the kitchen with recessed lights... and then we topped that all off with all new furniture everywhere except for the guest bedroom! Whew! Thanks to all that, we are living on a very tight budget now, but it was worth it... we have a beautiful home that we're very proud of, and one we are looking forward to starting our family in!


Now for the main purpose of this blog entry... the BEFORE & AFTER pictures!

KITCHEN (yeah, there's no way we could've lived with this! haha)




(everything was covered in plastic while the ceilings were being scraped)






MUCH better!! we love our little kitchen


DINING ROOM (flows from kitchen)

(what it looked like when the sellers lived there)



LIVING ROOM & FIREPLACE (boring!)

(what it looked like before the sellers moved out)




what a mess...



ENTRY STEP (parquet wood floor = no go)

in process



WALL BETWEEN MASTER BEDROOM & GUEST ROOM (aka the "Ketubah wall")



MASTER BEDROOM

(when the sellers lived there)

a VERY belated holiday post

I admit, I sort of dropped the ball on posting holiday pictures....

We invited our family over for our first Hanukkah party in our new home! We made hundreds of latkes and had everyone bring something, so we had a ton of food, in true Jew style! :)

Thanks everyone for joining us!

making latkes!

yuuummmmyyyy!!!!

stealing latkes, E?

Bri cooking up a storm!

moi

lighting the candles before dinner




it's finally dinnertime!





Uncle Allan, Bubi, Dad

Andrea & Denise

Andrea & Aunt Fran

brotherly love... or something along those lines

I often make this face when Justin points the camera... first thing that comes to mind, I guess...

work it!

fisheye Nick!

um, yeah...

hmmmm....

family gathering

my two favorite men :)

Bubi, me & Nana

Ethan & Aunt Fran


It's present time!






it's the iTouch! ;) (ok, actually ipod touch-- Justin....)

Nick receiving his gift...

Nick dropping his gift...

it's safe!

our gift... surround sound system!



overall a great, successful party!!