The scene of many future gags

Our living room is the place where we do the most...well...living.  I think this is why it was the first room that we painted and the one that I have been tweaking the most since we moved in.  I waited for a while to take the final shot to post because I keep changing things in there, but since there is no clear point where I will be finished, I just went ahead and took these.  I like how the couch balances the very long room and provides enough seating so that we don't have to figure out how to arrange a chair in the layout.  The floors are nice enough that we only need a small rug for the coffee table, so it worked out that all of our stuff fit perfectly in the room.  I am envisioning lots of future family photos, and maybe even a full showgirl/juggler/elephant display in our 138th Show Spectacular.

As to the built-ins around the TV, I have to give pretty much all of the inspiration credit to Young House Love on these shelves.  They painted the backs of their built-ins in pretty much the same color (Martha Stewart Plumage) and it was such an amazing idea that I had to use it!  They also inspired me to make a little time capsule of mementos from our UK trip in a sealed mason jar on the right as well as a collection of business cards from all the Top Chef restaurants that we have visited in a vase on the left.

To finish out the look, I used the white objects I have been slowly accumulating to place in front of the dark color, then I grabbed all of the books in our collection that were white/cream or turquoise to get myself started placing objects.  I had to add my beautiful vase from Anthropologie with teal and coral because I just love it so much, so I pulled a couple of things with the reddish color to make it fit in the scheme.  One of my favorite arrangements is the full collection of the Series of Unfortunate Events books that I stumbled on in my local Goodwill, which made for a fun pop of color at the base of the shelves on the right.  So far I like the balance and the layout, although I'm sure it will change as time passes and new objects are found/acquired since I would love to use these highly visible shelves to display all of our favorite things over the years!

Getting things together upstairs

Over the weekend hubs and I decided to tackle the master bathroom.  Since our first walk through I have wanted to paint this room.  No offense to the previous owners, but it was clear that this room was heavily neglected.  It wasn't even featured in the photos on the real estate website, despite the lovely soaker tub, standing shower, and double vanities.  That was likely because of the original brass-ish hardware, filthy grout, chipping paint.  Yargh.

But, thankfully, no more!  We started with a full paint job, covering the yellow faux finish with a nice coat of Sparkling Brook by Martha Stewart.  Then, as we painted we noticed that the towel bar near the shower was held up with, wait for it...Scotch. Tape.  Yup, you read that correctly, it was held up with scotch tape.  Needless to say, that prompted us to add "install a new towel bar" to the list of weekend projects.  After the hubs successfully added new quality hardware in brushed nickel, double so that we can share the prime real estate, it felt much, much better in there.

Then I got to play with the details, noticing that the Monet print that has graced all of my bathrooms since my first apartment was rather muddy with the new bright blue walls.  So I slapped some scrapbook paper in the Monet's white frame (after hubs suggested something graphic instead of a photo) and came up with something perfect for 60 cents, score!  Add that to the fun new bathmats and acrylic accessories, and it's darn near a spa in there, at least to me.  Love it.

The second project I tackled upstairs was styling the black bookshelf at the top of the stairs.  I saw a pin on Pinterest featuring black and white wallpaper in a black hutch, and I absolutely loved it.  Same idea as the blue shelves in the living room, only with paper instead of paint.  After racking my brain for the easiest way of adding paper, I decided on contact paper (cheap, self sticking, small amount on the roll).  I ordered some on Amazon and was actually able to cover the backing in about 30 minutes with minimal problems.  Then I got to style the bookshelves and grabbed some random sentimental objects from around the home, such as my old glasses for the top of the "Girl with Glasses" book and the watch of Jeremy's that I semi-stole our first year together.  I also found an owl for the Harry Potter bookshelf at the local Ross, it was too perfect to pass up :-).  I think it will be a continuous process like the built-ins in the living room, but for now I'm happy.

Slightly closer so that you can appreciate the details

Last day as a homemaker

My real full-time job starts on Monday, which means that today was my last day to have the whole day alone in the house to focus fully on decorating before there will be more things on my mind.  So I decided to make the most of it by completing as many projects as I could formulate, which turned out to be family silhouettes, framing a swatch of wallpaper, sewing curtains, and bleaching the grout in our bathroom (slightly less glamorous/creative).  Truly a crammed day, just the way I like it!

Our family silhouettes, I think I need to add hair to mine to make me look less bald

 Beautiful Schumacher wallpaper that is much to expensive, but the sample was free!

 Oh boy, did this grout need bleaching.  All I could think was "untidy, untidy!!!"

 Sewing a $5 shower curtain from Salvation Army into three curtains, no ears of corn to be found

 Beginnings of our library with the curtains.  Still needs window seat cushions and bookshelves

 Our lovely new pub table arrived today, so simple to assemble!

Overall a very productive day, but of course all I can see are the multitudes of things left to accomplish.  Every day should get us a little cozier, a little more snug, a little more nested,

Welcome home!

And so it begins, cue the clouds, the theme music, and "The Fowlers" in diminishing yellow text.

Welcome to our little life here in the Triad, just a young married couple and their dog.  The Simpsons brought us together back when we were teenagers, we had a reading from them in our wedding, and we pretty much quote it every day, so it seems only fitting that it be our blog's theme.  So expect multiple references in every post, just FYI.

We have moved around a lot as a couple (four homes in three states so far), but now it seems that we have planted the seeds to what will become the roots of our life together.  A wonderful job opportunity brought us to Greensboro, NC, and by pure luck we found our current home over our one weekend of house hunting paid for by the hubs' new company.  We love it.  I have had two weeks between closing and starting my new job to make it our own, and so far things are progressing well.  However, I am learning that I need to retrain myself out of the renter mindset.

I'm sure you know what I mean, since most everyone rents at least once in one's life, but I will specify my own definition.  In the renter's mindset, I can already see the end of my time in a place.  Walls that are painted need to be repainted.  Holes that are made need to be completely refilled without a mark to avoid paying extra.  Anything that you want to do with the decor needs to be done immediately, otherwise you will run out of time to enjoy it and spend the rest of your home decorating life trying to recreate that perfect arrangement, or stuck in a mental pigeonhole of how things fit together.  But here, there is no end in sight.  Things that I do don't have to be undone.  Walls will stay that color until I change them.  Projects can wait for months or even years until I come across the perfect piece at an antique store or consignment shop.  It's so liberating, I tells ya.

So the purpose of this blog will be to document our journey as real-life, mortgage holding, home decorating, root-planting grown-ups.  Hope you will enjoy reading about it as much as we will enjoy living it!