One step forward, two steps back...

Hope you all had a fabulous long weekend! Our was spent unpacking A LOT, organizing, and purging of all the stuff we don't need.  There is a LONG way to go still, but any progress feels good!  In between all the unpacking, and seemingly endless errands, we enjoyed some pretty sunsets off the back deck...

... we also started up season 2 of House of Cards... in bed... with coffee.  Such an indulgence!  Side note: is anyone else as obsessed with Kevin Spacey as I am??? I love evil Kevin Spacey and his saucy southern accent.

And my honey got me some absolutely GORGEOUS flowers for Valentines day...

Aside from smelling the roses, admiring pretty sunsets and watching TV in bed, I made some progress on the living room... kind of.

I painted.

It all started out great! All the holes were getting patched, cracks, chips and wall scuffs from four years of wear and tear were getting covered up, and the paint was going on as a pretty light grey.

I even had a little fun with the paint before rolling the walls out...

All fun and games right??

Wrong. 

Somewhere between belting out a Taylor Swift song, and starting in on the second coat, the paint started to dry.

That's when things took a turn...

While I was confident at first, the paint was getting darker and darker as it dried... and more and more blue.

Nooooooooooo!

In direct light it wasn't so bad, but the blue (lavender almost) undertones were feeling very "baby boy's room".  Let me tell you, after painting all day, this was NOT the look I was hoping for.

Can we say dark dungeon??  Ugh, it is not good my friends.

Granted, it was a rainy day, and this picture was taken in the late afternoon... but still.  STILL.  It's like purple in the above picture!  Ick!

To add insult to injury, the warm lamp shades, tan sofa, and creme colored curtains I hung afterwards weren't helping matters...  The yellow tone of them accentuated the blue even more.

In this next picture you can see how yellow the curtains looked next to the "grey" and how blue the grey looked next to the creme colored curtains.

Ignore the weird colors in this photo - I used the HDR filter on my phone since the light from the windows washed everything out, but

That night I swapped out the creme colored curtains out for white ones, which dramatically improved things, but the walls still look very blue to me.

More bad iPhone pictures, but I just wanted you to see the grey walls in daylight with the white curtains.

The color is called Silver Screen (by Behr) and while the sample on the paint chip and on the lid of the can looked like a pretty pale grey, it reads as blue/purple on the walls.  Hello Monica Geller's apartment.

Right??

Needless to say, I'll be repainting in the near future.  For now it's livable, but I have grand visions for this space, and they don't involve lavender walls.

Ok, moving on....

Ok, so what do I see changing in this room??  A lot.

So far, we're just working with everything we had in our last apartment, but I'm pretty adamant about selling some of this stuff, and replacing it with new things - namely, a comfortable new sofa (this is non-negotiable), and a new coffee table.  Those are the big items on my checklist.

I've saved the below pictures to my phone for inspiration in this room.

The name of the game is light and bright... classic, clean lines, and natural fibers.  

In the below photo, I love the bright pretty linen curtains hanging in this room, and the neutral linen couch.  It's clean, and simple, and inviting.  Everything I want in our living room.

This next photo captures the simplicity and color palette I want - the true grey on the walls paired with lots of white.  It's clean, inviting, and easy on the eyes.

I love the white sofas, natural wood elements and lots of greenery... so pretty.

And then of course, this next photo is one I've posted before...

It's obviously decked out for Christmas (and has a lot going on because of that), but the pale pale PALE grey walls are perfection, along with the natural fiber rug, white sofa, and lots of black and white sprinkled throughout.

Now that I've made my mistakes with the paint on the first go round, I'm going for round 2, and this time, I'm determined to get the right color of grey.

The one thing I'm thrilled about so far??

My new natural fiber rug - it's looking very handsome with the cowhide.

Stay tuned for more updates my friends...

I'm Back... Oh, and we Moved!

Thank you for all the sweet comments and emails over the past few weeks!  So touching, and it really means so much!  So much has been going on (and so much is STILL going on), but I've really missed my little blog and wanted to check in with you all!

In the last month since I checked in, the big update from my world is that we've moved!  It was a very tiring Saturday for me last weekend - especially after getting back from NY in the wee hours of the morning - but we survived! Even in the rain!

This is what the dining room in our new apartment looked like on Saturday morning before the movers started unloading...

And.... here's what it looks like now...

This is my life.

Not to scare you, but this room is looking 100% better in the above picture than it did at the end of moving day!  We've probably unpacked half of the boxes that were in there before, so this is a HUGE improvement! Just use your imagination to picture what this looked like Saturday night.  You literally could not walk through it... this is progress my friends!

More exciting news... I finally unearthed the box where I packed my underwear... so that's a plus.  I've been living out of the suitcase I'd packed for NY and was at the end of clean clothes, so it was vital that I found that box last night.  Mission accomplished.

I'll post more "before" pictures of the apartment for you all before we do anything in regards to updates, but I wanted to talk about the entryway for a few minutes.

This apartment, unlike our last apartment, actually has a little entryway.

This is the view walking in the front door.

Immediately after walking in there are two archways leading to the formal dining room (on the left) and living room (on the right), so this little entryway is the bridge between these two very open spaces.

This picture (above) is taken standing in the middle of the living room, looking back through the hall to the dining room.

And this picture (above) is taken standing in the middle of the dining room facing back through the hall to the living room.

Bright, light, and airy - which we love - but because all the rooms are connected, this means that as we decorate, all the colors and patterns in each space need to speak to one another since you'll easily be able to see them all.

The hardwood floor is also great, but there is a lot of it in a very open space which means that its EXTREMELY echo-y right now. The answer to this problem is rugs. The entry space is not necessarily wide enough for a 4x6 rug, and I'm not the hugest fan of the circular rug, so I think a runner in the entry is our best bet.

Right now, the walls are a creamy yellow color, and it's not bad at all, but I really want to accentuate how bright and pretty this space is.  There are holes to be patched, and the place hasn't been painted in at least 4 years, so it's the perfect opportunity to freshen things up.

I'm thinking a fresh white paint in the entry will bounce around as much light as possible from the bay windows flanking each of the surrounding rooms, and it will serve as a neutral background between the living and dining rooms (for which I'm thinking a pale grey).

So now that I've got the color palette of the walls somewhat settled, I set out looking for a runner, and ended up finding one really quickly that I like.  Oh and did I mention that it's extremely discounted?? It's ~$50... With free shipping.

Does it get better??

Isn't she pretty?

Navy in my mind is the softer, more preppy version of black.  I love it.

If you remember, we also had a somewhat similar grey trellis rug in our living room and in the last two years, it has served us well.  Not only has it held up, but we haven't tired of it one bit.  In the new apartment it has moved from the living room to our bedroom.  There's a new natural fiber rug in the living room which totally changes the look and feel of everything.

While the navy runner has a similar feel to the grey area rug we already own, it's different enough (in both the pattern and colorway) to be distinct.  I'd originally been thinking of a rug with a more linear pattern... maybe black and white... but I think that the majority of this being navy, and that the accent color is creme (not white) will really help mask dirt from heavy foot traffic.

I unfortunately wasn't able to sell Kris on the look of a worn rug... can't win 'em all folks... and since he really likes the grey trellis we have, I think this is something we'll both be really happy with in the end.

Now that I've picked out what runner I want... it's time to think about coordinating rugs for the dining room (that will most likely end up as an office).

I found a few that I like, and threw together a quick inspiration board just to see how they'd mesh next to each other...

Option I: Creme Colored with Abstract Ikat

Pros:
I love that this feels a little masculine, and I love that the pattern is really distinctly different from that of the runner.  I also like that the colors are pretty much identical so in terms of coordinating, they match, and while the colors are identical, each rug has the inverse color-weight of the other (one has more cream, one has more navy)

Cons:
Is it too matchy matchy in terms of colors?  I don't know.  I also just sold the off white rug that had been in our bedroom because I was never fond of how "off white" it was.  I always wished the colors had been inverse, with the cream color in the trellis print, and the background the richer taup-y color... will I feel the same about this?

Option II: Ikat Damask in muted blues 

Pros:

I love that this looks sort of aztec while also feeling somewhat traditional at the same time.  I love the tassles on the end, and the variation in the blues.  It's just really pretty to me... and I also like that it's not only VERY different from the runner which is really geographic, but that it's different from any other rug we have in our house right now.

Cons:

It looks really flat.. which I like (visually) but I worry that it will move around too much on the hardwood floor because it's lighter and has less structure.

Decisions, decisions...

Honestly I see the pros and cons to each, and I think I'd be happy with either, but I need input. I know which one I'm leaning towards more, but what do you think??

While I'm not 100% certain about which rug it will be, but I do know one thing for sure...  It feels good to be back!  I've missed you guys!

xo