Being Unoriginal

I too have hopped onto the Ikea Rast hack bandwagon. Its just so hard not to give in to blogger peer pressure. That and a $30 pricetag for a dresser/nightstand. Which, get this, was only $10 each for me! Here's the whole shebang. Ikea Seattle was doing interviews in local homes to take pictures and ask us questions like what's your favorite style chair (everyone else had told them Henriksdal and I was all Tobias), what kind of room layouts would you like to see displayed, blah blah. It was actually really fun. J made his famous snickerdoodles which the Ikea gals were so thankful for (I guess other people don't feed their guests) and after just half an hour they were on their way to the next home. My biggest thing was patios. A lot of apartments if not most in Seattle are outfitted with balconies so rooms featuring that layout would be great. Anyway for allowing us to be a part of Ikea Seattle, they gave us $50 in an Ikea gift card! After debating what to get (a gazillion plants to murder with my black thumb) I thought it would be a worthy investment to get matching nightstands with more drawer space. A year ago I bought the Ikea Nordli for its slim profile. One wall had a window and the opposite wall had a desk and dresser so we opted for one nightstand, like so.

It worked out for a while but when our friend moved out of our extra room, we decided to convert his old room into an office/guest room. So, while J was at work and I should've been studying, I moved our desk and dresser into the guest room, which opened up an entire wall of space. I measured and voila, two Rast dressers would fit perfectly, leaving just enough room to the master bath door. One Ikea trip and two vodka lemonades later... 

Please don't mind the unfinished bottom edge of that large abstract art. It was clearly a diy... Anyway, I was debating between a bin pull or a more modern tab pull. Because the width of the dresser, putting two bin pulls per drawer was too busy, not to mention way too expensive for my bedroom budget. In the end I went with the Blankett handles from Ikea. 

Each pack was $9.99 and I needed just three packs. They don't look like much in the box but I decided to spray mine oil-rubbed bronze for a more industrial look. The end result? 

They repeat that simple edge on our new duvet. My first adult non-Ikea bedding! Getting all growns-up here, folks. It's actually a linen cotton blend so its super light weight but still keeps in all the warmth. 

Sorry for the crap photos. A camera is on my wishlist! Toodles.

Playing Catch Up

So I'm about six months behind on posting since every other blogger starts holiday decorating right after Labor Day. Truth be told, it was pretty uneventful. I was finishing up studies and working while J was doing the same but with two jobs. We were poop tired and didn't get our Christmas tree until December. Here are some shots in all their belated glory.

I decided to go with a simple black, white, and gold. That gold pinecone wrapping paper was from Target, and although beautiful, gold glitter rubbed off EVERYWHERE. Oh well. Hope everyone had a great holiday! 

Gallery Wall Is Up!

After two years of living here, I have made a LOT of holes in the walls. After patching some up and not wanting to do that again, here's what I've learned.

Be patient. Instead of rushing to hammer in a nail to put up that new frame, play around with everything first. Lay it all down on a large table or on the floor, like so.

Those large canvases are a diy, one inspired by the West Elm version. I wanted to make them cohesive, so they all use black, gray, white, and gold. I'm constantly adding more art as I find it/create it. 

Also, 3M tape! Their velcro strips hold up to seven pounds each for the medium size so no more holes! 

Girl Crush: Clare Elsaesser

I don't have the budget for "real" art. Between school, work, and you know, buying a thousand cups of yogurt on which to subsist while I go to school and work, there's not much left to invest in good art at the moment. But if I did somehow have the money, I'd buy everything this gal made.

Walking Trees

Swirl

Ring of Roses

I would love to add the Walking Trees to my gallery wall in the living room and will be my first "real" art purchase. Can't wait! 

Look What I Found!

Apologies for the weeks of nothingness on the blog! Nothing's really happened on the home front except... Ikea came to my house! They came for a little interview and to take a look at my home. It was a team of three wonderful gals dressed in those not so wonderful yellow Ikea shirts. We ate J's famous snickerdoodles and went over some questions, took some pictures, had an amazing time, blah blah. They probably say it to everyone, but they said our home was the BEST! I'll take it.

Other than that, the real meaning of this post is to go over my lucky garage sale finds. I forgot to take a picture of the items as they were on the street, but this is one of them:

They were two for $20! The seller's grandma lived in Japan in the 40's and 50's. Everything is solid wood, although the finish on them was bad, the metal was tarnished, and some hardware (those decorative circles) was missing. I wanted to modernize it a bit so I took off the handles (there are tiny knobs on the circle plates in the middle) and the decorative circles and painted it charcoal. All those metal details were hammered in so I had to painstakingly paint around every edge. Each one took about 90 minutes. Below is when the paint was still drying. 

Good ole' after. 

Total cost for this project was $20 but if you don't have paint and a brush, those would cost you about $15. Have you found any bargains lately? 

Belated Updates

I've been completely gone off the blog, my apologies. I've just been swamped with work, vacation plans, scheduling, school, general running around the city-ness, blah blah. Yet... I have not completed anything and I have two blank canvases sitting right next to me. Hopefully this week will see more action on the blog.

In the bedroom, where my desk is, I changed the ledge from black to white to lighten up the wall. I added my leopard clutch to the frames up there and finally bought a clear acrylic tray for the desktop. It ties in with the clear acrylic chair and it only costs $7 from Hobby Lobby! Buying an actual tray would have been at least $40 and this is actually a picture frame you can find here. Just pop out the cardboard back and voila! Cheap-a$$ tray.

These dinosaurs are also from Hobby Lobby. Originally, they look like this:

After some gold rub n' buff, they become these beauts. You can turn them into magnets, cake toppers, place card holders, pretty much anything, but for now they're just in the clear tray for some added masculinity. Because dinosaurs are manly. Even if they're gold. 

And two coffee plants that are still alive three days later. Chilling in the living room. 

Ellie was curious. And she's an attention-whore. And photo-bombed my picture.

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Have a great weekend, everyone! 

I Got One Too

Everyone is getting one of these Vittsjo pieces from Ikea.

A few weeks ago, I was perusing CL and found the nesting coffee tables. I left the tab open for J and less than 24 hours later, we brought it home for less than half price. 

For now, its just the original black, but I think I want to paint it gold. Or not. I'm not sure. I'm wildly indecisive. I'll be back in like... five minutes with another post with some updates.