Master Bedroom Updates

The master bedroom was the first bedroom that I have ever had a real vision for. After browsing countless design websites and perusing several magazines, I had an idea of what I wanted to look like. It honestly came out better than I had imagined, and I felt even more inspired to continue working on the rest of the house. It's a lovely room to come home to and I find it to be very peaceful, relaxed, and elegant.

More photos after the jump!

Bathroom Updates

Here's the latest on the upstairs bathroom. First it got a new window. Sorry no pictures of that in progress. It got a new paint color (a nice light grey) and all the trim and medicine cabinet got several new coats of white semi-gloss paint, and finally some accessories from Ikea.

Then the bathroom also got a new shade (thanks to my new-found roman shade diy skills) and a new shower curtain.

Just for reference (and because who doesn't like a before and after?!), here's what the bathroom looked like when we first bought the house. Photos after the jump.

DIY Roman Shades

This is a project that I honestly was not sure I would be able to do.  I had this fabric that I found at Hancock Fabrics and I had the idea that there must be some way to make your own roman shade.  We have two nice windows in our kitchen that face our neighbors house (actually they look right into the neighbor's kitchen).  We didn't need to cover the windows completely - we actually quite like our neighbors and we often back and forth through the windows.  They even invited us to dinner through the window once, it was too cute.  Anyways, the windows did need to be dressed up and I wanted some kind of accent color for our yellow and white kitchen.  After a lot of googling, I came across this website at Martha Stewart and this one from HGTV.  Ugh, the photos had me drooling (I love the one with the ribbon applique) and I thought I could do it, but wasn't that thrilled since I have such limited time between grad school courses, externship, and lab work.  So, I was even more excited when I found this post on how to make roman shades from cheap mini-blinds from Target.  Many thanks to Jenny for her brilliant idea.  There's another tutorial here if you want more info on this project.

Here's an in progress shot...

And a couple of afters...

They look fab and they work great.  I couldn't be happier and since this first attempt I've made three more, one for the bathroom (with a ribbon applique!!) and two for the living room to replace the mini-blinds that were there.  I still have another to make for the living room and might even be making two more for the guest bedroom.  Basically, I'm crazy about roman shades now.   

Dining Room Update

 Here's what the dining room looks like of late.  The wall color is new, as is the white buffet with baskets and many of the accessories (the posters and mirror are from our apartment, the rest of the accessories are new).

More photos and some before pictures after the jump.

Living Room Update

Here's the living room as of today.  What we've done in here: painted, bought furniture, rug, and other accessories, made roman shades for 2 out of the 3 windows (still going to put up curtains on top of the shades), and of course decorated for the holidays.

More photos and before pictures after the jump.

Living Room Thoughts

It's been a while since I've posted here, my 2nd year of graduate school is really kicking my butt. As the semester winds down, I'm finding it harder and harder to stay focused on schoolwork and have started thinking about what to actually do with our living room using the sofa we already purchased from West Elm in between the winter blizzards. Here's what I've come up with. Enjoy!

Closets!

Our new favorite handyman/contractor Javier finished our closets in only a few days! Hooray!! Now I have a space for my clothes that is not the makeshift rack next to my bed.  It has been a blast getting the new closets organized.  I'm not completely finished with the organization process but here's some photos anyways of the progress and the completed product!

Finished product after the jump.

More Shoveling

Ugh, I was about to publish this post as the celebratory last snow of this winter, but it turns out there's another blizzard headed our way.  Snow is supposed to be coming in on full force from Friday morning to Saturday afternoon.  Is there no end to this?!

Anyways, here are some pictures from the last snow (yesterday).

More photos after the jump!

House Updates: Photos

I know it's been a while since I posted new pictures of our progress.  Major renovations have thankfully been completed.  We're still slowly furnishing all of our new rooms and enjoying the little discoveries that come with living in a new (old) home.  Here are some photos I took of the downstairs.

More photos after the jump!

Houseguests

Many thanks to Raquel and Yasmin for spending the weekend with us a few weekends ago!  We had a great time and it felt like college again (in a good way) with so many wonderful Wes alums under the same roof.

Come back soon!

Home for the Holidays

One of my favorite part of the holidays was decorating our house with Christmas lights. Our neighbors have complimented us on our decorations several times! So exciting!!

After brief stint in LA for Xmas, it was nice to come home to our little bungalow. While I was out there, I got to see Chi Young and Elliot and their GORGEOUS new home (also a bungalow) of which I will not post pictures here because it puts our house to shame. But, it gave us a lot of inspiration for what our little bungalow can become one day!  It was wonderful to see my family (who I hope will all come to visit the new house soon)!

Let it Snow!

One of the joys of homeownership that we were in no way prepared for was shoveling snow. The DC area got a massive amount of snow during the blizzard of 2009. And, of course, we had no snow shovel. Shout out to Ginny and Randy, Gil, and Jeff and Becky, our generous and kind neighbors who lent us their shovels at various points throughout the 3-day-long snow shoveling marathon!

After shoveling out two cars and our sidewalk, my arms were about to fall off. So we jumped in the snow to celebrate. Here's Masai after jumping from our porch, face first into the snow. Yikes! It was actually really fun...and cold. Here's hoping there is no more shoveling until next year =)

Thanksgiving

We were so excited to have our first Thanksgiving in our new place and even more excited that our moms (Chantal and Diane, wearing matching jackets) came to cook for us! Here are some photos of the finished kitchen and the delicious dinner!

Settling In

Well, we did it. After a crazy couple of months of moving and unpacking and refinishing floors and dealing with leaks and all other kinds of disasters, we have just about settled into our new home. A big thank you to our moms, Chantal and Diane, who gave us the help we needed to get it done and to Pete for coming to our rescue and helping us move at the last minute!

Our last picture in our apartment

Pete and Chantal

Many things remain to be done, but for now, we're just happy picking out new furniture and rearranging things to our hearts content.

Progress!

This weekend, we were pleasantly surprised to see major progress on the house. We are moving in next weekend so we were also quite relieved.

Tiles in the bathroom!

Walls in the living room!

Walls in the kitchen!

A fridge!

Randy and Jay stopped by too!