a home

I am not a decorator.  While I like to claim that I am a lover of art and design (mostly of the clothing-type variety), home decor just has never done it for me.  As long as my house was clean and tidy, I never really cared about how it was decorated.

Then I became a stay-at-home-mom.

I realized that I never cared about how my house looked because I was never there.  I worked all day, and we went out of town on the weekends probably 50% of the time.  I suddenly had to stare at the space that I had created 15 hours a day.  As I spent day after day in our apartment, I realized the following:

1. Our apartment gets no sunlight.  We are on the bottom floor of a building, and there is a deck above our only light source.

2. The neutral "beach theme" worked when we lived on the beach.  Now that we were in an apartment with neutral walls and no architectural beauty, it was just drab and dull.

3. We have an incredible patio with so much potential.

I'll be honest; I found our apartment to be downright depressing.  Something had to be done.  

Of course, we have no money for this.  We certainly didn't budget to redecorate our living room any time soon, so I went to Pinterest to try to figure out what we could do on the cheap.

Here's what we did:

Step 1: Go green.  My mom and I went to Lowes where she bought me a house plant and some plants for the patio.  It's amazing how much a house plant brightens up a room.  I also made a commitment to myself to always have fresh flowers on our dining room table.

Step 2: Let there be light.  We got rid of the vertical blinds on our sliding glass doors!  The vertical blinds were not only an eyesore, they also prevented any light from coming through into the living room.  My mom and Cliff bought us sheer curtains from Ikea that we put up instead.  Now we can have privacy while also gaining what little light comes through to our patio.  And they look so much cuter!

Step 3: A DIY.  My mom gave us a blank canvas that she had in the garage, some old frames, and lent us her paint.  We decided to do a chevron design on the canvas and paint the frames a shabby chic style blue.  Word of advice.  Two engineers + geometric design = longest project ever.  Don't attempt this if you are married to a perfectionist.  I have to say though, we have some dang perfect chevrons.  As for the frames, I haven't figured out what I want to put in them.

Step 4: Fung shui.  My mom helped me move around our furniture to make the room cozier.  We put the couch at an angle in the corner and put a table behind it.  I love the way it makes the room feel.  The couch now faces the light from the sliding glass doors instead of the tv wall.

Step 5: A splurge.  Wouldn't you know it?  The month that we were working on all this, Doug received an award at work (go Doug!)  This award came with cash!  We decided to spend $150 on room upgrades.  We bought two new pillows for the couch and new lampshades.  I went back and forth on whether to DIY lampshades, but these puppies were $20 at Target.  With the cost of fabric paint, stencils, and crazy anal-ness that would have resulted, I decided to just buy these.

So, that's where we are.  It's still not a dream home or anything, but the bright colors definitely make the space happier.  I wish I loved home decor.  I wish it could be something that I cared about as much as my wardrobe, but I just don't.  So for now I'll be happy with lots of bright colors, pattern overload, and too many pictures of Little Miss Cuteness.