Yellow and pale blue work so well together. I love round mirrors hung by cords. Perhaps this would work? The curves of the lamp juxtaposed to the hard edges of the cabinet put a smile on my face. The ash-stained wood is amazing and unexpected; and the brass feet finish it off perfectly.

Love.

I’m still styling the bookcase, but I wanted to share some teaser photos with you! It was a long, arduous process, but Billy is painted! I’m not sure how well it’ll hold, as I noticed some chipping while I was putting things back together, but the shelves are in and the books are on, and that’s the hard part! I should have a more thorough run down of my process later this week!

(We picked up the metal typeset characters at the DC Big Flea this past weekend — only $4!)

He is way too dark! In my old apartment he worked, but now that we have a lighter, airier feel to the space (not yet, that is), I want something lighter! So this weekend, I plan to tackle the bookcase with some primer, some paint, and git-r-done! I was inspired, and plan to follow Centsational Girl’s post on painting laminate furniture.

So Billy, get ready to meet your match! (Wish me luck, DC has been suffering some serious humidity so this’ll be an indoor project..)

While I’m busy getting the new place set up, I wanted to share some recently found inspiration with you. We are working on our bedroom right now, and it’s very cozy, neutral and nice. But we were looking for something with some contrast, a black sculpture or something — so I headed to Jonathan Adler’s site, knowing he had some amazing black sculptures! Little did I know, they had an area called “Show us your JA style“.

Upon further inspection, I happened upon these lovely spaces. Shall we take a look?

What do I love about this space? The openness of it! This entry has made this place perfect (well, except for the mail sitting on the Nelson bench in the foreground..)! Those bookcases in the background are amazing, and they have been carefully edited for perfect balance. Love it!

WALL COLOR. WOW. I mean honestly! If I could get away with painting a room or a wall in this house that color, I would! I am in love with those inky wall colors right now. But I really don’t think I would get away with it here! (Mostly because we don’t get a lot of light in the house..)

Pattern, pattern, pattern. All the different patterns make this work! Not to mention that LCW chair in the foreground. ;)

Perfection. Balance, color, depth, contrast. It’s just perfect. And hello, Nelson bench! I’m still trying to convince the boyfriend we need one. ;)

So go check it out for yourself! If you’ve got a piece of Jonathan Adler in your home, why don’t you enter!

The landlord, when she lived there, must have planted some ivy for ground cover, which would have been all well and good, had it not turned into this:

Completely overgrown! To make matters worse, every time I walked up the front steps to the door I would get whacked in the face with a cobweb from the over grown bushes. Not to mention the little bugs that would nip at my arms and legs as I fumbled to get in the house! Needless to say, after a couple weeks, I was sick of being bitten and entering the house with a mouth-full of spider-web!

So Friday night, the boyfriend and I hustled over to Lowe’s to stock up on things we’d need to get the job done! I actually got out of work a couple hours early that day and made one of my tasks to trim the hedges before we got started with the rest of the work Saturday morning. Once stocked up at Lowe’s, we came home and got to bed to get an early start! Little did I know that the boyfriend’s definition of early start was to get out there at 7am, demolishing the overgrown ivy and various ground cover.

After a cup of coffee to wake me up, I suited up in long-sleeves and pants (don’t want all those misplaced bugs coming after our sweet skin!) to help tackle the task of taking the front yard back from all the buggies! A few hours later we were looking much better! (Well, the yard was at any rate, we definitely weren’t going to win any beauty pageants after all that labor!)

Want to see what we ended up with? Well, here you go!

Look, Ma! No weeds! Boy, does that ivy root itself in there! I’m sure we’ll be picking it out weekly for a while, the only way we would’ve gotten all the weeds out would have been to till the yard, and well, I don’t want to buy a till!

We bought a new hose, since the old one burst apart when I turned it on (which equals me, soaked, ugh), laid some pavers down to prevent the drip-off from creating a muddy pit, and purchased four bags of black mulch to really finish it off! Sadly, those hideous scalloped edgers were already in place, and since it’s just a rental, I’m not going out of my way to purchase new ones!

We may end up planting some flowers, but for now, it’s a low maintenance solution to our front yard. 5 hours of work, 4 bags of yard-waste, and less than $75 later, we have a happy yard!

I prefer to just sit here staring out the window, contemplating how exactly to get to that darned squirrel, or that feisty blue jay…

You do realize it’s a holiday weekend right? Your favorite holiday? The one that’s supposed to be filled with beer and barbecue and those bright, noisy things in the sky? Really, no thanks.

I’ll be in the way, for sure. But I’ll take naps here and there. Like.. now. Have fun doing all that stuff this weekend, I’ll be here, on this ottoman, soaking up the sun.

*yaaaawn* Hey, can you open the blinds a bit? I need to work on my tan.

We have a huge space on our dining room wall that will need something. I’ve had a couple ideas, but this may be the simplest with the biggest result! Now to convince the boyfriend that this would be awesome for our wall! Our curtains are green, black, white and tan — would be an interesting combination to work with — maybe we’d even take it in a completely different direction in a complementary color.. Things to think about!
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Side note: Our new house is still a huge mess. Our rooms are getting switched around, furniture is still being moved around and we still have a few boxes left! We’ll get started on more blog-worthy projects soon!

The West Elm Totem Duvet and Sham set is a wonderfully graphic set. Though it may be too much punch for our small, low-light bedroom.

I first saw the Room and Board Washable Wool blanket in Charcoal Stripe when the boyfriend and I went to visit the new Room and Board store in D.C. last week. It was just so soft and subtly graphic in person that I would put the money down for it, for sure.

As you can tell, I’m going toward a grey theme for blankets on the bed. Both are graphic, and I’d pair either with some crisp white linens and a brightly colored pillow or two.

Our movers were scheduled to arrive around 9:30-10, so we headed over to Caribou Coffee for one last treat and for me to grab some fuel (caffeine) — but we got called half way there and had to turn around — they were already there and it wasn’t even 9am!

So after a bit of rushing and figuring out the best way for them to access my apartment, they got to work and had my furniture moved just as quickly as they got there. They were off to the boyfriend’s apartment, and while I ran to Starbucks for my much needed Skinny Vanilla Latte (iced, of course, since it was already 85 degrees and only 10am) the movers got to work on his place. I got a call on my way home, 15 minutes later, from Chuck telling me they were almost done at his place!!

Once they had everything packed at both our places, we headed off to the new townhouse for them to wind things up the staircase. Everything went up smoothly except our queen box-springs, which prompted a Sunday morning trip to Ikea. And of course, the one piece of furniture I really wanted them to be careful with — my new dresser — was the one thing that got damaged. Just a small chip in the veneer on one side and a scuff of paint from the baseboards as they were trying to get it up the stairs, but still! It slipped out of their hands and dropped about 6 inches onto one of the guys legs (remember those skinny little legs? Ouch!) and I about had a heart-attack!

This was the scene Monday morning. We are still making progress, and we still have a lot of work to do — but we are getting there. Did you notice I am trying color coordinated books? I believe I wrote an old post on how much I hated it — but because we have such a small amount of reading material, I figured it would be worth a try!

Kira is also loving the stairs in the new place — she keeps running up and down them! Hopefully she’ll lose a bit of weight — she was getting a bit chubby! ;) In fact, it probably wouldn’t hurt any of us!

Hopefully we’ll be more organized in the next week and I can really start sharing some of the things we are doing and have planned for the space! :)

We also managed to get a lot of our small stuff in this weekend, but with all the dressers and bookcases and everything still at our apartments, we just have boxes lying around.

Silly me packed away my camera cord, so you’ll have to imagine that the dark iPhone photos you are about to see are actually a lot lighter. To recap, this is the old living room and master bedroom:

Pretty plain and boring huh? Personally I think the white makes the space look extremely dingy. But with our new colors, the space has more dimension and warmth.

Sadly the lighting is not very good. These were taken late in the day, and right after a thunderstorm, so it’s very dark. But we’re making progress! And it will all come together very quickly!

Time to get back to packing and cleaning. Such is the life of a perpetual mover!