Basement Overhaul

And so it began!  We took one weekend and tackled it!  We decided to paint the entire basement "Fashion Gray" by Behr.  The accent wall was what gave us some stress....and cost us a couple back to back trips to HomeDepot.... :)

Oooh!  Check out that guy's nice butt!! :)  Dan's so good at taping!

PS-That's my new table from Pier 1!  Stay tuned for updates on the chairs I found for it!

So, we thought we wanted an orange accent wall.  You would think after the wedding, we would realize how very hard orange is to get right.  Many swatches and weeks of debate still got us nowhere!  I hate to say we "gave up" on orange, but, let's face it, we did.  Plus, it's always hard to get the right color for a basement with no natural light.  So, here's our orange test...it was scary!

Not what we were looking for!  It looked like a highlighter!  We eventually decided on a tealish blue to match one square in the Crate and Barrel pillows I had my eyes on.  

Let me give you a reminder of what the basement looked like when we toured the house with our realtor:

And now the finished product!

What a process!  But SO much fun!  Here is a source list for anyone that might be interested:

1. Orange Bench - Homegoods (St. Louis Park)

2. Sparkly Gray Pillow on Bench - Homegoods (Burnsville)

3. White Mirror - Homegoods (Burnsville)

4. Gray Sectional Couch - Ikea

5. Colorful Pillows on Couch - Crate and Barrel (Zenith Throw Pillow)

6. Orange Throw Blanket - Ikea

7. Black End Table - Homegoods (St. Louis Park)

8. Orange Cylinder Lamp (can't see very well) - Ikea

9. "m" Decor on Table - Anthropologie

10. 12x12 Picture Frames - Ikea

11. State Love Prints - Modern Ink Stationary on Etsy

Canvas Prints!

After much research on canvas photo prints, it boiled down to price but also quality.  Surprisingly, CVS had the best price and excellent quality too!  I originally ordered the two canvases to put in our bedroom...but when they arrived, we couldn't help but put them up in the living room instead!  We're very happy with them and I enjoy so much walking by them every day to remember the best day of my life!

We hung them with 3M squares, which can be a bit tricky!

We had company over about 20 minutes after we hung these to watch Sunday football!  

Here's a view from the mudroom:

Gotta love pictures and gotta love 'em even more on a big canvas!!

Linen Closet Heaven

Linen Closet Makeover!

For those that don't know, my new husband was out of town for work for a total of 5 weeks in the past 2 months!  I've had many emotions about this: anger, frustration, happy for free time!, loneliness, empowered!, and so on!  A rollercoaster of different feelings!  It's hard because it's not his fault and I'm glad he has a great job.  But it's also hard to be home alone for that long.  So each time Dan would start packing to fly out for the week, I would start preparing my "projects" for the week so I could stay busy!  The last week in October and the first week or two of November, I tackled the linen closet in our upstairs hallway.  Sad that this was the highlight of my week but I think we're all getting accustomed now to our adult lives where things like this make the top 10! :)  Sorry there are no pictures of the painting process but, in a nutshell, I spackled holes and repainted the entire inside of the closet white.  It was a bit beat up, dusty and, yes, had holes!  Then I took out all of the shelves and sanded each one and painted them all white.  This took about 3 coats each!  Good thing the World Series was on!  Now for the fun part, organizing!  Here is a before photo, I just didn't have time to make this any neater until now:

Then I picked out color coordinated baskets and labeled them all!  I tossed many things and categorized everything you could imagine!

Ta da!  Everything is in it's place!  Hopefully now I won't hear, "Honey!  Where's the _____?" from Dan anymore!  I don't blame him...did you see the closet in it's previous state!?  To summarize, there are baskets for the following if anyone is looking for ideas:  make up bags (unfortunately an entire bin is devoted to this seeing as I always buy my makeup during the "free gift" times!), "Nails", "Headbands", "Face", "Teeth", "Bath", "Medicine", "Toilet Paper", then there's the towel and washcloth shelf and on the bottom there is a bin for all sheet sets.  I also keep a little tote on the side (can't see it) of handy tools we use on a regular basis so: hammer, measuring tape, 3M stickies, nails, masking tape, etc. YAY!