front door.

It's amazing how much more "homey" it feels with our new wreath!

new wreath.

I bought a wreath very similar to this just now on my lunch break.

It was $9.99 and originally $40. Yay Joann's!

Is it crazy that now I want to paint our front door black so that the wreath will pop?
It's currently off-white...I guess it will have to do :)

PAINT.

Breaking news: Ryan has agreed to let me paint!!! Here's the plan:

I would eventually like to paint the "big room" which is the entry, living and dining room...(all of these have the same connecting walls, and it would look really weird to paint one and not the other). However, I'm thinking I should start with a smaller room first to get my feet wet--not literally. No paint on the feet please.

So, maybe our bathroom? I'm wanting this color basically throughout the whole house...with the exception of the kitchen. It's called "Tobacco Road" and it's perfect for creating a warm atmosphere, making molding stand out, and without being too dark.

Here are some examples of rooms using "Tobacco Road".

Now imagine this color in our bathroom:

Thoughts?
*YES, we are putting tile in the bathroom eventually.

our "new" bathroom shelf!

This is one resourceful little table, don't ya think?

reflective spaces.

Check out these "reflective spaces" from Architectural Digest...wow...

this last one is my favorite.
...who wouldn't love that???

the table of many uses.

college apartment... use: bedside table.

first "big girl" apartment out of college...use: end table

latest apartment...use: entryway table

guess what we use it for now?

mantel from my iphone last night

Thanks for the advice for a bigger picture on the mantel! It definitely helped a lot!

faux-plants...

So, what is your stance on fake plants for decor? I've always been a bit against it... HGTV pretty much drills it in your head that they are "tacky" but I keep seeing design blogs that have some fake greenery! I'm thinking that may be exactly what my shelves are needing--a little color.

see, these are my shelves on the jcp website. there's greenery!

set of 3 ball plants from target? jeez--$129.99???

hydrangea bouquet from jcp?

ivy ball topiary from walmart?
potted grass from c&b?
potted wheat grass from amazon?
thoughts?
tacky?
any other ideas where to find these?

accessorizing...

This is totally not my forte. I finally, after 2 weeks, started to unpack all the decorative stuff from the boxes in our guest rooms. This is what I've done so far...basically just thrown stuff on shelves. Feel FREE to comment and give me any constructive criticism of what you might do differently.

dining room before:
(i hate those bamboo panels, for the record.
they will be changed out for blinds & drapes.)

dining room after:the mantel. (we'll actually hang the picture)

the entry.

what would you do differently?

bedroom furniture

Y'all would laugh hysterically if you could see our bedroom right now. Here's a picture of how the owner decorated it.
But for us, our bed is on the right side wall, and our mismatched dressers and 25" TV are on the opposite wall. We don't have anything on the window wall yet. The funny part of this scenario is that the TV is too far away for our blind eyes to see from the bed. So, we've done the natural solution: we've pulled the TV and stand about 6 feet from the wall. So when you walk in you see the back of the TV, cords dangling 6 feet, in the middle of the room. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I'm not complaining though. Because, in the apartment we literally had only 1.5 feet around all sides of the bed..and that was the whole room.

So I'm really enjoying all this new space!

Now we just have to get furniture (and Ryan says we need a bigger TV)... hmmm..
Here's the furniture I like from jcp of course.

foyer solution??

This bench from jcp with a big picture above it and maybe a lamp like that??
Ohhhh I love ideas.

help the mccradys: the foyer.

Hello, and welcome to our foyer. The first impression of our home.

Stylish huh? Can't you just feeeel the look we were going for?

To the left is the garage. To the right is the hallway leading to the 2 bedrooms, guest bath and utility room.

It doesn't look like it from the pictures, but it is a rather large foyer. And I literally don't have ONE thing that looks good there.

Here's what it looked like before we bought the house:

I've tried to find a cool console table or mirror or something, but I'm not having any luck.
Any ideas?