Apartment Updates

I've been sharing peeks into my home on Instagram today, and thought I'd share them on here as well.  I realize it's been awhile since I blogged about changes I've made!

First off, my office is coming together nicely, if I do say so myself. Remember what it looked like when we first moved in? Here's a peek at the progress I've made and what it's looking like now:

Still need to find some more art to fill some of the frames in the gallery wall and get a few more organizational items and accessories here and there. I'll give a full tour once it's all "done"!

I finally made myself some pillows for my living room sofa. It was looking quite bare without anything.  Here's what they look like:

I'll be adding similar ones to the pillow shop soon. You can also email me if you're interested in getting some made for your home.

After months of not DIYing it myself, like I said I would, I finally decided to commission Patricia of Parima Studio to make a colorful piece of art for above my sofa.  She shared with me a close-up of the progress so far:

So excited to see the final product and put it up in the living room!

In my kitchen (which I wish I could gut and completely remodel but I can't because it's a rental), I added a few things to make it prettier:

The tea kettle is a Le Creuset, which was sent to me by the friendly folks at All Modern.   It's in the most beautiful shade of blue and has a little bit of an ombre effect.  I absolutely love it - makes me smile every time I see it!  I also like that it whistles when the water is boiling, an absolute must for someone like me who tends to forget I have something on the stove (bad I know) !

The utensil holder glazed in turquoise inside, is from Etsy shop KarinLorenc. I love supporting fellow small businesses!

The little bowl that holds garlic and shallots is from Anthropologie (though I don't think it's available anymore).

Last but not least, in our bedroom we put up an inexpensive Ikea shelf to serve as a bedside table. We installed one on just one side of the bed to see if we liked it, which we do, so we still need to put up one on the other side.  Having a shelf instead of a regular bedside table allows us to open the drawers we have under the bed. A simple black frame holds of a photo of us on our wedding day (5 yr anniversary coming up pretty soon!) and I replaced our old ugly alarm clock with this pretty one from LL Bean:

Well that's all the updates for today.  Be sure to follow along for more later on!

More Living Room Progress

Just recently came back from a much needed 4-day mini getaway. For my husband, going camping every year is an absolute must, so we headed out to Lake Cachuma and took day trips to Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley wine country (see a few snapshots of the trip here).  These past few months have been a bit crazy so it was nice to slow things down for a few days and relax.

Back at home, and feeling refreshed, I'm motivated to make some more progress on decorating our little rental apartment.  You may remember the last post on my living room it was looking pretty sparse (see the move-in post here).  Since then, the main things we've added are the rug and mirror. Here's what it looks like currently:

The mirror was a bargain find from the Home Depot. The rug, also a budget find, is from Overstock.com (bought it using a discount code).

On the list of things to do next:

• make pillows - on the sofa will be two pillows in aga reverse black with black piping, and two black solid with off-white grosgrain ribbon; on the chair will be one lumbar in zig zag french blue with black piping
• paint the side table - I'm thinking possibly this sapphire blue
• make the abstract art I talked about in this post
• bring in a piece of furniture that will store and hide the TV wires, DVDs, xbox, and games

In an upcoming post I'll share with you all, the progress we've made on the bedroom, so stay tuned for that!

p.s. For any of you who may be interested in getting pillows made out of the same fabrics mentioned, email shop@ariannabelle.com for a quote.