Peonies + Coffee

Coffee and flowers {especially peonies!} make my mornings very happy. Remember this post? Well last week Trader Joe's finally had some peonies and I of course immediately brought some home with me. Unfortunately they're on their way out {the petals of the ones on my coffee table started to fall off last night} but I thought I'd take a few photos since they're fully open and look absolutely gorgeous:

Here's a shot of them on my desk with my morning coffee and toast {whipped cream cheese+jelly=yuumm!}:

The New Desk & My Home Office

Remember the new desk I was excited about getting delivered? Well we finally got around to setting it up, taking a few pictures, and posting my old one on Craigslist. The old one was a birch veneer Ikea desk I had since college and definitely showed its age. This new one isn't much fancier or much more expensive, after all we're still very much on a budget. However, it's white, clean, simple and works much better with the decor of my humble little home office {a.k.a. the corner of my living room}.

We had to include Little Foot in a shot, as he's a curious little guy and typically likes to be by my side when I'm sitting at my desk :)

Budget Makeover: My Kitchen

When we first checked out this condo back when we were first house hunting, I was really turned off by the kitchen. It was so dark, dreary, dirty and in unusable condition. My husband and I agreed that it was in severe need of a renovation and because we couldn’t afford the cost of that, we passed on making an offer. Weeks later after looking at many other homes, and actually losing out on one we had put an offer on, we came back to take a second look at the condo. The first time around we hadn’t paid much attention to how great of a location it was in and the fact that is was actually one of the bigger ones we’d seen. Long story short, we ended up buying it, figuring that all its other features made up for the ugly kitchen and we would figure out a way to fix it up on the cheap until we could afford a full renovation.

Here’s what it looked like when we first checking out the condo:

that's our real estate agent in the pic

Immediately after moving in, we bought a new fridge, brought in a gas stove that was handed down from a family member (free!), cleaned heavily, and got to work on painting! I knew that for the kitchen I wanted white cabinets with a bold background wall color. I decided on a teal color. Here’s the kitchen just with the background walls painted:

We made painting the cabinets a weekend project. Boy was it labor intensive! Painting the interiors was the most difficult because we had to get into all the little corners. We were going from dark to light so we used about 3 coats of paint (two primer coats and one finishing coat).

my husband painting the cabinet exteriors

the cabinet doors laid out to dry

My mom was nice to come over and help :-)

Here's the after:

Definitely not a fancy kitchen but a big improvement from what it was when we first moved in. It's a lot fresher, brighter and doesn't put me in a bad mood! (funny how environments can do that to you no?) All it took was a few coats of paint and a lot of elbow grease!

Happy Friday!

This Saturday I have an exam to take which unfortunately means I'll be spending Friday night studying. After the exam though I'm hoping to get some much needed rest and relaxation.
Hope you have a great weekend! :-)

Mini-Home-Makeover: The Front Door

I thought I'd start the week off by giving you a little peak into my home and sharing with you a mini-home project my husband and I recently worked on.

Our home is a one-bedroom condo in Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles), California, which we purchased late last year. Our condominium complex is an older building (built in the 1970s) and most everything visible from the interior common areas is outdated --including the front doors.

Our Homeowners Association requires all our front doors to be the same. This means that unfortunately we're stuck with what we've got until everyone in the building agrees to change them (which likely won't be any time in the near future!). Here's what our door looks like:

It's not a terrible looking door, it just doesn't fit in with our interior decor. The good news is that although we can't do anything about how it looks like on the side visible from the condo common areas, we can do whatever we want on the side visible from the interior of our unit. So, I thought -why not paint the interior side? Who cares if its one color one side and another color on the other side!

I found two inspiration doors that I fell in love with. This first inspiration door is from Amy Smart's 2,000-square-foot, two-bedroom cottage in Beverly Hills.

This second inspiration door was featured in the main editorial section of the last issue of Domino magazine. It's from twenty-something designer Michael Bargo's New York apartment.

So late last week, my husband graciously agreed to give our door a few coats of high-gloss black paint while I was away at work (he has two-weeks off from school!). To my delight, I came home to find a shiny, sophisticated version of our door. I added a little extra style by hanging a framed postcard from our trip to Paris. Here's what it looks like now:

What a difference a little paint can do no? Total cost was about $20! About $10 for the paint (from Lowe's), and about $10 for the frame (from Michael's). Stay tuned for future posts about our mini home makeover projects!

Have a Beautiful Weekend!

Below are a few shots of the beautiful flowers I purchased yesterday at the weekly Century City farmer's market. These are currently the centerpiece on my dining table :-)








Have a beautiful weekend!

Welcome!

This blog will feature my growing collection of images, photographs, quotes, etc. that inspire me, feed my creative soul, or in some form or another catch my attention. My main focus is interior decor and design, however I find that inspiration comes from several sources...so anyways, BIENVENIDOS!


Photograph used in the header is from Paul Costello; Charley Gallay/Getty Images