Moving 8.5 hours away from home and up four flights of stairs to live with the man I just married has sure turned out the be the adventure of a lifetime. And you'd think the 8.5 hours thing would be the biggest adjustment, but let me tell you, those four flights of stairs are no cake walk. We recruited the help of both of our parents to move everything up the stairs and needless to say, we got our workouts in and we were sore for days.
I thought I would make a little blog post about all of the fun things that we have done with our place to make it our cozy home. First things first, we needed a photo wall. As a photographer and lover of photos of my husband, I needed somewhere to put everything! We made a photo collage on one of the walls in our sun room and included an E for Entsminger and our wedding shadow box (which is not filled here). This wall has photos from our rehearsal dinner, cities we have visited, friends and family, and many of our engagement photos!
This has got to be the least finished room in the house with the exception of the second bedroom. Our dining room isn't done yet, but it is coming together! We finally have something on this wall. The other wall is in the works. And as you can see, we love patterns and designs and mixing styles. More to come on this room when it is done.
Next is the living room. We are in love with this room. It could be because this is the spot where we cuddle up and spend most of our time together. We painted the back wall a dark grey to cozy up the SUPER white walls that were there when we moved in. The trunk beside the couch is a redone trunk that I bought at an estate sale a few years back. It holds all of our blankets and extra pillows - storage is so important! The wall art is something that we came up with together. The maps are of the Chesapeake Bay, split into four canvases as art. We absolutely LOVE the way they look with our open gear clock!
And our Entertainment Center piece is like our prized possession. This this weighs about 800 lbs... yes, 800... up four flights of narrow stairs... no elevator... and low ceilings. It took four large men, including my husband and his dad, to carry/push/wobble/wedge it up the stairs and we guiding it making sure that no one got squished. But once we got it up the stairs, we LOVE how it looks in our place. It brings so much character to our place and it's a ONE of a kind piece - BOOM - that's probably why I love it!
This is a view into our sun room from the living room. We get SO much light in this room at all hours of the day, especially because we are on the fourth floor. As you can see, we have our fall decorations out. That one little pumpkin candle display is all the fall decorations we have. haha Yes, I am slacking on decorating. I'm really just saving up all of my holiday decorating energy for Christmas, so don't judge ;-)
Open storage in our kitchen is so important to us because our kitchen is TINY - I mean tiny, like pioneer living tiny. We actually love how it turned out! We have our Vera Wang crystal wine glasses displayed, some cook books, some dishes and some glass storage displaying food!
One of our favorite parts about our place, maybe because it was our first "design idea", is the coffee & wine bar. We have everything you could ever need in those drawers to make yourself a drink - tea bags, bottle openers, coffee filters, coffees, etc. We have had so much fun trying new wines and discovering what we like to drink together. And guess what, we became Wine Club Members...I know, who would have thought ;-)
The other wall of our sun room - my reading chair! My grandma and aunt bought this chair and had it reupholstered for me when I graduated college. Yeah, I'm weird in the fact that I would prefer old awesome furniture as gifts rather than cash. =)
Last but not least is our bathroom. This is kind of Justin's baby. He painted all of these nooks and crannies while I was gone at work one day and he did such a good job! The yellow brightened up the place so much! That minty colored vanity came with the place and we have yet to tackle that, so just look past that for a hot sec until we can get our hands on it! Yellow and white are our focus in this room to make it fresh, and navy towels bring the blinding whites down a bit.
We have gone with an owl theme in our bathroom and you will see that over the next few photos! We LOVE the tooth brush holder and soap dispenser that we found at Pier 1. We also found the Guard Owl that holds our door open there as well. The Owl lamp was purchased at World Market, so we traveled all around and held out until we found the perfect pieces for this room.
We have recruited the help of our mothers to put the finishing touches on our bathroom. These are baby bath photos of Justin and I from manyyyyyy many years ago, matted on tan hatched burlap paper. This decorative shelf brought a lot to our bathroom and filled a totally blank wall with personality. Below the shelf, we hung a row of hooks, both from Target, to utilize the space and make a place for hanging towels and robes.
Our little guard owl door-stopper holds the door open because, like I said, our home is ancient and the doors don't stay open. But, we love him...most of the time...until you bump your toes on him in the middle of the night. So beware of the Guard Owl!
We absolutely LOVE our new home. We are far from done, both of our bedrooms need a lot of work and our dining room is slowly but surely coming together. We have had so much fun designing our ideal spaces together. You know when you can design and agree (or disagree and compromise) with someone on decorating an ENTIRE home, you certainly picked the right one. I am 100% confident that my husband and I will have a blast finishing our home - and in every single other new adventure that life is going to bring us.
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