Office

We haven't been doing too much work around the house, but we have hung a few more pictures.  Since it's just the two of us (plus Daisy) we decided to use the smaller of the two additional bedrooms as an office.  We hung all of the pictures on the walls and the keyboard is all set up so we have completed the room.  We used all existing furniture so this was an easy room to finish.  Here's a couple pictures of our completed office/music room.

Gallery Wall Project

We had a quiet weekend for the first time since we got in the house.  It was nice and relaxing.  We went out to dinner, got some shopping done, and got some little house projects done.  Our biggest accomplishment was hanging a gallery wall above our bed.

When we first moved in, we laid all of the pictures and wall decor we brought with us from our apartment on the ground and decided where we wanted to put different things.  We have quite a few canvases from our wedding and our engagement pictures.  We really didn't want to put pictures of just the two of us all over the house, so we decided to do a gallery wall with the pictures and other decor on the big wall above our bed.  It was our first time doing a gallery wall and we must have laid everything out about 15 different ways before we decided how to hang everything.  Once we got to actually hanging everything it wasn't so bad or at least it didn't look so bad.  My husband did all of the hanging :).  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Hard at work on our wall 

Our completed wall

We also bought some ledges this weekend to put up some of our decor that doesn't easily hang on the wall.  We're going to use most of them in the morning room, but we also got a small one for our guest room to display our tile from Mexico and album from Hawaii.  After finishing up the gallery wall we were on such a roll that we got the ledge up in the guest room.

Souvenirs from our Mexico and Hawaii trips

We also put up some decor in the powder rooms and a bunch of stuff in the office.  I forgot to take pictures so I'll update later on those.

Living Room

In preparation for our housewarming party last weekend, we finished up our living room.  We still want to get some decor for the walls, but we have all of the big items.  Since our main floor is all open we wanted to make sure the living room flowed with the kitchen design.  To do that, we decided to carry through the gray with pops of red from our bar stools in the kitchen into the living room decor.  We kept our existing sofa from Value City Furniture and our existing coffee table and end tables from Big Lots.  (We'll probably replace the coffee table and end tables, but these work for now.)  We picked up the red cabinet for under the TV, the red chairs, and the red pillows from Target, and we bought the curtains from Homegoods. Here's a few pictures of our completed living room.

We're planning to pick up a decorative mirror similar to this one for between the windows.

To complete the look, we're seriously considering getting a large Maryland Flag pallet style wall hanging for over the couch similar to the one below.  It might be a little much for some people but we both went to UMD and want to incorporate Maryland into our decor.

Housewarming Recap

We had our housewarming party on Saturday and it went really well!  For the past couple months, we have been busy buying furniture and trying to get as much as possible put together before the party and it really paid off.  Ultimately we know this is just the first of many parties in our new house, so we didn't worry about having everything perfect.  Some rooms still don't have anything on the walls and that is ok.  We'll get there eventually.

We really appreciated that so many people took time out of their weekend to show up to see our new house.   It was nice to see everyone and a lot of fun to show off the house.

I haven't taken any pictures of our newest projects, but you can see our new red chairs for the living room and red pillows in these pictures of the dogs from the party.

my parents' dog came for the weekend and she really liked sitting on our new chairs to see out of the window

our Daisy loved having so many visitors

I'll update later with better pictures of our living room set up.

Basement

We ordered our furniture over Memorial Day weekend and finally received our basement furniture last night.  Part of our sectional was on back order which caused the delay.  We put everything together and we're loving the space.  We'll eventually get a couple accent chairs to put opposite the sectional to make it a good area for conversation.  We're also planning to get a dry bar installed on the opposite wall (not pictured) and we're going to put a big TV (70" or larger) on the bar counter top.  Since it's just the two of us we really want to make this a fun space to have our friends over and to just relax and watch movies.  Anyway onto the pictures :)

Here's a before picture:

Our beautiful floors

Less than 24 hours later we have a usable basement!

Have I mentioned Daisy is loving "her" new sectional?  As soon as we put the sectional in place she hopped up and didn't want to leave it the rest of the night.  

We are working on assembling chairs in our living room to complete that space plus getting ready for our housewarming.  We can't wait to have people over to see the house!

Ready for Guests

We are getting our first visitor tonight, so we worked hard to get the guest bedroom all set up last night.  We used existing furniture and bedding in this room, and we're really happy with how it turned out.

We have been out of town almost every weekend since we moved into the house, but we have been working really hard to get everything set up during the week.  We are having our housewarming on Saturday, and although everything is not done at this point, the house is definitely in good shape to have people over.

After working so hard to get to this point with the house, I have finally come to the conclusion, with the help of my husband :), that it will take us months, maybe even a year, to get to the point of really feeling like the house is set up.  I am okay with that because we don't want to rush into buying stuff just to get it done.  We would rather take our time and search stores like Homegoods until we find the perfect accent furniture and decor for each space.  In the meantime, I'll keep updating the blog as we go.  

We're expecting to receive our rec room furniture tonight, so I'll be sure to post tomorrow if we actually get it.