my apartment at evening

I love the way my apartment feels in the evening. It's always quietly glowing. I think I might miss the coziness a bit when warm weather finally comes (but only a bit ;). Last night I was up until 1 am (not doing the dishes--whoops!) working on a dress, and K needed his tripod back today anyway, so no photos for me. I had the strangest feeling when I headed out to work this morning--like I was leaving the rabbit hole. Now that I've been making more of an effort to be actively creative in my life, it's almost as if those eight hours a day in the office don't exist--like they're just smudges, or sleep.

midwinter tea time

When we moved into our new apartment last April, K claimed the extra room as his "office" and set to decorating it in a classically masculine style. Because he was granted his own private space, he told me I could take the bedroom for my sanctuary. I like a breezy bedroom atmosphere, so my plan was to decorate ours as if it were a romantic garden. I hung a lace curtain over the single window to ensure that no natural light was lost, and created a little bistro nook against the far wall for writing, sipping coffee, and pondering. The one thing I could seriously do without is the ugly grey carpet, but beggars can't be choosers. When I finally get around to hanging something on the other walls (I have plenty of ideas), I'll be sure to give you a glimpse of the rest of my sunny little space :)

cozy.

After allowing my semi-bare skin to touch the icy air yesterday, it was back to thermals and knits for me this morning. I spent yesterday evening eating leftover chili (I made another batch) and reading Saul Bellow with a glass of red wine in my cozy apartment, while the best kind of snow fell outside my window.

(sweater/thermal: tjmaxx; belt: goodwill; jeans: pacsun; boots: aldo)

I'm pretty excited for this weekend. K and I have some tentative plans to get out and about (and I still have some shopping to do), so (snow willing) it should be pretty fun! It's the last weekend before Christmas, so I want to spend most of my eveningtime just sipping hot cocoa and enjoying the luminosity of our friendly neighborhood fir tree :)

new furniture, new favorites

What a weekend! This is what I wore on Saturday, when K and I hit the jackpot at a moving sale in Shelburne. We hopped on to CraigsList before heading out for breakfast at JP's in Essex Junction (me: veggie omelette, homefries, wheat toast, coffee; him: the works omelette, homefries, english muffin, OJ) and saw that there was a great faux-leather chair up for grabs(among other things). We decided to go check it out.

We'd been keeping our eyes out for brown leather chairs in particular, because it's difficult to match much of anything to our orange couch. This one (though a little rough around the edges) was perfect! The woman having the sale then proceeded to walk us through her entire house and point out everything that she was trying to get rid of (apparently she and her husband are getting separated and they want to sell off all of the furniture that reminds them of their life together). We ended up walking out with the chair, an orange and blue floral loveseat (which we later bought a cover for), four blue ball jars and two gold-framed mirrors for the bathroom. All for a grand total of $75!

This is definitely the way to go when trying to furnish a new apartment on a budget. As long as the used furniture has no weird smells or questionable stains, why not? People often have really great stuff that they're only getting rid of because they happen to be redecorating their homes (or their lives, in this case).

(dress: Charlotte Russe; scarf: thrifted; bracelet: flea market; tights: Goodwill; boots: ALDO; sunglasses: UO online; ring [made out of a button!] from mom via a button store in France!)

home improvement, part one

Yesterday I mentioned that K and I were super-productive this weekend, and I thought I would share our first little DIY project with you! K had already crafted an awesome desk and a really cool door-turned-bookcase, but I didn't really assist in those endeavors so I can't even begin to take credit for them (I'll just say I was his muse...). But don't take my word for it! It's time for a quick round of "Look What My Boyfriend Can Do!":

Anyway, we had originally intended to build three sets of bookcases for our living room, but after lots of complicated math and lumber research, we determined that the project was way too expensive for our weak wallets. Instead, we bought some bookcases on the cheap ($25 each), assembled them, and painted all day:

(Side note: these are my "painting pants." I've worn them every time I've painted anything, from spreading tar on the basement foundation of my parents' house in seventh grade to the bright-red walls of my post-college apartment in Boston, and now this... it's nice not to have to worry every time about which pair of pants I want to risk ruining :)

And I mean all day. We went to Home Depot for a gallon of mustard-gold paint (only now I realize I don't remember its cutesy color-name) and spent the better part of a beautiful Saturday afternoon putting the pieces together, sanding the surface to enhance the paint's sticking power, and painting into the evening hours. After applying a second coat to all three cases on Sunday morning, they were finally ready to move into position on Monday evening. The paint definitely turned out a much brighter yellow that we had planned on, but that's okay!

We then lovingly lined the canary-colored shelves with our paperback friends (and other favorites, like my new elephant bookends):

Our orange couch is awesome, although this particular angle and this particular light do not particularly flatter it. Now all we need is... more furniture! Ultimately we hope to have a large Oriental rug under/around the couch, a coffee table, more seating, a side table and lamp... and the list goes on. At some point we also intend to put plants on the tops & around the bookcases. I can't believe how much space we have! We've come a long way from this:

(slapdash panoramic photo approximately to scale)

And the icing on the apartment-cake? The lovely nightly treat of fantastic sunsets through our bedroom window:

in the back with the bricks

Sooo I had one of my first awkward blogger photo-taking interruption interactions this morning. Getting used to this "living in a public place" thing is going to take some time... one of the men who works in an office below our apartment came strolling up the alleyway and seemed a little bit confused about what I could possibly be taking pictures of at such an early hour. At some point I may end up having to explain myself, but I don't necessarily want all of my neighbors (who inevitably would not understand) thinking I'm a narcissist.

But here you have it. This is what I was photographing:

I'm kind of loving the shabby-chic industrial-style scenery behind my apartment. It's quite a change from the country landscape behind my previous accomodations.

Oh, PS: the orange couch = fantastically retro. I'm in love. I'll post photos of the new apartment when it starts to fill in and clean out. Right now it looks rather wretched.

(dress: Old Navy; scarf: thrifted; bangle: flea market; tights: HUE; moccasins: Minnetonka)