Moving (And Decorating): Part II

I have been thinking about this blog post all day. Planning to rush home and take pictures of our new home before the sun went down so that I would have some shots to share with all of you. Please bear with the formatting of the text and the photos in this post. I can't seem to get the text to line up properly with the photos. Keep scrolling to the bottom if there is a big gap of blank space.

Before I show you photos of our new home, I have to tell you how stressed out I became when I found out we were moving and that I had a new space to decorate! I am not, by any means, decoratively inclined. I go to people's homes where they have everything coordinated and in a perfect spot and the rooms look like they are from House and Home magazine, and I drool. I wish I had the ability to know what would look good with what and to see how things could all come together.

I like to watch home design shows on HGTV and the W Network and sometimes I will be sitting there thinking to myself, 'What are the designers thinking picking that tile to go with that room?' and then it gets to the end of the show and I see the finished product and it all makes sense and everything looks like it accidentally on purpose ended up to look perfect. I just don't get it!

I knew I wanted to paint a few of the walls in our new home and definitely the dining room wall. When we viewed the condo, all of the walls were a neutral cream color or beigey brown except for the dining room which was construction fluorescent orange.



This photo doesn't even come close to showing the intensity of the orange. Let's just say, it was borderline blinding!

So, we knew that had to go and I decided to paint an accent wall in the living room and bedroom as well. Once I decided to paint, I drove myself (and the Hubs) crazy trying to figure out what colors and shade to do! I went from yellow, to red to purple to blue in the dining room, forest green to a more kelly green in the living room and had so many shades of light blue to choose from for the bedroom, it was ridiculous. For two straight weeks I visited (multiple times) several paint stores, collected copious amounts of paint swatches and talked about paint night and day without any decisions. Finally, after a trip to Home Hardware (I love that place) I settled on the colors I wanted.

Then we had to decide what kind of paint to buy. Do we prime and then paint? Do we buy the paint with the primer in it or do we just skip primer and just paint? Don't forget, I had a bright orange wall to cover! So we finally decided on a tinted primer and paint for the dining room and then just paint (with the primer in it) for the other rooms.

By the time we finally got the keys to our new place, I was pumped! We had a weekend to paint and move boxes before our big move. The painting was relatively uneventful except for a few spots on the ceiling which are an easy fix. The Hubs had never painted before, so he learned really quickly that it's hard work!




A sneak peek at the colors we chose.



The Hubs hard at work, painting the living room. I love him for it!

Once we got all of our stuff moved in and were beginning to unpack, I realized that we didn't have much to hang on our bare walls. We had a few nice pieces that we had received as a gift or as a hand me down from family, but nothing that really tied our decor (and our newly painted walls) all together.

So this weekend I went to HomeSense on a mission to find some decor. I really was looking for some sort of sunburst mirror for the living room (something I saw on one of the design shows) and a piece of art for above the TV. I ended up snapping photos of all the potentials so that I could go home and show the Hubs and get his opinion. Here were the options:

Sunburst Mirrors:




 



The Hubs said this one looked like a fish

A side note about the sunburst mirrors. I sent a pic of these mirrors to the Hubs while I was at the store and he called me right away to ask me why we would hang a mirror in the living room above the sofa if no one would be able to look at it and see their reflection. I had to explain to him that these mirror more of a decorative piece than for practical function. I thought that was really cute and funny. :)
















The art for above the TV:

I love trees!

The green is the same as the accent wall AND it was a set of two!

Right colors, but really not our tastes



And I found some new friends:

I've liked owls ever since I was a kid and we read a book about owls in school. I even got an owl necklace when we went to the science centre with school. So when I saw all these owl figurines, I fell in love! I brought the guy on the bottom home with me that trip and he now sits on my dresser. I look over at him every once in a while and smile. The Hubs doesn't understand my new love for owls and thinks I am going to become a crazy owl figurine lady. I promised him I wouldn't, but what would it hurt to have a couple more new friends?

 

So I brought all of these pictures home and the Hubs and I decided on what would fit best. We ended up going back the next day and getting the things we liked and even got a big clock for our dining room wall.

 

So which artwork did we pick? You are just going to have to wait until my next post, where I will share photos of them on our wall, to find out!

 

Yeah, that's me, keeping you hanging!

 

Check back tomorrow (or maybe Thursday) for Part III.

 

C