Living room layout options and some tough decisions… where does the dining room table go?

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We are in the part of our renovation where I feel like we are working constantly {so. many. decisions. to make!} but we aren’t seeing much progress day to day. I know that’s totally normal for any construction project but man does it take the fun right out of it sometimes… I’m ready to see some transformation! But that starts to change as of this morning {!!!}, our existing kitchen cabinets are coming out and we start on our week or two with absolutely no kitchen so that we can prep the walls and be ready when the new cabinets…

In the meantime… coat closet/pantry design and inspiration

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While we live in our semi done/undone kitchen and wait {for what feels like an eternity} for our kitchen cabinets, there are still a million things to be done to keep making progress in our cute little abode. The next thing I want to tackle is the coat closet right inside the front door of our place. Here is the coat closet {side note: I can’t believe I didn’t take a shot of the doors from directly in front of it, argh! I guess you always miss something when trying to cover all of the ‘before’ pics…} I have to say,…

The floors I wanted… and the floors I got…

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When I started imagining what I would do with our condo and how I would transform it, I imagined re-doing the floors in a kind of classic walnut color… not too light, not too dark, totally timeless. In my head I was picturing something like these floors {side note: this is a newly renovated house that our team is listing here in Chicago, cute right?!} Our existing floors were a pretty light color but they were kind of too bright in a way, it’s hard to put my finger on it… here is a before pic. The existing floors in…

Why I don’t decorate for the holidays

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This is not a picture of my house, but doesn’t it look festive?! Since October I’ve been seeing one blog post after another from bloggers showing their new fall decor, and then their new Thanksgiving decor, and now their Christmas decorations. While I love seeing the beautiful decorations and am in awe of some of the things people put together out there, sometimes it seems like it’s just a contest to see who can show us the most different ways you can decorate for Christmas because every year they scrap everything from the past and come up with something totally…

Let’s talk baby nurseries!

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First let me clarify ~ no, I’m not pregnant. And while I will probably not ever have a need to design a nursery for myself, it just happens to be a space that I’ve always wanted to design! One of my teammates is preggo and so I thought, what better time than now to do a post all about baby nurseries, so that I can indulge this long held dream and share some of my favorite inspirations and pics for these spaces?! I thought about showing just one ‘most favorite’ design approach and ‘style’ for this blog post, but honestly,…

Finding your style, so that you can bring it to life.

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Before we moved I did a serious closet purge and got rid of most of my clothes. {honestly, I could still get rid of more} I would literally stand in front of the closet every morning and, feeling defeated and uninspired, I would literally say out loud with a sigh ~ I don’t know what to wear. Every day. Did I love anything in my closet? Do I even have a style? Probably not. It’s so easy in our closets and our houses to just amass a random collection of things over time that we often unintentionally end up living in…

Bathroom Inspiration ~ the patterned floor tile trend

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One new bathroom trend I am really loving right now is patterned floor tile. The new super cool look is Spanish influenced tiles that are fairly ornate. And while I do think this is one element that can be done very well and look timeless in it’s own way for a long time, it can also easily be overly trendy and look bad after jut a few years, depending on what you select. I feel like it can be hard to put in words what makes a good patterned tile and what is ‘bad’ or too trendy, that will look…

Bye bye subway backsplash… a new trend is in town.

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Subway tiles are classic, and ~ if done right ~ are timeless. But they’ve been so popular for enough years now that even these are starting to feel a little tired and overdone. I’ll always love them, but I will admit, there’s another approach to backsplashes that’s been a rare sighting for a long time, but is getting a little more attention these days, and I couldn’t be more excited. The slab as backsplash. Personally I’ve been head over heels in love with this look for a long time. It doesn’t really get more sophisticated than this. And if anything is more…

Where have all the medicine cabinets gone?!

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As I pack up, and purge, and daydream about our ‘forever’ {for a reno at least} home… I randomly starting thinking about the strangest part of a house ~ medicine cabinets. Has anyone else noticed that medicine cabinets seem to be disappearing from bathrooms everywhere? what. the. heck?! Does it really even matter if there’s a medicine cabinet in the bathroom? Am I just getting stuck in old thinking about storage and being practical? I don’t have a medicine cabinet in my bathroom now, or any other {built-in} storage for that matter. And maybe that’s why this is weirdly on…

Sofa Dreams

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Since we’re doing this sublet through the end of the year that means no big designing and no big furniture purchases for about nine more months, until we find our permanent place. But that hasn’t stopped me from becoming really pre-occupied with what sofa I want in our next living room. I haven’t even really started imagining too specifically what our next space will look like design-wise overall, because we want to be open to different types of spaces and buildings that could work as far as fixer-uppers. I think once we get moved into our immediate next space I’ll…