Wayfair Sofa Review: Out with the orange couch, in with the purple Andover Mills Dewitt Sectional

I tend to get sentimentally attached to furniture. (Weird, I know.) And my retro orange couch and me have been through a lot in four years. I bought the bright orange, That 70's Show-worthy sofa from a lovely couple on Craigslist, right before moving out of my college town and to a new city for my first "big girl" job. It sat in my grandma's garage while I crashed with G and hunted for my own place. But eventually, it ended up my first all-to-myself apartment.

The Decorating Evolution of my Home Office (It's finally finished!)

I'm so behind on sharing house progress with you! It's been over a month since I posted about my office makeover being underway—and it's been finished for several weeks now. I absolutely love how it turned out. 

It's dark, but colorful. Vintage-y and eclectic. Filled with my favorite art, books, and writing inspiration. A cozy place to work my day job 8-to-5, read in the evenings, and spend the weekends blogging and writing. Out of everywhere in this house, this is where I spend most of my time.

My Home Office Makeover is Underway!

See that room through the big doorway on the left? That's my home office—bay window, fireplace with exposed brick, original French doors, and all. (I feel so spoiled.) And finally, it's getting a much-deserved makeover.

Downton-Meets-Farmhouse Kitchen Wall (feat. decor from Gordmans!)

You guys, I'm about to share the most neutral I've ever gone with a room. Ever. So over our Christmas/NYE break, we removed wallpaper, repaired plaster walls, and painted our kitchen. 

Kitchen Makeover | Part I

When we got this house, I really thought I'd have sooo much more blogging material. And as a matter of fact, I do. I've just been short on the blogging time. So allow me to apologize for blog posts being so few and far between for the last few months. Good stuff is coming, I promise. We spent the summer and warmer months of fall focused on the the exterior. And we're devoting our winter to giving the interior a facelift. That mostly means: peeling wallpaper, fixing plaster, and sealing / priming / painting the walls.

Butler's Pantry Project | Part II: Priming, Painting, and Decorating

Hello again! Recently, I posted about peeling wallpaper and picking paint colors for our butler's pantry. Two weeks later... all the wallpaper is gone, the plaster walls repaired, the room primed and painted, and the little space pretty much decorated. :)

House Progress: Dining Room Decor Plan

Our dining room has definitely caused me the most design obstacles so far. It's a formal dining room—something I haven't really had before. It's a big, spacious room. The radiators and built-in cabinet are gorgeous—and also pose furniture arrangement challenges. Oh, and it's the only place we can fit and plug in our must-have keezer—fresh homebrewed beer on tap is such a luxury!

Get the look of stained glass—affordable and temporary!

In my office, my desk sits in front of a nice bay window that faces east and looks out over the neighborhood. For six hours of the workday, I love it. But from 8 AM to around 10 AM, the sun is in a position high enough to peek over the trees, but not so high that it's over the house. So it's a really bright, sunny spot to sit in the morning—sometimes it's hard to even see my computer screen. (Now I know why the previous dwellers had a strange window blind that only went halfway down. I took that down a long time ago.)

So I've been brainstorming ideas to tame the morning sunlight a bit—without blocking up my window with blinds. I found myself inspired by the real, original-to-the-house stained glass window in our living room. It looks like this:

How should I decorate the dining room with this table?

Our dining room is huge. Our dining table set was little. So I've been on the hunt for a nice, big dining table that will not only look more proportionate in our dining room, but also provide better seating for occasional dinner guests. (Let's be honest: G and I eat most of our meals on the couch.)

I found the above table on Craigslist for just $100! It's currently flipped over as we're re-gluing the legs for stability (the half hour truck ride jostled them loose). So it's hard to see that the top is stained a nice dark wood tone—like our trim! The rest is painted a crisp, bright white. And don't those unique legs make a statement?! I can't wait to get this thing flipped over!

How I hemmed my curtains in 5 minutes - no iron, needle, or thread!

Our beautiful old house as thrown a few design challenges my way. I recently tackled one of them. We had some company a couple weekends ago, and I really wanted to spruce the guest room up into something comfortable. Most of it was easy: fresh bedding, some vintage decor, a pretty new lamp, and patterned curtains. But those curtains - in fact, all the curtains upstairs - have had me trippin'. Literally.

Even though our second floor has the exact same ten-foot ceilings as the main floor, the windows are positioned lower on the wall. So on the main floor, my standard 84" curtains hang a couple inches above the floor trim, which I'm okay with. But on the second floor, the same curtains sag about six inches. See what I mean about trippin'?

My Spray Paint (Still) Brings All the Boys (err, Men) to the Yard

I can't believe that it's been almost four years since I published one of my favorite blog posts: My Spray Paint Brings All the Boys to the Yard. Back then, I was living in that lovely attic apartment down the street from favorite bars and hangouts in my college town. That day, a couple guys were drawn to how "I be killin' it with that paint." One even said that my "antiquing got swag." Still one of my favorite compliments to this day.

My Home Office | Tour + Decorating Inspiration

Certain parts of the house are coming along. (You can check out the master bedroom and bath, downstairs bathroom, dining room, foyer, and living room in this post.) While other rooms still feel disheveled and hardly unpacked.

My office was one of the first rooms to get set up with furniture since I needed to have a place to work. But style-wise, it's not as colorful or inspiring of a creative space as I'd like. It needs to function as a motivating office for working from home, as an inspiring space for the creative writing and blogging I do as a hobby, and as a pretty room since it's on the main level and will definitely be seen by guests.

Bug Off! | Getting rid of unwanted guests of the 6- and 8-legged variety

To know me is to know I'm afraid of anything with more than four legs - except butterflies. After over a month of living together in our new-to-us, 105-year-old house in a semi-rural small town... G is just finding this out. He's come home to a beetle trapped under a mason jar, fireplace wrapped in tape to keep honeybees out, and me nearly in tears because there were two wasps upstairs.

One of the biggest, scariest adventures in having our own house has been dealing with the uninvited guests. The job has mostly fallen to me since I work from home... and our house is now also my office. So far, I've been pestered by ants, spiders, bees, wasps, and a solitary beetle. And with two furry co-workers - errr, uh... cats - I want to keep my extermination methods as eco-friendly and pet-safe as possible. And I thought I'd share my product reviews and recommendations with you!

Let's get down to the creepy crawlers, shall we?

At Home with Honeybees (AKA: Bees in our chimney?!)

I love Burt's Bees. I love beeswax candles. And I love me some honey... especially slurped out of those honey straws from the farmers' market or brewed into a refreshing Kolsch beer.

But I'm a fraidy-cat when it comes to the little buzzers that make honey: the honeybees. I'm embarrassingly afraid. Not embarrassed myself, but bound to embarrass any friends or family standing nearby. Like, flapping-my-arms and running-away, embarrassingly afraid. I know, I know... flapping your arms can make bees upset or afraid, resulting in a sting. And that's why I'm afraid. I'm afraid of being stung. It's a fear of the unknown because I've never been stung. I'm afraid of the pain. I'm afraid of turning out to be allergic. And I'm afraid of watching the bee die because it stung me. Ugh.

So anyway, long story short: For a few weeks, we've been trying to figure out how honeybees are getting in. But now we've seen it with our own eyes. The bees are coming down the chimney and into my office via small openings around the woodburner. We went outside and looked at the chimney. Lo and behold! A bunch of bees swarming around the chimney top!

Decorating my Living Room with Kirkland's Flea Market Collection

The Lovely Side is excited to partner with Kirkland's for this post!

On Friday, I revealed some of the decorating I've been doing in the new house... specifically the vintage charm I added to the foyer using items from Kirkland's Flea Market Collection. Check it out here.

Flea market style doesn't always describe a vintage, antique, rustic, or distressed look. It can also mean bright, colorful, and bohemian... which is exactly what I'm going for in my living room.

Decorating my Foyer with Kirkland's Flea Market Collection

The Lovely Side is excited to partner with Kirkland's for this post!

It's official: I'm about 99.9% moved into our lovely old house! And while I'm spending most of my spare time trying to get things unpacked, I can't resist doing a little decorating... starting with the foyer!

I want the foyer to be a balanced but eclectic mix of Victorian character, vintage charm, rustic touches, and timeworn flea market finds.

The bad news: Flea markets haven't quite started up around here yet. And even if they had, I wouldn't have the time to go scavenge them. (Ugh, unpacking.)