We just don’t get much light in our garden unit apartment. Once the sun has moved away from our sliding glass door we are in the dark. Literally. There are no overhead lights and just one teeny tiny lamp lighting up our life.

I had been on the hunt for a floor lamp since we moved in. I didn’t want to buy one of the college dorm room lamps just for a quick fix. We’ve decided to be a more conscious about what we’re buying for our place and we’re trying to avoid temporary solutions. That way won’t be wasting money on the temporary fix and we’ll own something we actually love. Very Grown Up of Us, no?

We went back and forth for awhile and finally settled on one from Lamps Plus. We bought all of our lamp shades from them for a really good price and ended up loving them. Our lamp was about $75. We paid a little more to have a solid, sturdy base and the option to have the double pull. It’s actually really nice to be able to control the amount of light. More light for reading, less for movie watching.

Anyway, enough with the details on the lamp. Here’s how it’s lighting up our space.

Pretty impressive, huh? Truth be told, these pictures were taken about 2:00 pm. So our entire outdoor light source hadn’t left for the day. It’s still a dramatic difference for us though. No more feeling like cave dwellers! Who knew $75 would change the entire feel of our living room?

What’s the latest quick fix that you’ve added to you abode recently?

Ooh! Look at the twinkle-y lights! I assure you, this looks much more magical in person.

Day time view. Christmas garland in California, the only place that snowflakes and starfish can peacefully co-exist.

More night time twinkles!

We also made the executive decision to ditch the Christmas tree this year. We’ve always had a real tree and our landlords aren’t to keen on us putting one up and leaving the apartment for 10 days on vacation. So we improvised with a little Rosemary tree in our Hawkeye bucket. Festive, no?

So, have you decked the halls yet? Add anything interesting to the garland this year? Any creative ways of improvising a Christmas tree in an apartment that you’d like to share? I saw a few cute ideas here.

Well grab the smelling salts people, I snagged the deal of the century. I’ve been stalking Craig’s List for a new coffee table ever since I saw Laurel’s and John and Sherry’s glass tables. I found our table for $50. Strikingly similar to this one, no?

Matt, bless his heart, went along dutifully to pick up my find. Like a good husband, he never sends me on my furniture scavenger hunts solo. With my wingman beside me I popped the pickup address into our Garmin and hit the road. When we arrived at the location we were a little weirded out. It was a commercial location, a non-profit in fact. Hmm. We found our seller and he gave us the down low the crazy pick up spot. They were filming a movie and were on location! In fact, our beloved table was an old set prop from a previous flick. How LA of us, right? I had to stifle a squeal. So, being the midwestern, non film savvy (dare I say giddy just to be talking with movie people?) lady that I am I HAD to know what movie they were filming. A lesbian rock band documentary. For real. I’m not sure if that will be hitting a cineplex near you any time soon but still, our coffee table was in a movie!

Along with the excitement of our table’s origin we are equally thrilled with how it looks in our place. Matt loves it too, which is originally why I wanted to get a new table. He loves all things modern and sleek and I definitely have more traditional tastes. I think this helps blend our style a little more. Our living room looks less country cottage by breaking up all of that white furniture.

Here’s our living room with our piano bench turned coffee table. Cute, but maybe we need a little more interest?

Here’s our beautiful after with our film worthy accessory in its rightful place.

So, what do you think? Love the new look? Maybe you’re more excited with our brush with movie fame. Either way, tell us what’s your best Craig’s List find. Or more importantly, have you ever had a celebrity run in?

I picked a couple of pictures that I snapped from our recent trip to Santa Barbara. A quick trip to CVS to print these puppies out and they were up on the wall in no time. Here are the pictures I picked:

I chose these pictures because the colors worked with the other blue and brown prints already on the wall. I hope to add more frames or even switch these out new vacation pictures. I love that this project was so simple, personal and inexpensive. All of the things on my project checklist!

We knew moving to the land of high gas prices and tiny parking spots meant this beast had to go. We happily bought our first compact car, a Hyundai Elantra. We actually love our new car. It’s so zippy! I was a little worried about the lack of trunk room but let me tell you folks, this baby’s got back! We’ve hauled all of our beloved Ikea finds home, our dining room table and chairs and most recently, our newest Craig’s List gem. Can you guess what we hauled home this week?

So tell us, are you riding high in your pickup truck or do you like a lower profile? Heck, maybe your main mode of transportation is your bike. Either way, tell us what kind of vehicle gets your wheels turning!

I knew I didn’t want a traditional line up of frames in here. I thought an asymmetrical design was the way to go since there wasn’t really any theme to the art in our frames. We have everything from our first home key, to a map of Des Moines and a crazy pic of Lulu-totally rando. I’m hoping to add some color to the room with the art and pictures since we aren’t painting this room.

I was inspired by these photo collages:

I just took the collection of frames I had and laid them out on the floor until I found the design I was after.

After switching around a couple I was finally satisfied with the arrangement. I started the hanging process with the largest frame, sort of the anchor of the collage (Lulu). I didn’t do any fancy measuring, I just winged it. We will definitely be spackling this wall when we move out.

This is the original “after". I felt like it needed a little more bulk to even out the left side of the collage. I just popped up another 11×13 frame that I had left over from our living room frame switcheroo and love how it turned out!

I’ll most likely add a few more frames but I’m really happy with how it looks so far. A much better view than a blank, dreary wall. I also need to print off a few pictures to fill up our blank Ikea frames. I was so excited to get this project going I couldn’t wait to hang up all of the frames. So please don’t mind the gray empty frames.

So whaddya say? Like the asymmetrical look or do you go for the more traditional look?

Here’s our living room before…

With the addition of our cute, affordable pillow…

Overall I’m pretty impressed with the BHG line. This pillow was the only one that caught my eye in the store but I looked up a few more online that we might be adding to our collection.

I’m thinking about adding in Navy Blue or Yellow too. Thoughts? Suggestions? Maybe I should add in a pink pillow (mostly to horrify Matt)?

This is important stuff people! Help a gal out.

After switching them out and adding a new lamp shade I’m really liking the new set up. Luckily, we easily hung these pictures on the nails holding our old pictures. We only had to remove one nail on each side since we were downsizing from 4 pics to 3. It was nice not to have measure and level all over again!

We also have our eye on some cute green pillows for the couch. But right now we’re loving the shot of green these pictures give our living room.

Lulu loves the new pictures too! You can’t beat the $10 price tag to bring in some color. Have you done any print swapping lately? Found any cheap but cute art? Fess up!

We were gifted this little Target lamp for our wedding. We still really like it but the shade was looking a little weary. I tried my darndest to vacuum that puppy clean but it wasn’t looking great.

We decided to make a quick swap with a $20 lamp shade from Lamps Plus. After making the inexpensive switch we couldn’t be more happy with it. We both agree it looks much more modern with the round shape and love that it makes the lamp look more streamlined and less traditional than our “before” shot.

This lamp shade is really similar to the $13 ones we scooped up for our master bedroom. We couldn’t be happier picking this shade up at Lamps Plus. The shades are so reasonable there. I couldn’t find one at Ikea or at Target this size for the price. Gotta love getting the most bang for your buck. I’m still deciding if I should paint the lamp brushed nickel. Thoughts?

I recently received a comment saying they liked the photos above the couch. My Mom is also in that camp. I lean more towards the “don’t put up wedding photos all over the house.” In case you’re curious, we also have engagement/wedding photos in our bedroom. 

Here are the prints that I just picked up to replace our pictures (sorry this is an ebay photo). They’re bigger than the wedding prints at 16×19 so I’m not too worried about them looking small above the couch.

The green is pretty bright. If we go with these I’ll probably add in some green throw pillows on top of the grey ones. I’m really hoping this makes our room a little less blah. It seems so plain. I’d like to add in a punchy color and I think the green will do the trick.

My only concern with these is that they’re too impersonal. Maybe they look a little too much like hotel prints?

So dear readers, I need your help. Do they stay or do they go? Should I replace the wedding pictures with the ones I’ve just bought? Start from scratch? Any other solutions you can come up with? I’m all ears!