Accessorizing A Fireplace...

Andrew's mom Charlotte asked me last weekend if we had bought anything new for the house. My sad answer was not really, considering how empty some of our bedrooms are (which is why none of our guests are allowed on the second floor!)

However, we did have one humble new addition.  It's funny, before we were homeowners, I never looked in a Pottery Barn catalog or ever thought about fireplace tools.  Actually, I still don't think about fireplace tools but luckily, Andrew does.

He found this set and sent me the pictures, saying that he knew that the style would appeal to me. And he's right, the other sets we had seen were ridiculous overpriced and just seemed to be big, clunky and ugly.  I love the addition and I also love that he found it for a bargain price. Our second floor may be bare, but gosh darn it, our living is going to look amazing when we're through with it!

Newlywed Map

One of Andrew's Christmas gifts from me was a framed map.  Not very exciting on its own but what we're using it as is a travel map or a "newlywed map". The idea for it was partly inspired by a post from Beantown Baker on her created from scratch (of sorts) Newlywed Map and a map that Andrew's Granddad and Mimi (his late Grandmother) used to track their world travels.  It's used to mark all the locations you've visited in the world together.















As you can see, the US is decently (although not completely) covered.  And I'm happy to report that all the pins in Europe and Africa are completely from our honeymoon cruise (to date). And I'm pretty much solely responsible for most of the pins in Asia, although Andrew shares some of the Japan pins due to our trip last year.

The map I selected (for convenience's sake) came framed and customized with our family name.  It also offers five different colored pins to signify categories such as dream destinations, planned destinations, locations of loved ones and family, genealogical roots and of course, places visited.

For the time-being, Andrew and I just chose to focus on places we have visited on our own and visited together. To be honest, I don't think we'll track any of the other categories that were mentioned above because we think the most important thing for us is to be able to see a visual representation of where we have been.  However, I think we might play with different colored pins to differentiate places we've visited together from what was done seperately.

Not only is it a cool thing to for a couple or family (or anyone, for that matter) to have as a memento, it also serves as a great piece of artwork to hang on your walls and to spark conversation. 

We have found the perfect place to hang our map on the wall in our dining room and it looks great hanging over our latest furniture addition - a sideboard that matches our dining room table, also purchased at the Restoration Hardware outlet for a fraction of its original price!

For Luck...

A gift from Andrew's brother Adam:

A real horseshoe! Hung over our door with the ends up so the good luck doesn't escape.

Decking Our Halls

It's funny, until we were homeowners, Andrew and I never paid much attention to holiday decorations.  I've always enjoyed wrapping gifts but never got into buying little decorative touches for my old place.  A $20 fake Target tree, a string of colored lights and a few ornaments, and I was good to go. 

But now that we have a house that we're proud of (ridiculously proud of, in fact) and the prospect of spending our first Christmas as a married couple (truthfully, not different from life before the wedding except the whole owning a house thing), we're inspired to make purchases like:

My first wreath ever (this is where I bring in the whole, "I grew up on an Army base overseas" thing and say that people didn't hang wreaths up in the countries I grew up in, therefore, I didn't grow up with this tradition) - this thing still smells fantastic:

Our very own stockings to hang over the mantel:

Speaking of mantels, did I mention that we finally had our chimney inspected and after a rather costly repair, we were ready to safely have our first fire in the house (and my first time living in a house with a fireplace, again, attributed to the reason mentioned above):

There were a few other purchases that I'll 'fess up to making (Christmas runner for our sideboard, Christmas kitchen towels, Christmas guest towels and Christmas soap for the guest bathroom [Sidenote: I am totally in love with Bath and Body Work's Winter Cranberry scent right now]).  This was all bought for a Christmas Adam gathering (Adam coming before Eve, December 23 coming before the 24th, it's a family term from Andrew's family) we held for our families.

The after-Christmas sales are going to be especially tempting this year. Usually, I stock up on half-off wrapping supplies but I think this year, I'm going to have my eye open for more decorative elements.

Before and After

Thanks to Andrew's handiwork, we now have a nice new TV stand to replace the $8 Ikea table that was previously serving in its place.

One Step Closer...

With yet another rug purchase, our dining room is looking more like the real thing.

In Bloom

We've brought a little bit of May's flowers inside with our new entryway rug:

It was a slight splurge, but I minimized the cost with a $20 coupon code and a free $25 gift card promotion that the company was running for Mother's day. I can't wait for it to arrive this week, just in time for Memorial Day weekend.

Six Down, Two To Go

Some things are just meant to be.

After Andrew and I scored the table we were lusting over for a ridiculously low price at the Wrentham Outlets, we were having problems finding the right dining room chairs. We didn't like any of the ones we saw at the Restoration Hardware outlet, plus, they ranged in price from around $200 to $500 each. Which could make one chair cost as much or more as our table.

After keeping an eye out in furniture stores, Andrew spotted this chair in Marshalls of all places.
A genuine leather Parson chair for a VERY reasonable price.

The only problem was that the Marshalls we were in only had two in the color we liked. And they couldn't locate the chair in their other stores via computer system; we were told the only way to find it was to individually call other stores and ask them if they had them. Andrew used his iPhone to call 8 - 10 stores while we stood in the store but could only locate one more in Hingham, even after expanding his calls to include Home Goods stores (Marshalls, TJ Maxx and Home Goods are all owned by the same parent company).  So despite my urging to just go for it and buy the three on the hopes we could locate five more, we walked away from the chairs. This was on a Sunday.

Come Wednesday, I was returning home from a business trip and was promised via text message that Andrew hoped he had a surprise for me. When I walked into the house, I saw SIX of the chairs in our dining room. Andrew had apparently called THIRTY stores earlier in the day, and after expanding his reach to include TJ Maxx, had hit the jackpot. He found four of the chairs at a TJ Maxx and returned to the Hingham Marshalls to get the first two chairs we had found. At this point, the one in Marshfield had already been sold.

All that's left for us now is to locate another two chairs or find a similar style "arm chair" to use at the head of the tabe. But it definitely feels good to have gotten such a great deal on chairs that we love. Even looking online at retailers like Overstock.com, they were selling faux leather chairs for much more than we got these chairs for. It's finds like these that totally make it worthwhile to take our time furnishing the house, rather than rushing to buy things simply to fill the empty spaces in our house.

UPDATE: As of tonight, we have the last two chairs! I happened to walk into a Waltham TJ Maxx during lunch and found the last two waiting for me. After fitting them into my trunk and my backseat, I have to state that I can't believe Andrew was able to fit six into his car at one time.

Meet Our New Dining Room Table!

Meet our new dining room table:

I can't tell you how much we love this table and how excited we are to have scored a great deal on it since we got it at an outlet store (after lusting over it in a catalog for weeks). This is also the reason why we had to rush through Easter dinner, since the guy delivering it ended up being able to stop by with it the same afternoon we bought it.

In terms of furniture stores we've visited in the past month:

• 
  
  HomeGoods
• 
  
  Jordan's Furniture
• 
  
  Ikea
• 
  
  Bernie & Phyl's
• 
  
  Crate & Barrel
• 
  
  Restoration Hardware
• 
  
  Pottery Barn
• 
  
  Boston Interiors
• 
  
  Building 19
• 
  
  Cardi's Furniture
• 
  
  Gardiner furniture outlets
• 
  
  Wrentham outlets

After all that, the furniture count is at 1. That's right, just the dining room table. We don't even have chairs for it yet, since we didn't like any of the chairs on display at the store where we bought it. I'm thinking we may be a tad too picky. And I never realized how hard it was to find a nice, unstuffy rug for a reasonable price. Andrew and I may be furniture shopping until next year!

Slowly But Surely...

...there are signs of us moving into our new house. Andrew and I have spent every night this week moving a carload of things into the house. So far, not much has been unpacked but we consider it a huge achievement to get the majority of our things over before the rain starts for the weekend.

Of course, the first thing that came over was our new bench, installed in its permanent home:

And one of boxes I did manage to unpack was filled with my spices and baking accessories, all fitting perfectly into our new spice cabinet next to the fridge. The whole bottom row is devoted to cupcake liners - who knew I had so many? And I'm pretty sure there a few more packages lingering in some of the boxes:

Also, we had fun tonight showing off the place to Andrew's parents Tom and Charlotte, the first of our family and friends to see the place. Thanks to them, we also had a our first piece of mail addressed to us at our new house - it was a card congratulating us on "our new digs." Yay for being homeowners!

Furniture Stores Make Me Feel Like a Rat In A Maze

Just as I started this post, the part in Old School where "Frank the Tank" gets mocked for having a "big day" planned with his wife to visit Home Depot and Bed, Bath and Beyond, came on. Andrew and I just locked eyes and grinned, because we've been discussing future trips to both stores all weekend.  In fact, we ran a lot of errands on Saturday that had us visiting similar home-oriented stores.

After meeting a coworker of Andrew's to pick up a file in Milton, we decided to take a look at some of the nearby furniture stores in Avon.

First on our list, Jordan's Furniture (it's hard to make out the Jordan's sign all the way to the right, I'm going to blame Andrew since he was the one that took this picture!):

Andrew made a beeline for the leather chairs when we walked in - he looks ready for his duties as man of the house:

We spent some time looking through rugs - it was amazing how different ones they had (and how expensive they are):

Andrew had way too much fun with flipping the rugs quickly on the massive hanger system:

We found a sofa in my signature color, but this green was even a little too bright for me!

Located conveniently next door was Ikea, which was a zoo in terms of parking and how many people were crammed in it:

We weren't really interested in their furniture but I always like seeing the wide variety of patterns they have for comforters and Andrew was interested in some of their storage systems for use in a basement:

Just to give you a clue how crowded it was in the store (which literally had to be hundreds of people considering how massive the entire building is), there was a long line of people waiting to get into the cafeteria. I guess people really love their Swedish meatballs! Andrew quickly scrapped his plans to grab a coffee:

Getting out of Ikea was even more of a hassle - we couldn't not figure out how to exit, which sounds stupid, but literally, they plan the store like a maze where you have to wind your way through a whole floor before you can leave. Determined to avoid doing that, we figured out taking the elevator down was the quickest way, and even that was confusing since none of the buttons were labeled to clearly identify a floor (the couple in the elevator with us were also mystified by the choices). We left the building thankful for the parking lot's "fresh air", glad to shake off the feeling of claustrophobia!

Last stop in the oh-so charming Avon/Brockton area was a Walmart to stock up on TONS of cleaning supplies, for things like hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances.  I'm not going to post any pictures from Walmart, because I figure every American has been in one at least once in their life. However, I did want to share something interesting we spotted at checkout - Strawberry jam and peanut butter M&M's! What will they think of next?

While picturing how to decorate rooms and trying out furniture was fun, it was suprisingly draining. I was feeling distinctly cranky at the end of the day, and I had to bribe Andrew with the promise of pad thai from New Rod Dee's for an early dinner to keep him going!

Officially Grown-Up Now

I'm feeling particularly grown-up now that Andrew and I starting to do some serious furniture shopping. Our current place is mostly a mishmash of cheap furniture from college. I'm finding it therapuetic to throw out all the crap I've accumulated over the years, including all the furniture that is falling apart (goodbye pressboard Target dresser with broken drawers!)

This is one of the pieces that Andrew and I have been lusting over for the past few weeks:

The description cracks me up:

"This is the recliner and ottoman you start thinking about halfway through your evening commute. You’ll stumble through the front door, drop the briefcase, kick off the shoes and flop into the big, broad arms of this handsome chair. [Chair name] looks and feels like it’s been a part of the family for years."

I think that's exactly how Andrew is picturing using the chair. Me? I'm picturing myself draped sideways over the cushy arms, wrapped in the throw and reading a book. Pure happiness.

Benchmark

Andrew and I cleared a huge hurdle to becoming homeowners last Friday. I'm still afraid of jinxing things by writing too much too soon, but suffice it to say, we've turned our thoughts to furniture.

We've been researching all sorts of benches that would work well in a front entry way or a mudroom. Most of the stuff we looked at online was your typical particle board bench with faux leather. Some even came with a few baskets on the bottom as storage space.

Then upon a stroll thorugh Home Goods this weekend, we came across this bench. Swoon.

I love this mosiac pattern on top - the colors, the shapes, the flowers, all gorgeous and constrasting well against the stone (cement?) portion. I actually noticed the pattern on a patio table at first, which was way too expensive and impractical for our needs. And then Andrew found the bench, which was much sturdier than anything we had researched and so pretty to boot.

I love the fact that the first thing that guests would see when stepping in a house would be this cheerful and colorful pattern. Also, I can totally picture my parents sitting on the bench to put on their shoes. Beautiful and practical.

This is where we would put it - out with the old and in with us.

I think furniture shopping has officially replaced our house hunting obsession.