Apartment Style: My Living Room and Kitchen

I love to decorate, and love seeing how everyone fixes up their "first" homes or apartments.  I've been meaning to do a post on my apartment, but I just now got around to taking pics to put on here!

Here's the lovely abode Tressa and I call home...
(Click on Tressa's name to visit her blog and see what she's up to!)

Couch, Chair & Ottoman, and Zebra Ottoman:  Ashley's Furniture

Curtains: JcPenny

Zebra Pillows: Ashley's Furniture

Flower and Leather Pillows:  Garden Ridge

End Tables, Tray:  Target

Painting: Store in NLR that's no longer open.

Candle Holders: Kirklands

Vase:  IO Metro

Arrangement in Vase:  Arty Crafty & Hobby Lobby

I'm a very lucky (probably slightly spoiled) girl.  All the furniture was a gift from my parents for graduation last year.  I'm slightly obsessed with my couch and chair.  I love, love the color and can't wait to put them in a room thats not white. haha.

Amazingly the zebra ottoman has not had anything spilled on it yet *knock on wood*.  My roommate and I are pretty OCD about it.  I love the large tray.  It holds all our magazines that we are waiting to read, plus drinks, snacks, and anything else.

I'm also obsessed with my entertainment center.  It was also a gift from my parents.  We had purchased the center piece a couple of years ago with the intention of adding pieces to it.  Well, they retired the style before I could purchase the other pieces and I was so sad.  One day, I happened to be walking through Furniture Row and low and behold they had my other matching pieces.  I called my parents right then and they ordered them for my birthday!  I love the way the finished product looks!

My mom helped me decorate the top and bookcases.  She's amazing at decorating!

Entertainment Center:  Furniture Row

Decorations:  Various places such as Arty Crafty, TJ Max, Riffraff etc.

On to the kitchen...

My favorite thing about our kitchen is the marble looking counter tops and our raised bar.  It's the perfect place to sit and chat or do homework, while the other is in the kitchen.  Right now our counter tops are a little crowded due to my roommate and I's disagreement over the best coffee maker, so we just have two out.

My favorite candy jars from The Container Store house a variety of granola bars and special K bars.  Perfect for grabbing on the way out the door.

Top of fridge.  We like wine here.  The sign came from nowhere else but Fayetteville's very own Riffraff.  The BEST home decor store, if you haven't been there click on the link and go there now!  They ship to anywhere and have the best prices!! The wine glasses also came from there, but as I am typing this Tressa just dropped the white/red wine glass.  My mom got me that cute wine holder from Kirklands a while back.

More wine, a little Don Perignon, and cute sign from Riffraff.

My mom helped me decorate the top of my cabinets.  Most of the decor came from Arty Crafty, but the plates I found at a little antique store last summer.

Part of our entry hallway.  A friend helped me paint the canvas several years ago, it's my favorite verse from the Bible.

Now you know where I spend the majority of my time!

Cut off

Tressa and I were discussing earlier today about how hard it's going to be next September, having been finally cut -off from the financial stability our parents have provided us for so long (ok, probably a bit TOO long, but hey we're not complaining).

Here are our top 5 ways to save money next year (obviously some of these we're not totally serious on)

1.  Do without cable.  Ours is $135.00 every month.  Redic, I know.  We have cable boxes and DVR in every bedroom, plus all the movie channels.  Pretty sure we can both do without this.  I mean, you can watch everything on your computer now anyways, so why not just invest in one of those little cords to hook the computer up to the tv?  Sounds like a plan to me!

2.  Join a gym and take showers there.  That will cut down on both water and electricity!

3.  Leave the oven door open after you've cooked something.  INSTANT space heater!  (Confession:  I actually already do this because I'm so dang cold natured)

4.  Stock up on fans in the summer and space heaters in the winter.  Who cares if your home is a fire hazard, we're saving money here!

5.  Only run the dishwasher/do laundry when it's absolutely necessary.

When all else fails, call home and explain how unreasonable it is that you're being cut-off at 23 years of age when your other siblings managed to string along far longer than that.  Explain that sometimes being responsible is so overrated and you would like to postpone entering the real-world until you have a better grasp on your financial stability, which obviously they could help you reach by simply taking over a couple of bills.  After all, it would reduce stress and prevent premature aging.  Do they really want their daughter looking that a tired 40 year old in her mid-twenties?  I think not.

Joking, of course ;)

Decorating Inspiration

It's no lie that I love to decorate.  Blame it on growing up in a home where my parents constantly rearranged our furniture on a monthly basis, and I was allowed absolute creative design of any bedroom I ever had.  I enjoy decorating so much more now that I have my own apartment which I can experiment with on a daily basis.  Through in a roommate who works at quite possibly the greatest decorating store in Northwest Arkansas, Riffraff, and our apartment is never lacking in decor.  In fact, we are known to put decorations in the trunks of our cars when we grow tired of them and have nothing else to store them in.

I'm not shy to use tons of color and patterns in our apartment, and my roommate has a love of words.  I'll save a peak at our decorating style for a later post, since currently our apartment is in shambles due to a sick roommate, and an emergency trip to the E.R in the early hours of the morning.  For now, I'll let you in on some of my inspiration that stays in a little folder on my computer.

I love raise bars and islands.  Our raised bar in our apartment is one of my favorite things.  It's a great place to sit and talk while one of use is cooking dinner, or working on schoolwork, or even blogging :)

I also love, love see through cabinetry.  Of course, I should probably never have them since my own cabinets stay quite messy, but they would be great for someone who is super organized, like my friend Christi!

I adore white furniture and white walls.  When paired together, they create an element of cleanliness and modernity.  The base of the table adds a rustic element, which is in stark contrast to the contemporary design of the chandelier.  Throw in some aqua accents, such as the picture and the vase of the table, and you have a very simple, yet put together dining area.

This kitchen screams my name.  I love the varying patterns that all correlate to each other, along with the different colors of wood.  I've always wanted a breakfast nook that has a bench.  This kitchen allows for lots of seating to be sure that the kitchen is the heart of the home.

How I love this armoire.  It's very modern, yet the design is very antique.  I love the matching lamps and bright yellow to add a splash of color.  This would look great in an entryway or hallway.

I imagine this little seating nook in a master bedroom.  A perfect place to read, or have a quiet time.  

I adore this kitchen.  It has a very European feel.  I love the sunken stove/oven area.  The island is large enough to have plenty of space for preparing food, and I love the open shelves in the background which house a variety of cookware.  I think a shelf for hanging copper pots and pans would make a perfect finishing touch to this kitchen.

A Trip to the Hospital

My precious roommate, Tressa, has been really sick for the past 3 weeks.  She has been scaring us because we haven't been able to figure out just what was wrong with her.  Last night, I woke up at 1am to my phone vibrating.  This was totally a God thing because normally I won't even hear my phone ring when I'm asleep.  I answered it, and it was Tressa, crying in the other room.  I ran into her room to experience her having a series of mini seizures.  Scared both of us to death.  I went outside in the snow to attempt to get the snow and ice off my car so I could drive her to the hospital.  It was a scary drive in the ice with Tressa trying to control her pain.  Her boyfriend, Ben, is a doctor and he met us there.
Several hours later, Tressa is home with a passed kidney stone and lots and lots of painkillers and antibiotics. I get to play nurse Jen, and take care of my sick roommate while we cuddle up with blankets and watch movies.
Praise the Lord that hopefully Tressa is on the road towards healing now, and the worst is behind her!

Dumb

I have a slight obsession with having white teeth.  It probably stems from my years of being a pageant girl, but I just hate it if my teeth aren't super white.  I'm also obsessed with Crest Vivid White toothpaste.  Try it, it's amazing.  So I ran out of toothpaste yesterday, and bought a new tube.  It came with a sample of the new Crest White Strips Professional.  I decided to try them.  I'm no newcomer to white strips, but I normally have really bad experiences with them.  Like, they KILL my teeth after having them on for 5 minutes.  I put these on last night and they were awesome (or so I thought).  They didn't hurt at all and stayed put the entire 30 minutes I wore them.  Yes, 30 minutes.  Can you tell where this story is going?  I was pretty proud for getting through the entire 30 minutes without pain and thought that I had found my new love.  Went to bed, yadda yadda.

Woke up in the middle of the night in intense pain.  I'm telling you it was intense!  I seriously thought that my teeth were going to fall out.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  Hurt so bad.  Hurt so much that I couldn't sleep the rest of the night.  Ow.  I could barely brush my teeth this morning without crying they hurt so bad.  

So off I go to school.  The slightest amount of air on my teeth is excruciating, they are that sensitive right now.  It wasn't fun having to teach/talk all day without smiling (which if you know me, is hard).  I'm sure I looked pretty silly.  

So that's my stupid story.  Don't use the white strips.  They're horrible.  My teeth are still hurting regardless of how many tylenol I've popped all day.

On another note, my roommate and I volunteered to distribute flyers for our church's new campus in Fayetteville tonight.  Well it sounded all fine and dandy until we realized that today is the coldest day all year.  Brr... We are going to freeze our little booty's off.  We have to do 55 houses too, so think of us tonight while you're in your warm and cozy houses :)

And so I should also do a plug for our church!  The first service in Fayetteville is THIS SUNDAY at 9:15 and 10:55 so if you don't go to church anywhere else you should come hang out with us!  Lots of fun!  

Finally,  celebrate with me because I finally finished both my IRB proposal and my application for the Knowles Science Teaching Fellowships!  This is a HUGE stress relief and now all I have to do is sit and wait :)  I'm getting pretty good at that.