Friends and Family Wall

I've been wanting to do a friends and family photo wall on one of our blank hall walls for a while. Now that we're done painting everything (woohoo!) I can finally put my plan into action. So without further adieu, some inspiration from the world wide web:

As you can probably tell, I'm drawn to neutral walls with eclectically colored frames. I'm thinking I'll look for a few vintage frames and then use Ikea's RIBBA frame as filler.

Love the RIBBA frames--they're inexpensive ($4.99) but the mat that comes with makes them look polished. And you can spray paint them whatever color you want (they come in black and white).

Well, I'm thinking this and finishing up the office will be the next projects in the queue after we're done with kitchen touch-ups...

Frame photos from here, here, here, here, and here.

Geometric Rug Roundup

Our living room floor is feeling a little bare these days—we have laminate flooring throughout the main living area—so I've been doing a lot of research on area rugs lately. I find myself really drawn to geometric rugs—I feel like they can add interesting patterns into your decor and add a pop of color (or not if you want to stay neutral) here's a little roundup of what I've been looking at (and some that are just cool):

 Clockwise from top left: West Elm, Target, Overstock, Overstock, Overstock, Shades of Light

Kitchen Update (It's Been A While!)

Why, hello there. September is just flying by, no? Flying by so fast that I realized I haven't posted anything to ye olde blog in, like, 20 days. I do have an excuse for not posting recently, though--I was out of town all last week for work in Boston (and then went on a camping adventure with my friends Jennileen and Noelle south of the city!). Anyway, enough excuses.

Stuff has indeed been happening on the kitchen front. First, we got counter tops about three weeks ago. The installation went smoothly and was done in a few hours. We decided to go with the grey quartz from Lowe's that we had our eye on. It's the "Alloy" color from Lowe's Allen + Roth line.

Here are the counters in action:

After that, we were ready for backsplash tile. We decided a while ago that we would just go for a simple white subway tile. We looked around and found the best price at our local Floor and Decor Outlet--21 cents per tile, which came out to around 50 bucks total. I like that.

Then it was a matter of deciding whether to attempt tiling ourselves (which we've never done) or asking the contractor we've been working with to do it. The contractor's price--$400--was a too steep for us, especially now that we're almost to the end of the project and really trying to save where we can. So we looked at some tutorials online and decided to give it a go. Also, our good friend Jonathan came over to help us. He is wise in the ways of tiling and many other handy house things. We owe him many beers for helping us out over the years.

After a couple weekend sessions of tiling, Jonathan and Robert had most of the backsplash done. Here's a peek:

Now we just need to grout and finish up some of the edge pieces.

So I would say we're like 98% done with everything. We even have running water and electricity! All the electrical work was finished while I was out of town, so I came home to find working recessed lighting and our bar pendants hung up:

It was pretty great. Now it's just a matter of pulling together some finishing touches--putting a sill on the window, hanging blinds, buying a new trash can, etc.

(And you may or may not have noticed, but I've just been showing pieces and parts of the kitchen in my recent pictures. I'm waiting till we're totally, totally done to show you the complete thing. You know, like the big reveal they do on those HGTV shows. Humor me, folks.)