Hiding Technology

My apartment has a very weird location for the only place I can connect my internet, it's on the main wall coming into my apartment.

For a while I just kept everything in a basket but it looked really messy. Sorry for the bad picture of it but it's all I have you have to look past the ottoman and the cat to see it.

So I decided that I'd buy one of those shoe storage things from Ikea since they are so slim and wouldn't take up much room. I decided on the Hemnes Shoe cabinet with 4 compartments.

Only I thought the hardware made it look kind of boring so I replaced the hardware with new pulls from Lee Valley and now my wall looks like this.

I think it looks much cleaner and it's easy to access all the plug ins, because the shoe cabinet has no back to it. Because I live in an apartment I didn't want to drill into the wall so I used about 8 3M command strips positioned so that later I can just pull the tabs and the cabinet will come right off the wall.

Till next time!

Back from the Blogging Dead!

I'm back!

I had some stuff come up in my life that made me get distracted from this blog, but now I'm back and excited to show off all the changes I've made to my little apartment! I'll be posting something new soon.

Rental Kitchens...Oh how I hate thee!

This week I am going to be focusing on my kitchen. Rental kitchens always pose such a problem since most of the time they are the one thing that can really date an apartment, and there is very little you can do to update it when painting is a big no-no! Plus unless you are planning on living someplace for over 5 years you probably don't want to rip the whole thing out and redo it on your dime!

This is my kitchen how it currently is, lovely oak trim on the doors, simple fixture, and boring laminate counter top. I do appreciate the white tile backsplash and the white appliances but overall this is the only thing I truly dislike about my place.


I drool over white kitchens like these. The pops of black against white really stand out and add an interesting feature!


Cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling are a dream for me since that is not a typical design in rental apartments!

Pictures from : House Beautiful

Now the challenge is to make my little kitchen look like these. Good luck to me!

DIY Pelmet Boxes

I was very inspired by this pelmet box tutorial at Little Green Notebook. I'm impressed with how little effort it took her because it took me from 5:00pm to 1:00am last night to put my own together (but totally worth it!) . So kudos to her!

Here are the BEFORE pictures of my windows.


I was going to use ribbon to accent the box like she did, but I didn't realize (or look at) how much ribbon is actually on a roll. I ended up with 9 feet of ribbon and needed approximately 28 feet. Needless to say, I was a little short!

But necessity is truly the mother of invention, I thought maybe I'd use a marker to outline the pattern I wanted but when I touched the marker to a test piece of fabric it bled all over the place. Till I figured out that black spray paint would work ( have I mentioned how much I love spray paint because I really do!) So I taped out the design I wanted.


Here are the AFTER pictures of my windows. Yes they are night pictures, because it was 1am when I finished!



I love how they turned out, I think they really add to my living room and finish off my windows perfectly!





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New Pillows!

I went shopping with a friend last weekend and picked up these 2 cute ruffle pillows at Pier One
for my bedroom. I absolutely love them! I have a thing for pillows and have a really hard time resisting them when I see one I love in the store.




I also picked up this cute little bird for my living room from Micheals. I know the whole bird trend is supposedly over, but I don't care, I just think they are so cute and I'd cover my entire house with them if I could find enough that I liked.



I snapped this gratuitous cat picture while I was taking pictures of my pillows. Jill with my other little bird statue.


Hope you are having a great day!

Happy Belated Valentines Day!

I know it's really late, but I've been super busy so I'm wishing you all a Happy V-day now from me and my 2 cats. Hope you had a good one!

So I did get my table on Sunday but I still haven't decided on chairs so I decided to share what I found at Winners the other day. I love places like Winners and Home Sense because you can find all these really nice things for good prices!

Like these 2 white candlesticks. I love the curves and straight edges.


Or like this really cute picture frame. I'm not sure where it's going to go but I love the price and shape.


I also found these 2 cute ottomans that my cats immediately claimed as their own the minute I brought them home. I put them by the table for now until I buy chairs for it.

My cats also totally clawed the covered buttons up, this is what they are supposed to look like.

And now they are no longer covered and look like this...


I've stop freaking out when they wreck something though and luckily I actually like the ottomans better without the fabric on the buttons. They are more obvious that way. So it worked out.

Still a very successful trip to Winners.