Get it?  Nooks and crannies?  Yeah, I know, I am horrible at blog titles!  After finally getting around to purchasing and hanging the sunset canvas wrap it was time to finish up the nook in our dining/living room area.  When the 10% coupon from Crate & Barrel arrived in the mail I could barely wait for the husband to get home from work and to give sign off on purchasing the sideboard.  The sideboard (aka a china cabinet or buffet) completes our dining set, which previously included a dining room table (with leaf, which come in handy!) as well as a wine rack.  The sideboard not only completes our set, but also gives us extra storage for all our serving platters/bowls/dishes/etc.

BEFORE:

Doesn’t the nook look sad with just that little end table?

AFTER:

Now the space looks appropriately filled.

And a vertical shot of the space ….

This sideboard totally makes our condo look like real adults live here.  AND we had the perfect number of picture frames to place on the sideboard so no additional purchases were necessary.

Happy Decorating!!

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We’ve been doing quite a bit of decorating to the living room and hallway over the last few months.  I’m really excited about all the new little details.  Originally the husband and I had planned on hanging the picture below from Mexico in our master bedroom.  When we ended up going with the red accent wall instead of the gray one the picture no longer would do in the bedroom.  Since we still loved the memories of the trips we’ve taken to Ixtapa and the picture itself I was confident we would find a place for it eventually.

A few weeks ago I threw my friend a baby shower and in an effort to set the house up for the party I moved the big comfy chair from the living room nook to where we placed the Christmas tree this year.  I really liked how the new chair placement no only added one more place to sit near the couch, but also made the living room area feel more cozy!  The only problem was now the nook was pretty much empty.  The side table was still there, but it just wasn’t/isn’t enough to fill the space.  The space needs some wall art as well as piece(s) of furniture.

FINALLY we had found a place for our sunset photo!!  After going back and forth between having the photo as a print and framed or a canvas wrap we eventually decided upon a canvas for the sunset photo.  With some help from the rents I decided upon the size (36 x 24) and ordered it from My Publisher.  The best part was My Publisher was having a sale so we got 40% off the canvas wrap!  Within a week the canvas wrap arrived at our front door.  One hook and a level later we were in business!!

Now all we need is the matching sideboard to our wine rack and dining table.  Once we put the sideboard in this little nook it will be complete.  Please Crate and Barrel send us a coupon so we can get a discount on our sideboard!!!

What do you think of the canvas wrap??

Happy Decorating!!

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We might be a few months into our second year of marriage, but this year we got our very first Christmas tree!  Our new home needs a tree.  Clearly I had my priorities in the right order since the first order of business was to go purchase ornaments.  A couple years ago when we were registering for our wedding at Crate & Barrel I had seen a lot of cute ornaments.  Our first and only stop for ornaments was at Crate & Barrel.  Luckily for us there was a 30% off sale on all the ornaments!!  My husband and I filled up our basket with lots and lots of white, silver and red ornaments.  I was pretty sure we were buying too many, but figured we would return the ones we didn’t need.

It seemed like destiny as we drove up Massachusetts Avenue and right by a Christmas tree sale at the local church.  Instead of heading the Whole Foods or Home Depot to buy our tree we were going to get it from the church!!  They had a ton of options.  I am not really sure why we didn’t think of checking out the local churches in the first place.   At least we will remember this for next year!

After walking around the available “medium” size tree options a few times we quickly agreed on this guy:

Sorry for the crappy camera phone pictures.  It didn’t dawn on me to bring my camera … fail!  Anyways, after purchasing the tree we laughed a little at our lack of planning on how we were going to get the tree home.  It might have been December, but the convertible top when down and the tree when in the backseat of the car.  We made it home just before the rain started in.  Pretty good timing if I do say so myself.

We were home and had a tree and ornaments, but we were lacking lights and maybe more importantly a tree stand.  We threw the tree in a bucket and walked to CVS.  There we purchased a tree stand and 200 white lights.  Back to the house we went to decorate our tree!!

After a number of tries we finally go the tree straight in the tree stand.  The husband cranked the Christmas music and we spent the next hour or so arranging the ornaments perfectly.  Here’s a close up of a couple of the ornaments.

I am very happy with our final product.  Check it out …

What do you think??  I’m very pleased.  Our menorah and dradle looked great next to the tree throughout Hanukkah! Maybe next year we will buy a tree skirt and actually get some gifts under the tree :)  We did have a present under the tree for less than 24 hours.  Then I couldn’t wait any longer and gave my husband his holiday present prior to Christmas Eve.

Happy Holidays!

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I remember being very excited to register for our wedding.  After the husband and I moved in together we did the whole merging of the worlds exercise.  For example, we kept his couches, but I got to keep my bedroom set.  Deciding what to keep vs. discard was a fairly easy process for us.  However, nothing in our apartment was really “ours”.  For example our kitchen dishes were handed down to me from my mother when she redid the kitchen — this was back when I was still in college.  They have got to be at least 10 years old. The dishes have really held up well, but we wanted dishes that we had chosen together.

Side Note – I think this is officially my second blog post with no pictures.  The problem is I didn’t take pictures when we went on these registry excursions.  I was going to take pictures of our wedding gifts, but didn’t think that would be fun to look at LOL.  In any event I hope you enjoy the post and I promise to have pictures in the next post! :)

The husband I scheduled an evening to do our first round of registering.  Off to Crate and Barrel we went.  Despite sitting in traffic for an hour to get the big Tyson’s Corner store instead of going to the smaller store in DC I was in great spirits.  We walked up to the counter “hi we need to register”, which was followed by the whole, congrats, when is the wedding and here’s how you work your scanning gun.  Okay now where do we start?  I had done a little pre-shopping online and we had agreed on some glasses. Scan – enter quantity.  Ummm how many do we need?  I had no idea and my husband looked at me smiled and shrugged his shoulders.  After just sort of staring at each other for 30 seconds he reminds me we can update the quantity online.  Okay great we can do that later so there is no need to worry.  Now what?

Imagine walking around the store for over an hour and randomly choosing things.  We had no idea what we needed or how much.  There were also a few items we couldn’t agree upon.  We left the store a bit defeated, okay maybe a lot defeated!  I thought registering would be easy and fun … not so much.  As we returned our scanner they gave us two heart shaped champagne glasses as a gift!  At least there was a little reward at the end of our attempt to choose things for the registry.

As we drove home I texted one of my bridesmaids, who also recently got married, and reported our less than successful registry experience.  She had some great advice for us … take a parent (or parents) with you to register.  The parents are able to help with how many of an item you need, what stuff  you will want to have that you might not be aware of and when needed the parent can mediate the choosing process. =)

This is exactly what we need!!  My mother (more than) happily agreed to accompany us to the next store and provide us with her expert advice!  A few weeks later when the husband and I were visiting my parents we headed to Bloomingdale’s with my mom.  We were a lot more successful the second time around and both found her suggestions extremely helpful.

So there you have it … our wedding registry experience in a nutshell.  Do you have any tidbits from registering that might help a current/future bride to be??

Happy planning!

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