happy holidays!

Hope you all had a very merry christmas!
Just wanted to check in and share a little bit of our christmas!



and i realized i didn't do a post of our christmas decor, so here's a few pics:


and i finally finished re-making our manzanita trees from our wedding just in time to decorate them for the holidays!




hope you all had a great christmas, and thanks for sticking around for my few and far between posts!

desktops & counter tops

Black Friday was massively-organize-and-clean-the-house-friday over at the sixth floor apartment. seriously, nolan nearly fainted when he came home. ;) we have clean & organized counter tops and desktops, folks!

so now that things are looking pretty decent, and not buried under mounds of things-that-had-no-home...i finally got around to taking a few pictures...so, here are the much requested pics (from probably my only reader) of our parsons tables...

Parson's Desk in my girl cave, doing double duty as a desk & vanity...

the top of my dresser...it rarely ever looks like this:

Parson's mini-desk, serving as a drop off point for all my daily things...

Parsons Console, serving as Ollie-headquarters

our tv console...in the beginning stages of christmas festive decorations...

hopefully there will be a post in the future showcasing more holiday decorations....it is looking a bit sparse! lol.

tables, desks, & consoles...oh my!

during our apartment renovation, i looked at countless home decor sites, blogs, stores, etc. and the one thing that i found myself constantly drooling over, was the West Elm Parson's Desk. {why, west elm, are you not in hawaii?!?! we all know hawaii homes need help in the interior design department!!!} i looked at furniture stores here for something comparable, i mean it's so basic! but nothing. i even thought of having it made, but was told to just buy it, it would be cheaper. (hmph!) i even drooled over it in the actual west elm store earlier this year:

{hi cece!}

eventually, i just bit the bullet...i was gonna order it online and ship it! and since i was already going to ship the desk, i may as well order other things we needed too! shipping was super fast and was delivered to our front door:

assembly (thanks to nolan & his dad) was pretty fast and easy (although they did send 1 wrong part for the coffee table, but a quick trip to home depot solved the problem).

Here's a pic of our mini parson's desk and coffee table {please excuse the mess...i'm still working on finding homes for many things!}

not pictured are the parsons console table (being used as ollie-central), and the parsons desk (will be doing double duty as my desk and vanity area) stay tuned for more updates!!!

wonderful world of blinds!

we FINALLY have some new (modern) blinds up in this place! gone are the original blinds that came with the apartment circa late 1980s. heavy, ugly, dusty, dirty, drapes. even with the drapes pulled back, it took up so much of the window space, it really closed off the room:

{construction causes TONS of fine soot. we've vacuumed & mopped about a million times and the soot still appears! }

we couldn't be happier! (except if it were motorized, but that was just much too expensive!) they really help to block out the heat as well, which is another added benefit! and when it's opened, the rooms are so much brighter and feel a lot bigger. what a difference some drapes make! :)

let's get the ball rolling

one of the most used phrase from nolan throughout the wedding planning process was, "we'll do {insert task here} after the wedding." Said tasks include:

• buying a coffee table


• buying a nook table for the kitchen nook we demolished


• buy a desk


• buy an area rug


• hang engagement & wedding photos


• fully renovate the second bathroom


• install blinds

and i can finally say we are checking things off the list!

• blinds have been ordered!



• coffee table, desk, kitchen nook, & extra table have all been ordered!!! i'm so excited for my west elm parsons collection. i have been lusting after a parsons desk for what seems like forever!!!
  

{all images from westelm.com}

SO EXCITED!!! it should be here by next week, stay tuned!! now i need to start working on hanging the photos and finding an area rug...i'm giving up on the bathroom reno for now.

guest bathroom fix-up: finished...for now

WOW! an update! since we had a week-long house guest last month (hi cece!), nolan & i had to get our act together and fix up the guest bathroom so it was as use-able as possible! see, nolan wants to renovate the bathroom, so he didn't want to do any major work (like buy a new toilet) if we are planning on ripping this bathroom to shreds. so our goal: functional & clean.

this meant:

• capping the exposed sink pipe...DONE! no more water spilling out all over the floor!



• get a new shower curtain to replace that hideous one that the previous tenants left behind....DONE! nice, white, and plain. oh yah, and a tiny bit too short.



• new shower head that doesn't spray directly at the wall (seriously, most UNfunctional shower everrrrr!)...after 2 tries, DONE!



• clean & get rid of unnecessary stuff....done!

next project: BLINDS! it's time to cover up our windows!!!

workin' on it...

wow. has it really been over 4 months since i last updated this blog?!?! my apologies. things have gotten crazy in the wedding department, so everything house-related has taken a back seat. BUT wedding means super fantabulous houseguest, CECE is coming in 9 days!!! so that means we had to light a fire under our butts to get things ready.


1. clean clean clean!!!! i went on a 4 hour cleaning spree the other week. vaacuming, dusting, mopping, polishing, scrubbing...the whole shebang. now i just need a quick cleaning and we'll be house guest ready!


2. hang pottery barn hanging organizers: i'm so excited that there's actually a place for keys and mail now.

3. progress in the second bathroom:

• shower cleaned


• new shower head


• shower caddy up


• shower curtain up


• exposed pipe capped


• toilet---in process of being fixed

stay tuned for pics and more updates!!!!

guest bath: shopping

We headed out to Bed Bath & Beyond because we needed a new bathmat for our master bath...and since we drove all the way out there, we should look for things for the guest bath (a.k.a. cece's bathroom)! YAY! We didn't want to get anything too expensive because it's just a temporary solution until we can actually remodel (which nolan says will be after the wedding. boo)...at first i wanted to go really girly since this is going to be the adjacent bathroom to my future girl-cave. but then i thought of poor male house guests that would need to use a frilly bathroom and i felt bad. (see how nice i am?)

so we went for white. that's pretty gender neutral, right?

we came away with:

shower curtain, bath mat, shower caddie

not a bad start right?

guest bath: progress

wow. 2 posts in one week?!!? AMAZING! i can't even remember the last time this has happened here on this blog. what can i say, i'm really excited to get back into the swing of things. nolan said he doesn't want to replace anything until we're ready to fully renovate the bathroom because he doesn't want to install something (i.e. a toilet) only to have to un-install later....and all that is going to have to wait until after the wedding (boo).

so, with nolan's foot firmly planted in the land of we-are-not-replacing-anything-until-after-the-wedding land, i can only do minor things to make this bathroom as functioning as possible. (minus a sink) in time for our house guest, CECE!!! (hi cece!)


GUEST BATH IN ALL ITS ORIGINAL GLORY:

POST DEMO MESS:

i can't believe they ripped off the sink/cabinet/wall mirrors.

MOSTLY EMPTY:

ideally this is where i'd say "all clean!"

but it's not. it's still pretty nasty in there. BUT it's mostly cleared out :)

THE PLAN:

• clean as much as possible
• get toilet working again (it has no water, anyone know why that is?
• get a new shower head (i'm sure that doesn't count)
• get a new shower curtain
• find a shower caddie
• bathmat
• door hooks

i'm excited!!!
:)

guest bath: the cleanup

hello all!

anybody still visit this blog? i hope so, because i'm back with an apartment renovation post!!!

i thought i'd never see the day when we would start to tackle the black hole that is our guest bathroom. one of the main reasons we wanted a bigger place was to have a second bathroom. i mean, having overnight guests would prove difficult when they'd have to come into our bedroom to use the bathroom. what if they have to poop in the middle of the night? AWKWARD. right? or what if nolan and i experience a harry & charlotte post-french-dining experience ala sex and the city? that would NOT be good.

nolan's old college roommate stayed over for one night the other month and we were NOT prepared at all for guests. no extra bedding, no guest bathroom..."hi. welcome! you can brush your teeth in the kitchen sink." not good. bad hosts. So with the knowledge that we will be having a week-long house guest later on this year (hi cece!!! i'm so excited!) we have been focused on cleaning out that black hole. it may not get renovated, but at least it'll be clean and almost fully functioning (we have no sink area, as it was accidentally demo-ed).

so without further adieu, i present to you.....

THE BLACK HOLE!!!

so, i thought contractors take stuff to throw away when they're done. i guess not. we were left with buckets of paint, primer, flooring stuff, broken tile, mortar, and things i just can't figure out what they were for. all of this was left around the apartment when we moved in. we didn't know what to do with it all (they must've left it behind for a reason, right? wrong.) so we threw it in the guest bath.

when we realized we didn't need to keep all that junk, we didn't know where to dump it.

our building doesn't let you just throw any ol' thing away...so many rules. AND there was the issue of how would we transport everything? luckily it all fit in the accord. AND we had all the mangled chicken wire from ollie's make-shift barricade on our balcony that we were forced to remove. (damn you, you stupid rules!)

Luckily, my mom needed to have some (a lot of ) paint thrown away too, so she found people to take it all to the dump and said to bring over all our stuff too...so we did!

stay tuned for our more empty bathroom!

happy {belated} new year!!!

As most of you already may know, something pretty, full of sparkle, and all kinds of wonderful entered the apartment on new years eve....

an engagement ring!

we're engaged!!!

can you believe it?!?!
i can no longer dance around like an idiot waving my hand in the air whenever "single ladies" starts to play. ha.

in addition to the above,
six critters moved in as well...

we are now the reluctant owners of 6 guppies and soon-to-be 1 bottom feeder fish...for feng shui reasons...remember this post? luckily we found a plain grey pot...no crazy chinese designs. phew!

and hopefully in the new year, we will get our second bathroom cleaned out and AT LEAST get the toilet and shower in working order!