Category Archives: our apartment

I’m back from my Santa Barbara mini getaway with my husband (see photos of the trip here). We’ve both been working a lot so it was definitely a fun, relaxing, much needed break.

As promised, I wanted to share with you all my living room progress.  Since the last update here’s what I’ve done:

+Separated the two tables we were using as a coffee table and designated them as side tables

+Moved the chair ottoman to the middle of the room and added a tray so we could use it as a coffee table

+Added pillows to the sofa. I went with two blue velvet, two aga reverse black*, and a petite zig zag french blue lumbar*.

+ Hung the beautiful paintings I had commissioned from Parima Studio

+Purchased a media console. We went with this one from Ikea which was inexpensive (a necessity since this is a short term home) and just the right size. We’ve customized it by painting the back in a similar color blue as the velvet pillows. We bought doors for it, however not sure if we’ll use them or not.  Still deciding… Might just add two bottom drawers to hide the X-Box controls and gadgets and keep the rest as open storage.

+Added an accent table with a scalloped top next to the chair.  It’s black and I like how it looks but I’m kinda tempted to paint it another color.  Undecided still.

+Bought three square frames to hang on the wall in a vertical column to the left of the paintings. They’re silver but I plan on spray painting them gold to match the mirror above the fireplace.

Overall, here’s what the room is currently looking like:

What’s up next:

+paint the three frames and hang them

+ add drawers to the media console and style the shelves

+ get another side table lamp

+buy and install cover for tv cords & wires

+find a stylish storage basket or bin for Little Foot‘s toys

Hopefully these last few things don’t take me too long! Stay tuned for more updates!

*I don’t have these pillows available in the shop website yet. If you’re interested, email shop@ariannabelle.com for a quote.

I’ve been sharing peeks into my home on Instagram today, and thought I’d share them on here as well.  I realize it’s been awhile since I blogged about changes I’ve made!

First off, my office is coming together nicely, if I do say so myself. Remember what it looked like when we first moved in? Here’s a peek at the progress I’ve made and what it’s looking like now:

Still need to find some more art to fill some of the frames in the gallery wall and get a few more organizational items and accessories here and there. I’ll give a full tour once it’s all “done”!

I finally made myself some pillows for my living room sofa. It was looking quite bare without anything.  Here’s what they look like:

I’ll be adding similar ones to the pillow shop soon. You can also email me if you’re interested in getting some made for your home.

After months of not DIYing it myself, like I said I would, I finally decided to commission Patricia of Parima Studio to make a colorful piece of art for above my sofa.  She shared with me a close-up of the progress so far:

So excited to see the final product and put it up in the living room!

In my kitchen (which I wish I could gut and completely remodel but I can’t because it’s a rental), I added a few things to make it prettier:

The tea kettle is a Le Creuset, which was sent to me by the friendly folks at All Modern.   It’s in the most beautiful shade of blue and has a little bit of an ombre effect.  I absolutely love it – makes me smile every time I see it!  I also like that it whistles when the water is boiling, an absolute must for someone like me who tends to forget I have something on the stove (bad I know) !

The utensil holder glazed in turquoise inside, is from Etsy shop KarinLorenc. I love supporting fellow small businesses!

The little bowl that holds garlic and shallots is from Anthropologie (though I don’t think it’s available anymore).

Last but not least, in our bedroom we put up an inexpensive Ikea shelf to serve as a bedside table. We installed one on just one side of the bed to see if we liked it, which we do, so we still need to put up one on the other side.  Having a shelf instead of a regular bedside table allows us to open the drawers we have under the bed. A simple black frame holds of a photo of us on our wedding day (5 yr anniversary coming up pretty soon!) and I replaced our old ugly alarm clock with this pretty one from LL Bean:

Well that’s all the updates for today.  Be sure to follow along for more later on!

Our bedroom is finally starting to take shape! For the longest time it looked like this (even though it had been a good while since we moved in):

Yea, not so pretty.  The wall color actually doesn’t look too horrible in the photo (probably because it was a sunny day when I took it and the light was streaming in through the sliding doors) but my husband and I both didn’t like it, to say the least. We usually keep the curtains in that room closed most of the time and so the wall color made the room look dark and depressing. Definitely not us.  We used extra dining chairs as nightstands. The headboard you see to the right we brought in from my mom’s house to re-upholster it in a different fabric.

I wasn’t expecting it to take so long to get it looking decent, but other unexpected things kept taking precedence of our time and financial resources.  We have finally made some progress though. So far we’ve changed out the duvet cover, painted the walls, brought in “nightstands”, recovered the headboard and installed it, and selected fabrics for the pillows.

We went with this duvet cover from Ikea:

My husband is (sadly) not a fan of white duvet covers and we wanted something inexpensive since we eventually plan on upgrading our Full size mattress to a Queen or King, so it’s not worth investing in something nicer just yet.

This dining space from an old issue of domino inspired the wall colors: We didn’t go with as much contrast but still chose two different blues (Olympic Zero VOC Paint):

Our current bed frame is from Ikea and is the same one we’ve had for a while.  It served us well when we were very tight on space.

Though we’re not as short on space anymore and we’d love to change it, we’re waiting to do so until we can also afford the larger mattress mentioned above.  Since it’s staying and it has drawers, we went with shelves as nightstands so they won’t get in the way of being able to open the drawers.

We recovered the headboard in a greige linen (below right) and finalized fabrics for the pillows: The chintz fabric I’ve loved since seeing it in Michelle’s Lonny office:

It works perfectly with the colors of the duvet and the headboard. (Update: I found out the fabric is on backorder til late December I guess I’ll have to wait – booo)  The blue velvet will add richness, and the Kelly Wearstler fabric with the diagonal lines is a nice contrast to the floral in terms of style and pattern.

Up next to do:

• make the pillows
• get a new alarm clock -I’m thinking maybe this one
• on the nightstands add black frames with black and white photos of us
• buy and install grouping of white square frames on opposite wall

What do you think? Can you start to picture it? Can’t wait to share more progress!

Follow me on Instagram for mini updates!

*For those who are interested in pillows out of the fabrics mentioned above, please email shop@ariannabelle.com for a quote

Last week I showed you photos of my office progress. Today I’m showing you photos of our living room. If you remember from this post, when we got the keys, the walls were painted a medium brown.  Similar to the office, we decided we wanted to brighten things up with a nice white (we went with Horseradish C15-1 by Olympic):

Here’s my list of things to get/make:

1. Throw pillows – I’ve been so busy making them for others, I haven’t set aside the time to make some for myself! lol I guess also, I haven’t really finalized what fabrics I want to use.  I want to do four, maybe five pillows total.  Two will probably be in China Sea’s Aga Reverse in black and white, but not sure what I want for the others. Still deciding!

2.  Art for wall above sofa – I’m thinking something abstract with various blues

3. Another table lamp and two side tables (the thing holding the current lamp is actually a shoe shelf turned sideways)

4. A rug to add a bit of warmth and texture

5. A mirror for above the fireplace – maybe a sunburst one or a tall rectangular one

6. Coffee table accessories

7.  A flat screen TV (you can spot the “mini”, yet bulky one we currently have in the second pic)

I’d love to take out the blinds and add new window treatments but considering we don’t really know how long we’ll stay in this condo (1 year, 2 years?), it may not be worth the investment.  The white chair I’ve had since I was in college and was given to me by a friend of my mom’s.  It’ll probably stay for now.

Well there you have it.  That’s what my living room looks like currently – a neutral base. Can’t wait to add some life and color to it. Stay tuned for more updates!