IKEA explosion and sample paints

Isaac gave me a little spending cash from our wedding gifts! Originally I was going to save it for the iPhone 5, but upon a wandering adventure around IKEA, I fell in love with a TV stand and just had to have it for our ever-so-important TV set-up with our three game consoles. I have wanted forever to have something with drawers and/or cabinets to hid all of the controllers and cords, and now we have it!

How beautiful is she! I love me some Besta shelving units. She took hours to put together, and then I spent this morning moving everything from the old TV stand to the new one. I love the teal drawers, and it looks way less hectic than the previous one! Once our new media shelves come in, that DVD stand on the left will be gone as well, creating more room!

Ike playing his new Rocksmith game on the set-up. What a cutie.

In addition to building the TV stand, I also put our sample paints on the wall to pick which colors we wanted and see how it looks with the lighting!

The mint green on the right is our favorite. It will be for our accent wall in the dining room across to the living room. It may look really light right now, but I think once it covers the whole wall it'll be a nice, subtle pop!

Yellow in the kitchen. We like the bottom one best for full-kitchen coverage. It's pale and perfect!

This is all the same color gray for the bedroom, but I put it on three different areas of the wall to see how it shows in the different lighting. I think it's a perfect light gray!

That's it for now. I'm too tired to do anything else today. Going to Sherman tomorrow to sort through wedding stuff, and then Friday I absolutely have to do laundry before I begin cleaning out everything and making runs to goodwill! Time to purge ourselves of junk!

-Kristen

The beginning and the shame.

Ike and I have now been married a week and one day! I can definitely say it has been the best week and one day of my life. I'm very lucky to have him as my husband and am so excited about all the adventures we will have!

Here's where we're different: Isaac could live in a cardboard box, and as long as he had a few of his favorite books and his iPod he would be fine. I, however, although I really need nothing more to entertain me than my iPad, iPhone, and iPod, like having space. Space I don't even know what to do with. A 501 square foot one bed one bath apartment shared between two human beings and a cat is not nearly enough space at all. But then again, maybe I'm just not utilizing the space to its fullest potential.

We toyed with the idea of moving into a bigger place, but even though the idea of having a second bedroom to transform into a library/media storage was great, and Isaac gave me the go ahead to decide if we were going to move ("If you just can't live here, we'll move"), AND the fact that I absolutely HATE moving... I decided that since I'm already familiar with the small space and have so many ideas of where and how I would want to add more storage and shelving, I'm going to stick it out here and make it the most functional little apartment in all of Austin. Look out, apartmenttherapy.com. We're gonna knock your socks off. With Pinterest by my side and quite a few crafty friends who obviously need something to do after all that wedding planning (hint, hint), Project: Newlywed Heaven is now underway!

I'm going to upload some photos I took today of the apartment. BE WARNED: the apartment is a mess! Two reasons for this: we have not been able to clean since getting back from the wedding because there is NOWHERE TO PUT STUFF! The second reason is that Isaac has been sick, so since he's been resting we've both been resting.

This kitchen is a disaster! Pots and pans often sit on the stove because there is no room in the cabinets. And that far wall is only being used for a tiny bulletin board and dry-erase board!

Our crammed little coffee station is one of Isaac's favorite spots, but the rest of the counter is crammed, too! Also the stark-white walls are so glaring. Definitely painting in here!

Thank goodness that couch cover is replaceable! We're going to paint these walls and change the couch cover to a nice corduroy gray, and definitely utilize more of that wall space! 

Beckett is sleeping on my wedding dress bag, which still hasn't found a place to live, next to Isaac's Jaguar case, which shouldn't be shoved in a closet somewhere! I love our coffee table, but I really think we can utilize the media space more!

We don't even have a dining room because we have an office instead. While we love our computer, I think we can move it to the bedroom once that area is figured out! Also, look at how much space those DVDs take up. Movies are super important to us, and we have a lot of Criterion Collective and box sets that just can't be condensed! I seen some floor-to-ceiling media storage in our future.

What a beautiful wall whose only purpose is to hold a signed Sonic Youth album cover and be a resting spot for the trash can and cat bed! I think some beautiful home-made pipe shelves will make this wall fantastic, and storage-savvy!

One of the THREE bookshelves, that is too deep (but handy for storing records on the bottom shelf) and what an awful color brown! If new storage options don't work, maybe some new paint will! Also we may move that bookshelf somewhere else to fit the desk in that corner! And that beautiful wooden chest -- you need a perfect home!

This room needs paint all over. The walls I think will be a light gray, and that awful wood headboard will get a repainting, too! Maybe a mint? Who knows! And the two columns of milk crates will disappear as well, maybe to be covered in burlap and hooked onto the opposite wall for high-up storage!

The closet was a quick take-a-picture-and-run, because it is the biggest disaster of the apartment. Clothes crammed into crannies, things shoved back into the corner I haven't even tried to discover, two bookshelves, and two large, plastic, ridiculous to use dresser things. I want to be able to walk into our walk-in closet!

Our bathroom (including the cat's!) is so white, and as you can see there's not a single ounce of additional storage on the walls, so you can imagine how crowded and messy the cabinet is. I'm a huge fan of bubble baths and would love a nice blue bathroom with perfectly organized shelves while I soak!

Phew. I made it. How awful is that? But at the same time, I think that with fresh walls of paint to calm the eyes and utilizing the wall-space to its truest potential, we will be able to live here happily, and save the extra money we would be spending on more, unneeded space to go towards travel and things we actually want to do!

So, grande white mocha. Here we go.

-Kristen

PUNKIA

These are two separate collections, but this post will act as a sort of catch-all since I have been slacking in my posting duties.
Quick and dirty:

Got a kitten.
Got a typewriter.
Visited my niece.
Etc. etc.

More later (promise), but photos for now.

Also--my brother got me spy glasses for my birthday. They look like sunglasses, but record video. Expect these to be incorporated soon.

These are the photos that were intentionally double-exposed. Call it cliche art school bullshit, but I still like them.

These are the last batch from the apartment. Note the nice shot of one of the photo walls near its final stage.

The last photos were taken by B.