hgtv eat your heart out

we are officially unpacked, which can be seen as either a good or a bad thing. GOOD: yay! this is my own place and i can feel settled! BAD: boo. now i don't have a massive project taking up all my time, and since i am stillll unemployed this means i'm starting to get very antsy & restless. i want an income. and health insurance.

but i digress. i've had some fun filling in some of the blanks in our new apartment with some before&after craft projects.

numero uno: the kitchen shelf

we have a random little open shelf above the kitchen sink. [have i mentioned how much storage is in this place? it's fantastic.] it wasn't so much ugly as it was just bare and open, so i wanted to do something to fill it in. before:



i went to joann's and found some discount retro-style fabric that i thought matched the rest of our funky kitchen [a space that also includes random wood-paneled countertops, a vintage -- or rundown -- oven and a stainless steel sink]. i cut out a big piece, sewed it together on my totally sweet new machine and put some cardstock paneling inside it so it stays put over the edge of the shelf. add a couple decorations and voila! the after:





number two: the turquoise mirror

i bought this little baby for twenty-five cents at a garage sale before we got married. i always thought it was such a cool piece, and it fit pretty nicely in our l.a. apartment. we never really found a spot for it in our pasadena place so it just sat propped up against the wall. b kept threatening to trash it in the move [a la the infamous blue chair] but i defended it all the way to utah. the before, all taped up for our project:



i've been so intrigued by the idea of bright colors [especially turquoise] lately, and was devastated that our new landlord refuses to let us paint the walls. so, i decided i wanted to paint this mirror instead. we went to lowes, picked out the paint, laid a couple coats on the mirror and then distressed it. a fun little diy project for me and b. here's the after...i love how it turned out:





now i'm on the hunt for a few more turquoise pieces to tie it in better to our front room. fun!

we still have a couple more spaces to fill in around here [a task that will hopefully be completed after a little ikea run tomorrow], and once that's done i'll put up pictures of the whole apartment. i'm sure you can hardly wait.