Starting Fresh - Moving into a New House

We are moving into a house on Saturday. This is the first time we're going to be living in a single family home and we couldn't be any more excited! This is not the first time, however, that I am faced with a new space to decorate and make my own.

When we were students living in Saint Paul, MN, we were not allowed to paint the walls of our place or do much. Because we were in Santa Barbara for only a year, we didn't want to do much to our place. Once in San Francisco, our landlord told us to make our apartment our own and we did. We painted the place, each room as different color, and it looked great. In fact, it looked so pretty that, when the landlord was looking at selling the building, he asked us to use our unit as the model one for showings!

Our living room. This is one of four different setups we tried. The orchid on the top right corner is the present from our landlord for letting him use our unit as a model!

But, decorating is not only about painting, of course. I often think that it's the small details in a house that really make it a home. I love when people walk into a space and they see you in there. I also don't like spending lots of money of furniture and decoration because we are free spirited people and, who knows, we might end up moving far away at some place and I would hate to have lots of pricey earthly belongings to deal with. I rather save money for travel instead of for furniture.

For this new house, I plan to carefully look for the perfect details. The house is small so every piece needs to count. In order to do this, I'm planning on up-cycling pieces that I find in goodwill, at flea markets or on Craigslist. I've always loved transforming objects and doing art but the lack of a space to do the work has been holding me back for the past two and a half years. With a yard, now is the perfect time to start again!

Of course, not all these projects have to be elaborate ones. Some might just consist of finding the perfect frame in Goodwill for the sketches I drew while walking the Camino de Santiago, or painting a frame to match the other ones. In general, I try to cut my own matting when possible. For a while I was on a frame binge. I have so many frames I don't even know what to do with them!

I think I paid less than 50 dollars total for all these frames!

Or creating your own art.

The two whale pictures were cards I received at my baby shower. They were so cute I decided to frame them and use them as art in my son's room.

There will be more complex projects like turning an old garden bench we found on the street into a beautiful mosaic bench. More on that on my next post.

Found the bench on the street, got the tile for free at a tile store. Got my inspiration from all the lizards I saw while hiking the Santa Barbara mountains.

Whatever the project is, I'm planning on using this blog to record my work, share is with friend and put my ideas out there. I already have a project sitting in our baby's room, waiting for me to give it new life.

Found this gorgeous desk while walking around the city. I stayed by it while my husband went to get the car to load it up. I'm planning on sanding it, giving it a fresh new color and finding the perfect knobs to give it a new life!

Hope you'll find these projects interesting and inspiring!