Dining Room Progress

I love me a good before-after post! This weekend Boyfriend and I went into overdrive getting the house ready for company on Thanksgiving (I'm cooking my first turkey, eek!) and we accomplished an impressive amount! The dining room went through the biggest transformation, so without further ado here's what it looked like on move-in day:

BEFORE

Dramatic reveal!

AFTER

We painted it, furnished it, and hung some curtains high 'n' wide (it makes such a dramatic difference, like in my previous bedroom). Shortly after we moved in, we decided the yellow had to go and opted for a warm gray that I really like. It changes colors depending on the light and flatters everything in the room. The curtains from my previous bedroom happened to work nicely AND the curtain rod was the perfect length (lucky!).

We purchased our first dining set a few weeks back when a coworker listed this amazing ensemble from Design Within Reach for a TOTAL steal.  It was still expensive and I had many back-and-forth battles in my brain before Boyfriend convinced me it would be a good buy. Not that that was difficult; considering we got it for 1/3 the original price and could probably sell it for a profit if we wanted, I was easily swayed. Oh, and also I was IN LOVE with it. Seriously, head over heels. Look at these gorgeous curves:

So hot. Here are a few other details. Basket from EQ3, and yes, I'm trying to make those illustrious string balls (I'll post a tutorial once I perfect my technique)

Got this table on Craigslist for $50! I have plans for it, I'm just not sure what they are yet. 

We have a few more things on the to-do list for this room such as buying/making a new chandelier (maybe I'll make a string ball version), hanging some art, and maybe hanging some shelves. Until then, here's another shot.

Can't you just picture us around the table on Thursday stuffing our faces? mmmmm I can't wait!

Grown-up Dresser

After more than a month of dresser searching on Craigslist, we finally admitted that our perfect dresser with modern, clean lines was not to be found via thrifting. I also wasn't sure if I was willing to refinish/repaint a whole dresser...I can't even finish the nightstand I've been working on for 3 weeks now!

Our old dresser situation looked like this:

The most over-used IKEA shelving unit ever with some canvas bins from Target. It's not terrible or ugly or even bad...it actually looks pretty okay. But it's not what we want for our quickly-becoming-sophisticated bedroom. 

Thankfully we found this gorgeous piece on Overstock: the Bello Gloss White dresser! We measured the space (note the masking tape in the above photo) and decided it would be a perfect fit, so we took the plunge and ordered it. 

From the time we placed the order to the time it stood fully assembled was 15 days. FIFTEEN DAYS! Why? Well thanks to some shoddy handling, one of the three boxes it came in was torn open and the hardware and instructions has fallen out along the way. We waited another week for them to ship us the missing items only to discover that they had forgotten to include the drawer slides. That makes for TWO missing parts requests/deliveries! Thus, the dresser sat in pieces on our living room floor for 15 days until everyone got their shit together and I was finally able to assemble it. 

End rant. Here's the after :D

Soooo prettyyyyyy.  Oh, and we also hung this giant mirror that we bought from Craigslist for $40 when we first moved in. It's been waiting to be appreciated for two months now!

Love it! I'm learning that I have a soft spot for over-sized decor such as this mirror. Hopefully that doesn't bite me in the ass later. 

This mirror also gets the prize for being the first thing we've officially hung on the wall in our new place. It takes me a long time to hang things on the wall here in earthquake country simply because I'm paranoid and I want to do it right, especially with a 25 lb mirror. We used Quakhold brand hanging hooks that create a "maze" for the hanging wire to keep it from jumping off the hook during an earthquake. Like this:

Quakehold also recommends that you secure the bottom of the thing to keep it from swinging around, which I'll be doing with 3M Velcro strips (btw renters, this is an AWESOME product if you want to keep from damaging your walls!). Now to just cross my fingers that the "BIG ONE" won't happen any time soon or in my lifetime. 

Nut-Stuffed Delicata Squash

Once again, Tracy at Shutterbean has inspired us with this vegetarian number!

This is the vegetarian version drizzled with roasted garlic OO with some radish/chard/green bean stir fry on the side

About a week after I saw this recipe, my weekly Riverdog Farms veggie box bestowed upon me a delicata squash and I knew just what to do with it!
On her site, Tracy claims that the combination of nuts and sage make the filling taste like sausage. I decided to put that claim to the test and actually add sausage to half of the stuffing. Boyfriend was the test subject and after trying both the veggie and meat versions, I was surprised to hear that he could barely taste the difference. They even looked the same! Super impressed.

Couple notes: The first time I made this I roughly chopped the nuts and didn't cook the squash until it was soft enough. The combination of these two made it a bit of a chore to eat. The second time around I lightly blended the nuts and cooked the squash to complete softness and it was much nicer!

Head on over to Shutterbean for the recipe!