Our First Home

When we first started thinking about buying a place, it was about saving money and building equity. Things you don't think about until you find yourself in this phase called adulthood.  But then we started asking ourselves questions like, what community do we want to be a part of? Where do we want to be for the next 5-7 years? What kind of life do we want to live? and even though money and equity are things we were thinking about, we were also thinking about how to make a difference in the community where we were at. Buying a house became less about the money and more about how we could use our house to bless others. How could we live, shop, and go to church in our community? We saw places that were too expensive, had small entertaining spaces, were far from our church, or weren't close to public transportation. All things that didn't feel like us.

Then we walked into our place and the charm got us. The big open spaces where we could have people over for food and some good quality time. The kitchen right amongst the space to hang out.  The space to have guests stay over so we could visit or show them the city. It just felt right. 

So when I saw the Starter Stories Project organized by Compass, a real-estate startup company based in New York, I was inspired to participate in sharing our story. Owning a place for us means stability and community. A place for us to invest in the lives of others whether it's planned or spontaneous. I know the blog has been silent these last few months, but I thought I would update what we've done to our place so far to make it feel more us and still be able to have good quality time for those in our lives. 

Now I know it's not really a fair comparison since all the "before" pictures were taken at night and the "after" pictures are during the day but you get the picture. We're still decorating this room but it's coming together. Adam just made that Loyola sign that reflects the "L" stop closest to us. Next up will be to fix the really bright lights, make a new coffee table, and figure out what to do with the weird corner of furniture.

This kitchen is so pretty and functional. We hope to change out the lights and then way down the road possibly paint the cabinets white vs cream. Our place doesn't have as much natural light since it's a basement unit so we are trying to utilize bright colors to not make it seem as dim.

We have really gone to town on DIYs in our new place to make it feel like us. I had something like this in our old place to hold my measuring cups and spoons but not as intricate. I liked that it can be practical decoration. We knew we wanted something to follow the rustic/industrial feel our new place has, but Adam really outdid himself when he found that pipe and was able to put this together. So we got the barn wood from his grandpa, the pipe from Home Depot, the S hooks from Amazon (that we spray painted) and the red "gas" pipe from a resale shop. He then had to use his mathematical/engineering mind to be able to have everything be at the right angle. This task would have been a huge struggle for my designer mind haha it's why we make a good team.

The brick in our place really steals the show when you first walk in. We have been utilizing nails from the previous owners to hang some of our stuff on it. Thanks to his parents, we now have a table until we can build our own. Adam has offered to build us a rustic barn table but until then, it's nice to be able to offer a place for people to eat at when they come over for dinner. Adam hung his painting of Chicago this past week and it just feels right. We like to make a lot of our art so our place feels more personal. We're hoping to have a piano under the artwork but haven't found the right one yet.

This is my girly corner. I feel like Audrey Hepburn every morning when I get to sit on a fancy stool and put on my makeup. ( I don't know how accurate of a view of Audrey Hepburn that is, it's just what I feel like) I put some of my favorite prints and picture around this vanity we found at a resale shop for less than $100. I "splurged" a little on the stool from Target, but it just completed the corner so I went for it. (Splurging for us is if it's over $20 since we find a lot of stuff at resale shops, yards sales or for free) In high school, my mom and I shared a bathroom so I got to get ready with her every morning. Now she's 10 hours away and because of our schedules we don't get to talk as much as we would like.  I put a picture of her on my vanity so I can still think of her every morning.

Our room is probably the closest to being done. It feels like a place of rest and peace. I love the blue, white, gold and our rustic headboard we made last month. 

We brought some old favorites from our old place that just look better in a place we own ;)

The way we do projects is we have a rough idea in mind and then when we are out searching we just modify the project when we see cheaper things. This shutter necklace holder was less than $20 because I knew I wanted knobs of some kind and so when I found these discarded doorknobs for less than a dollar a piece, I was sold.

We still have a few projects we want to get done but our place is very functional at this point. We painted the guest bedroom last weekend. Neither of us wanted to spend our Saturday painting so we started painting at midnight on Friday night. It of course took way longer than I thought it would (I have no concept of time sometimes), but we were so glad to have our Saturday back. We just want to make a headboard for that room, get a rug and put some of our artwork up. (I would put a picture up but it wouldn't do it justice. Our outdoor patio is in the corner and our paint supplies were still in the other corner.)

So who is coming to visit us this summer? We are fairly ready for you ;)

Busy Bees

We have been busy at making our condo feel more like home and doing a good job at it if I do say so myself.

Brightened this shelf area up by painting it light gray and adding old barn wood shelves. Adam and I got to traipse over an old farm with my brother-in-law, Buck, to find this barn wood when we were in Maryland over Thanksgiving. Reminds me of him every time I walk into the enter way.

We painted most of our condo from this yellow to a light gray except for our bedroom. We painted it a navy blue and I am loving it. We still need to hang all our white and gold decorations but it feels elegant yet cozy.

Took out the anchored plastic paper towel holder ( I have no idea why they decided to anchor a plastic paper towel holder) and replaced it with one we made out of pipe. Really loving the rustic/industrial feel we've gone with in our place.

These are two of my favorite projects Adam has made so far. I mean for real though, I love everything he's been helping me with. It's been so fun to do these projects together by brainstorming ideas and then helping each other complete the project.  The top art piece was Adam's vision and he took that one from start to finish. It looks awesome in person and is a perfect piece for entry way. The second piece is our coat rack in our front closet. So when I painted the closet, I had to take the old coat rack out of the closet. When I did that it jacked up the wall that I had just patched so I could paint. In my typical fashion, I got mad at an inanimate object and decided that the ugly monstrosity would not go back in the closet. Poor Adam went to work with a working coat rack and came back to an empty closet that now needed a coat rack. He was nice though and made this beautiful thing. Makes me happy every time I get to hang my coat there.

Adam has been getting good use out of his tools with all these projects. I can't wait to show you all of the finished products when we get them done. We are getting so close.

A couple weekends ago, we visited some friends and Adam's sister down in Kentucky and found these beauties along the way. Things are so much cheaper outside of the city. Most of the knobs will be used for various shelves.

Seriously, we spent $10 on that box of knobs. It was amazing and then Adam made this shelf to hang my aprons. I feel like we probably should do a few tutorials because we've been learning a lot but I don't really have any pictures to support that next time.

Thought I would give an update even if it's not very thorough. We are loving life and our new condo ;)

We're at it again--- Help Adam pick some Warby's

Adam is in need of some glasses so we thought we would try and get people's opinions like we did with my glasses. Quick side note: Adam wants to make you guys aware that this is a fake democracy. As seen by me choosing the glasses that got the least amount of votes.

I needed glasses so I wouldn't wear my contacts 16 hours a day and while I liked what everyone else chose, I didn't like them enough to solve my problem…. ahem… back to your regularly schedule programming.

We choose glasses that we thought Adam would look good in (they are different, I swear) but some are little too small for his face (so let us know if we should go for round 2 and take some measurements before we order them).

Okay, what's the verdict?

Apartment Projects

We're hard at work over here trying to finish all the little things up around our place. We still have quite a bit left to do but we got some things done over the last few days.

Like a solution for hanging my necklaces. I used to hang them with 3m hooks but got sick of how 

college-ish that looked

So I seriously thought about getting this guy for my wall and my obsession with gold almost won me over. Then I thought about it and didn't think it was worth the $50 in case I didn't like it in a couple years (or even months).

So I went outside and while cleaning the yard, I found this stick and saw the possibility and loved that it was free. So Adam spray painted it gold while I untangled all my necklaces and it was done. Bam.

 Then over the weekend we got supplies to hang all our patio lights up. We're so excited to hang out with friends on our patio on a summer night ;)

Hoping to finish even more this week before we have guest this weekend 

Happy Map Day

This day has been 2 years in the making. Back when I lived in Indiana, Adam found a picture of the old electric line that used to run from Chicago into the western suburbs. It was ripped up in 1957 and is now used as a prairie path for people to exercise on. It has so many of the landmarks and cities that Adam grew up around so he really wanted to blow it up big and put it in our house. The first file he found me was super small so he did some research and called a local museum to find a file that was big enough to blow up to 2' x 4'.



The problem with blowing it up is that, you have to have a frame big enough to house it. Also ideally you don't want it to cost an arm and a leg (which they all do! and we don't have the skills to build one). It took us a year and a half to find one such frame at goodwill for $9.

We got rid of the old picture and let my obsession with gold win this one with a coat of spray paint.

The 2nd problem was to clean up the file (it had been in a brochure so it had some lines from being folded, stapled and had page numbers. This took some time but my media communications degree came in handy.

The third problem was getting it blown up at a reasonable price. Luckily, I knew an awesome vendor from working at Wheaton who was willing to work with us. The day the vendor dropped it off, Adam was so happy.  I mean we were both excited after working to make all the piece fall into place but it was really fun for me to bring it home after he had wanted it for so long.

Now we have it hanging in our living room and it's one of my favorite pieces in our apartment

Hotel de Wards is coming together

This weekend was so productive it is almost impossible to believe how much we got done.

We went to Home Depot 3 times. (Yeah, you heard me right.) I have already painted that trunk three different colors and am even considering painting it yet another shade of mint… I can't seem to find the color that I was looking for. But on that last trip, we ended up finding those globe lights that I have been looking for for our patio. I love them. Can't wait to put them up.

the curtains still need ironed but at least it hides the mess a little

We went to Ikea and wandered around and found curtains on the cheap ($10 for the pair) to cover our messy closet without a door in our guest bedroom and found patio furniture that was super reasonable. Now, we just need to put it together.

We got a bed frame for the first time in our married life and were able to use the bed lifts that my sister, Amy, got us for our wedding. Now our bed is so high, I feel like we need a step stool to get in it…. We'll see if we keep it that high but for now, it's an extra place to store things.

We got plywood cut down to be shelves in our bookcase and I stained them and put polyurethane on them to protect the shelves.

We got brackets and I spray painted them with leftover gold spray paint I had. Love them.

Adam got a bike and some stuff done for work that was needing to get done.

I got a zucchini plant from one neighbor and our car got a scratch from the other neighbor who backed into it. Honestly the scratch isn't too bad especially if you look at the front of our car. That's bad…

now it's my favorite wall in the house ;)

 Repainted the top of my dresser and polyurethaned that as well. Since the top isn't wood, the paint seems to chip easily when something is left on there for a while. I had to clean off the top of my dresser to paint it, so I took time to only put things back that really need to be there. It had been a drop zone for all of my things and looked pretty bad.

We even had time to hang out with some friends on Friday night and with each other the 2 other nights. Whew, just thinking about all we did makes me tired. Hopefully this week will be a little more low key.

Week Recap

I accidentally took a vacation from my blog this week. Whoops. Sorry to my 17 faithful readers. Here's a quick recap of this week.

We helped some of Adam's bachelor friends move in together over last weekend. 

Example A of this being a bachelor pad: They only have 4 spices, well 2 really. 2 cinnamons and 2 paprikas. (I later found 2 salts and 2 peppers keeping it with the theme)

Example B: After we moved stuff, the boys started to play P-I-G. They had to get really creative with their shots, hence the one under the desk and the one under the blanket. It was hilarious.

Example C: Later they played 2-on-2 INSIDE. This was also a big lol and really fun to watch

I feel bad for the neighbors below. Yikes.

Another thing I did this week, is go to the DMV. Lucky for me, I showed up to the busiest and largest DMV in Illinois during everyone's lunch. haha This is actually just half of the building that didn't have an empty seat anywhere. It was kind of funny. I knew once I got there that I wouldn't be able to make it through but decided to wait and make sure I had all my paperwork right so that when I did come back, we'd be good to go. I'm glad I did wait, because I was in fact in the wrong building. Haha I walked into the next building which was probably a fourth of the size and had 5 people in line. It was a twilight zone type of moment. Lucky for me, I got our car registered and made it back to work before our team meeting. boom!

We went to a Cubs vs Pirates game on Wednesday. It was a little chilly but it was really fun. We sat in the bleachers with the rowdier crowd, which went crazy when there was back to back cubbie homers. It was so fun!

We also texted Ryan (via his mom of course) to tell him we were watching his favorite team. He  (leighann) sent his reaction back. He is so cute!

Can you see the wind blowing my bangs back? haha lucky for us, it was a warmer day so it wasn't too bad despite the wind.

We're hitting up a Sox game tonight with some friends and then heading to Indiana for Saturday and Sunday to visit some friends. Hope to be back to blogging next week.

Happy Weekend!

Mysteries of life

Are there somethings in life that you just don't get? I don't mean the deep, philosophical beliefs about life (some of those can be hard for people to understand) but more like the mundane, day-to-day stuff that we don't even think about until one day we DO. Then the more you think about said thing, the more you wonder  who thought this was a good idea?

For example.

1. Why did someone think it was good idea to put this type of cap on a BayLeaf container?
Am I going to strain out my large bay leafs through this?  Shouldn't have gone generic on this one.



2. Why is Adam's belly button not only a lint factory but why is it always gray?
We laugh about it every single day when we find lint in there and and even joke about saving it and making it into something. Then we throw up about how gross it would be if we actually did make a belly button lint sweater. Ew.

3. Speaking of making a sweater out of gross materials makes me think of this book and who thought that was a good idea. Got allergies? don't worry about it, just make a sweater out of cat hair and try not to sneeze. Gross.

Also what if you don't have enough hair from your cat? Do you shave it? Do you find other cats so you can get more hair? Someone help explain this to me. I just don't get it.

4. How I am now doing stuff that I used to make fun of my mother for doing.

 Yikes. Life is ironic sometimes. I used to make fun of my mom for leaving stuff in the microwave and finding it the next day. Then… it happened to me. I tried to make bacon for my BLTs this week at the same time I was making a time consuming, veggie chopping extensive recipe. Adam came in to help and asked what it's in the microwave as the beeper went off. I said, "Bacon" and that was the last time we thought of the bacon until the next morning. Talk about a grossfest, day old, half cooked bacon. 

5. Why the weekend is so short?
Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? I think we should have 2 day work weeks and 5 day weekends or week long holidays like in Europe... Just saying.

Anyways, Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend! We're helping some friends move, watching basketball and hopefully getting me some free wood pallets so I can work on some projects I've been itching to do.

How Adam feels about fulfilling his dream of living in the City

Weekend Warriors

Wow, so the people have spoken. Thank you everyone who sent me emails, texts, Facebook, blog, and instagram comments about my glass choices. Seriously a hard choice. The overwhelming choice was #5, which I was leaning towards anyways… I'm still going between #4 and #5 because my hipster self is trying to win even though I know #5 looks better. haha Sending them back today though ;)

Anywho this weekend, we watched a lot of basketball (Adam's brackets are busted!) and explored the city a bit.

We went to Eataly, a huge Italian marketplace full of multiple restaurants dedicated to pizza, pasta, meats and cheeses, wines, gelatos or other fancy Italian themed food. It was awesome.

 You could also get fresh pasta

 All kinds of cheese

 fun kitchen gadgets

fresh produce and two levels of fun imported goods from Italy

 On Sunday, Adam went to a men's meeting after church to meet some guys at our church while I went out to eat with one of their wives. It was fun to get to know another lady from our church in more casual setting. Looking forward to continuing to explore the city and meet new people.

#tbt to that time I had movie picking privileges

Last Friday, we went on our Valentine's date to a movie and dinner. (Not getting creative over here with the amount we are trying to do in 3 weeks). I started watching Downton Abbey last year and so of course, like Sybil's character. When I saw this movie coming out with the same actress in it, I was curious to see it. I didn't really know much about it other than a few trailers but convinced Adam to take me anyways. As soon as it started, I knew I had picked a dud. Both of us thought about sneaking into a different movie but thought it would get better…. It did not my friends and that is why Adam has banned me from picking movies for a while haha and I really don't blame him.

It gives us a good story though. We laughed about it all through dinner at P.F. Changs.  Adam got extra sauce and meat with his meal so he asked for some extra rice to go with it. This is what the waitress brought us. haha

Hope you guys had a great Valentine's last week.