I’m so excited to share with you a little sneak peak tour of our new apartment! This has been a labor of love, anticipation, and stress as we’ve gone back and forth on so many things before settling on this lovely, and very sunny, little abode. I think in the process we altered our plan twenty different times – are we staying in Minnesota; no, we’re moving back to California; what about Austin, Texas?  Oh, we’re staying in Minnesota now; let’s keep living with my dad; well, how about buying a house; nope let’s rent; yep, totally renting.

We looked at so many apartments all over the area and liked a lot of them, but this apartment stole our hearts! Floor to ceiling windows, a ton of natural light, large bedrooms, an awesome kitchen (ideally white cabinets and counters), incredible amenities, and walking distance to downtown Hopkins. I think this may be my favorite part about the apartment! The fact that we can walk to this cute little downtown (with all of those small town vibes) and have access to shopping, restaurants, a movie theater, a performance theater, antique shops, a grocery store and so much more! It’s crazy!

Now that we are pretty much moved in, it’s starting to feel like a home – our home! This is the first apartment that really has me excited to decorate and narrow in on our decorating style. Up to this point, it’s been a jumbled, pieced together collection of random Craigslist finds and freebies. We’ve moved so many times over the years, that this way of furnishing our house was the most economical and least painful if something needed to go in order to move across country, at a reasonable price. And basically because we were freaking broke! However, as I’ve grown older I’m finding this desire and need for more permanency and stability. We will likely move again, simply because we LOVE living in new places! And let’s be honest, Craigslist find are my jam, so I’m definitely keeping that up!

Despite those things, I’m kind of a freak for interior design! I could sit down with a CB2 catalog and a glass of wine and dream of how I would decorate my future home for hours on end! In fact, had interior design school not been booked up for the next two years, I would have had a degree in that and not culinary arts. But hey, life works out in funny ways and there’s a good chance I would never have met my wonderful husband had I never went to culinary school and bought a coffee shop. So, things do happen for a reason, am I right?

Sorry, side tracking there… interior design, need for more permanency, okay! That sort of desire has me wanting to investing in more timeless pieces, discover my style (it’s been all over the place for so long) and hopefully get a beautiful magazine-worthy look in the process… even if most of our stuff happens to be Craigslist gems, flea market finds, CB2 clearance purchases (because I love a good deal) and good old DIYs! My mom raised a Goodwill shopping, clearance loving daughter and I’m totally okay! But this time I want to bring it all together with stylized purpose and good design.

Can we talk about this kitchen? It has been so enjoyable to cook in! I can’t even tell you how much my heart melts every time I walk into the room and look at this kitchen, barely able to grasp the fact that it’s mine and I get to cook in it! Dinner time is the best – simply the best! The living room, table and kitchen are all in one big open area, so I will be cooking away while Adam is watching TV with the dogs and just to be together is amazing! The icing on the cake are the floor to ceiling windows that face west & north. We are on the 5th floor (with very little obstructing our view) which means as I’m cooking I get to watch the sun go down. Tears, people! I literally cry every time it happens. Or at least freak out about it, which at this point may be driving Adam a bit crazy, haha! 

I’m not going to dive too much into my design plans, dreams, current dislikes, etc for our place. That blog post is on it’s way. However, the two photos above are basically the majority of furniture we own. So there’s some things to point out:

1. Let’s talk about that farmhouse table! It’s probably my favorite furniture piece we own! If you’ve been following along here for some time now you’ve seen this table in plenty of photo shoots. I scored this awesome table on Craigslist for $100! It was stained dark brown and had some scratches on the top, but after a few weeks of tedious sanding the results were amazing! It extends up to 7ft long, making it the perfect table for entertaining. That is a piece that will be with me until I die… and I may even want to get buried with it, haha!
2. I love our Ames chairs around the table, which lend a modern element to the table and the room. Those are definitely staying!
3. We recently picked up the Ikea Kallax bookcase, which I don’t hate as a media table, but it will eventually find it’s way to our office. That being said, I will need something new for that space… preferably in white.
4. I am not a fan of the tan chair in the corner. It will likely get replaced along with the lamp next to it!
5. The couch is one I’m on the fence with. Also a Craigslist purchase, from our Charleston days, for $600. I like that it’s a sleeper sofa and it’s pretty easy to clean. However, I would like to see a more modern look, yet still comfortable.
6. There’s a lot of different wood colors going on in this room as well, so I want to tighten up that issue. We prefer a natural wood to match the farmhouse table, so some of these pieces will need altering or moving elsewhere. Plus, with dark kitchen cabinets, I’m desperately trying to keep everything light!

Our bedroom is so wonderful, with a big walk-in closet and large bathroom, but clearly our decor needs some love and attention in this space! Adam’s father is pretty talented when it comes to building stuff, so I would love to commission his help in building a really cool bed.

The bedding is in serious need of a refresh and I would love to get matching night stands, as well. We inherited this really pretty oil painting from Adam’s grandma, which needs to get framed, and will eventually hang above our bed. Lots of ideas in my head, it’s just getting creative with making them all happen for a little money as possible!

The second bedroom in our apartment will act as our office. I would show you photos, but it’s sort of a terrifying disaster right now, over flowing with things I’ve yet to unpack. That room will have to wait for a future “office unveiling” blog post, or something like that.

Oh, and that sunset I was telling you about? Yeah, it’s magical! I took this from our balcony and in these few short weeks I’ve been blown away by how beautiful this world we live in really is. Despite all of the crap going on in our own lives and on the news, this planet is crazy beautiful! Sunsets, sunrise, mountains, oceans, flowers, and every single human soul – all of it is beautiful!

Okay, wow! This has become a really long blog post! Hopefully you were able to making through all of my rambling! I’m so excited to call this new apartment our home and dream up wild ideas on how to decorate it – on a budget of course! I love you all and I’m so excited to share more photos of our apartment as it progresses over the next year! Who knows, maybe we will find we love it so much and sign for another year after that… but we will cross that bridge if we make it through another winter, haha!