2010!

2009 went by way too fast!  Between planning the wedding, getting married, buying the house and spending every weekend since (and most week nights!) working to make it livable, we were so busy that the year couldn't have done anything but fly by.

So, welcome to 2010 here at Creativity and Domesticity!  This year is sure to bring lots of craft and kitchen projects, as well as plenty of home decorating.  And a new year means a new (sort of) look for the blog.  I know it's only a new header, but it's nice to have something that's a little less generic at the top to jazz up the whole look of this baby.

Now that it's a new year, and after a Christmas holiday vacation from work (but not a vacation from working on the house, of course), I'm ready to jump right into 2010 and make it a memorable one for the husband and I.  We will have our house move-in ready soon!  After some significant set-backs with the supports and floors in our addition that had a huge impact on us not being able to have an address change before Christmas, we have made quite a bit of progress in painting the downstairs and getting the floors ready for refinishing.  Also, our kitchen cabinets have been installed, the counter top is ordered and the tile floor is going in this week!  Yay for kitchen progress!

I've taken some pictures, but still have a few more to take so I can share our progress with you.  In the mean time, I want to show you a picture I came across for cool vintage kitchen storage:

Source

I've quickly become obsessed with this!  I love it!  I can see the bins filled with flour, sugars, chocolate chips, cupcake liners and other fun baking supplies.  And the pull-out spice jars?  Don't you think they are just perfect for sprinkles?

More fun with Polyvore

I couldn't help myself.  Once I started to play around with Polyvore, I just couldn't stop dreaming up inspiration boards for our house.  Here is what I envision for the downstairs rooms.

The Living Room:

Linen Living Room on Polyvore.com

I'm thinking neutral, linen-like colors for this room.  It will be a serene place where we can relax, read and cuddle up to watch a movie.  I am really liking silvery-blue shades and variations of turquoise as accent colors, but I like how easily other colors, like olive green or rich reds could be used to mix it up a bit.

The Dining Room:

Brown and Blue Dining Room on Polyvore.com

With the dining room sharing a wall with the living room, I was thinking that I might be best to carry the same color palette into this room, but play up the blue hues more and add some dark brown and pewter accents.  I really think this room will need a mirror to help make it seam bigger and I want to get an area rug and long to-the-floor curtains to make the space seem a little more formal.  We have an oak table, which I wouldn't mind covering with a coat or two of creamy white paint.  We also need to pick up some new chairs, preferably ones that are upholstered.

The Kitchen::

Retro Inspired Kitchen on Polyvore.com

Of course, I want to have a super retro kitchen, but this just won't work given our house, appliances and, well, reality.  Although, I still want to incorporate some retro-inspired item, like the glass jars in the board, some old, red kitchen utensils and some fun dishtowels and accessories.  The kitchen shares space (and a walls) with the dining area, so I want it to blend well, but also allow for a little punch of color.  And, with white cabinets and a linen-colored wall, the color is going to come through the accessories and some of my kitchen tools.

I'm sure my ideas will change a few times before we get settled in, but it is way to much fun to create these boards.

Dreaming of when it's all done

We are so close to having our upstairs bedrooms painted and ready for move-in.  The downstairs, with the exception of the kitchen, needs a complete paint job and the floors all need to be refinished.  It feels so good to see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to completing the bulk of our renovations.

I've been thinking up some ideas for the decor in each of the rooms.  This is so difficult because we have lots of hand-me-down and flea market furniture to work with when putting together a home environment we love.  I'm going to do my best to slip cover, paint and modify where possible to make everything look like it belongs.  This is going to be quite the challenge!

For our Office/Craft room, we already have dark furniture.  I would like to pick up a narrow table for use as a crafting/sewing desk and we'll need some book shelves or an armoire for storage.  Here is a little inspiration board I put together for the space on Polyvore:

Blue Home Office on Polyvore.com

Visualizing some ideas for the room is a big help. I also decided to put together an inspiration board for our bedroom:

Brown and Beige Bedroom on Polyvore.com

I worked in a picture of our actual bedding set and ceiling light fixture we purchased.  I have a dark brown bird cage/candle holder I can use in this room and I am considering DIYing an upholstered headboard.  I just don't know if a tufted or simplistic look like the one in the top left photo.

And, why not give it a shot for the other bedroom with the soft meadow green walls.  I decided to play around with white and linen colors in this board.  Here is how it turned out:

Green and Linen Bedroom on Polyvore.com

It seems that the more I worked on my Polyvore boards, I think I got better at putting them together.  The last one is my favorite!  That room might actually be something I could pull off.  I'm pretty sure I still have a white down comforter somewhere in size full/queen (perfect!), I could easily whip up some linen accent pillows and sew linen trim onto white sheets, and I could paint one of our dressers in the off-white, linen-like shade.  I also think we have an old rustic window in our garage that I could paint, distress and hang on the wall.

Yeah, it was fun dreaming up ideas for these rooms.  It will be even more fun when we get to start putting stuff in them!