Remember when our sun porch went from this

to this?

Of course you do, considering it was just last Friday! :) I don't know if you looked closely enough at the table in the corner, but if you did, you may have realized that it was our dog pen with a picture frame on top! Space in our house is exceedingly limited, so every single square inch needs to function, and this corner was going to be no exception.

When I was moving things around last week, I realized that there was just enough space between the bed and the windows to squish Piper's pen. After squeezing it in there, I decided that it would be nice to make the pen functional as well. I wanted a surface for drinks or to place a book until the next chance to read.  

My first inclination was wood, but then I decided that it may be too "raw" looking and might end up having that thrown-together-last-minute look. Sometimes that works, this time it definitely didn't. I also thought that I could use one of the multiple TV trays that we have, but in the end, they all proved to be too small. Finally, as I was browsing through our guestroom-turned-storage-room, my eyes fell on a picture that I was given. The picture originally hung above our fireplace in our apartment's dining room and I still didn't have a place for it in this house. My grandfather gave it to me and said that my grandmother had purchased it on a trip to Europe. I love the story behind it and that it was my grandmother's, but it wasn't quite my style--thus the lack of spot for it in our new space. 

So, I preserved the picture by taking the whole thing apart and then using wrapping paper to cover it. This way, in the future I can use it if I find a space for it! I used the matting as my template, cut it to size, and stuck it all back together. A bit of tape and some finagling and the picture had turned into the perfect tabletop for the dog pen! The whole shebang looked more intentional and I was able to protect the picture at the same time!

I decided to accessorize a bit by using a clear-based lamp that I picked up at HomeGoods for ten beans, a succulent plant I had on my kitchen counter, and a decorative box that was also given to me by my grandparents. I love how the blue of the planter and the red play off each other. Being opposites on the color wheel, they really compliment one another.  The lamp was an easy choice because it gave the feeling of coziness without impeding the view. A win, win in my book.

And in the end, that corner became something much more functional. I have to say, I was pretty excited with how it turned out. I may do a bit more tweaking in the future, after all nothing is truly safe in this house.  But as of today, I declare it finito!

I have to know what you think though! Do you like the functionality or does it look a bit to thrown together? Have you ever used a piece of furniture or decorative element in a completely different way than it was intended for? Did you like the results or end up scraping the whole project? 

Happy Monday everyone! 

The "Woes" Of Moving In

There are things that you don't think about when you are in the midst of moving. I'm as organized as they come and I still didn't have the forethought I needed. Stuff has been misplaced, moved (ha the irony!), and downright lost, as we relocated last Saturday. Suffice it to say, even though I tried my hardest to be overly organized, I don't think I prepared enough.

After all of the dust settled  people left, our house was a disaster zone. I felt like I was in an episode of hoarders. I could barely walk around due to the stacked piles of boxes and furniture. Don't you ever wonder how they manage to make their way through their house, without hurting themselves? In short, I feared for my life.

But, I was sort of ready for that kind of chaos. I knew it would come and I knew that within a couple of weeks, all would be back to normal. I would unpack, find a place for everything, and our house would start looking like a home, rather than a storage unit.

Yet, there were a few things that I wasn't quite prepared for. For instance, I knew that our dogs might go through an adjustment period. I wasn't sure what this would look like, but I assumed it would involve a lot of barking (due to all the dogs in our neighborhood). I also assumed that I would have to re-teach them where to do their bi'ness, where their pens were, and how the sleeping arrangements would work, in our new space.

I just wasn't really prepared for this:

Yea, Harlie was afraid of going up and down the stairs. The first day in our house, I had to take her up the front stairs into our house. She flat out refused to go up the back stairs (the ones we would be using regularly) and pulled on her leash so hard that her collar came off!! She also had to be carried down the stairs from our bedroom, that first morning. Let's just acknowledge here, that she is no small dog and I wasn't about to work this into my morning routine. Half-awake + 60lb dog + stairs = certain death.

Thankfully, she is doing a lot better now; but it took a lot of coaxing to make her realize that she could handle our bedroom stairs--and she still does this weird crawl-like walk down them. As far as the back-entrance stairs go,  we realized that she didn't like that the basement stairs were right beside them. She has a weird fear of basements. So, we just let her come in on her own a few times, and she has gotten the hang of it. Though, she does tend to hug the wall furthest away from the basement stairs. It is quite funny really. Oh golden-doodles.

Another thing that we didn't fully prepare for was the shower situation. We guessed that we would need two shower liners for our tub. Sidenote: The way that you convert a clawfoot tub into a shower is by using a tub-to-shower converter kit. 

You take shower liners and hang them around the entire perimeter, creating a temporary waterproof shower. It works really well and in the end, we can easily convert the shower back to a tub when we add a bathroom, with a real shower, to the second floor.

Anyways, on Saturday evening, after all of our friends left, we ran to Walmart to grab another shower liner for the following morning. I had two shower liners from our apartment, because we had two showers (duh?), but the box with the other one in it became buried during the moving process. So, we figured that it would be less of a hassle to spend $2.50 on a new liner, instead of trying to dig through boxes at ten in the evening.

Long story short, we needed three liners, not two. So, our shower ended up needing a little something else on Sunday morning.

Yep, that's a piece of plastic. And yes, its attached with packaging tape. And yes, we did shower with it like that. What else were we supposed to do? :) It worked wonders for keeping in the water, but I almost slipped and fell twice because of the stupid thing. Needless to say, we dug out the other shower liner Sunday evening. I didn't really want to defy death again.

One last thing,

this is how you apply your makeup when there is no hanging mirror in your house.

I bet you wouldn 't look attractive doing it either. Just sayin'.