It´s been such a long time ....

First up, Happy New Year to everyone!

I know, that I have been gone for a very long time. When I last wrote, we were leaving the United States and moved back to Germany. We sold a lot of our personal belongings (except for about 6 suitcases) and boarded a plane.

We stayed in my parent´s guest room for a few months (I still posted a couple of times then) and after a few more months, I accepted a new job 2 hours away from my hometime. And suddenly there was no time left for anything.

Work, my family and getting settled took up quite some time and I needed a break from blogging.

Well, the itch to write has returned and I have some great projects to share that will hopefully serve as an inspiration for others.
This June we rented an apartment with good bones, but almost no furniture to fill it with. So here is finally a small tour of our apartment.

First up, there is the entry way (looking out from the living room/dining room):

This is the entry wall:

Next up, we have the master bedroom:

     
       Here is our living room/dining room/office:

This is a big space and there is quite a bit of potential hidden in here.

Next, we have a relatively small kitchen (which is unfortunately speparate from the dining/living area.

Then there is a small bathroom:

 

On the way to the kid´s bedroom there is a small storage room:

 

And finally, here is the smaller bedroom:

As you can see from all the tilted ceilings, you might be able to recognize that we went with an apartment under the roof. 

All of the pictures above are from the day we went to look at the space.

Since then, we did purchase some furniture and have started to make this feel more like home. Writing about all of our purchases however would explode this post, and therefore I will show in between pictures at a later point.

I also have to add an updated apartment tour to the top pages.

We have spent 6 months here, and now that we have covered the basic furniture additions, I have decided to tackle our rooms one by one in smaller weekend projects.

Last weekend I made a plan with all of the areas I intend to work on troughout the year, and I will share it as well sometime this weekend. 

Take care,

Carina

Ikea Updates

I was so excited when I saw that Ikea updated their color scheme on the Kassett storage options, so I thought I´d share with you.

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You can see, that they are now also offering black, dark pink, and tan options.

I am loving these.

And for those patiently waiting for apartment updates: Things went a little slower than planned around here, but I am looking at decent sized apartments tomorrow, and will hopefully move by that week.

And then, the decorating can begin ( * so excited by the way).

Today at Ikea, I started out with a whole bunch of additional cooking and baking supplies, plates, and more.

I also got some basic bathroom supplies and will show all of you soon soon :)

Happy Sunday!

Room for Teens/Tweens

When I saw this capize-chandy in a local store´s weekly add, I thought immediately how nicely it could be incorporated into a teen or tween girl´s room.

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With this as my starting point, I started creating yet another moodboard incorporating a color scheme of olive green, apricot, purple, pink and light gray.

Immediately, I remembered these toss pillows which happen to have the same color scheme.

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So, here is without further ado, my room board for a teen or tween girl which is girly and fun, but not overly so:

The curtain panels, blinds, table lamp, mirror, night stand, purple blanket and wall art are all Ikea. The white headboard could be DIY. The rug was from google images, and I am not sure where to find something like this. As for the dresser - this could be easily found on craigslist and refinished. The slipper chair was also from google images.

Since this room is so very colorful, going with a neutral taupish gray would be the way to go.

A Laundry Room Moodboard

With some free-time on hand I started dreaming up a cute little laundry room space:

1. All of the items on this moodboard can be found at Ikea and are very reasonably priced.
2. The wall color is Benjamine Moore´s Wind Chime

What do you think?

DIY Recipe Box

Yey, today ít´s finally Pinterest Challenge Time over at Young House Love, Bower Power and 2 other blogs. I am so excited to see all of the great projects completed all over blog-world.

First up, here is what I have been pinning recently:



Yep. Recipe Boxes. Many years ago, I sat down and created a recipe binder for all of my recipes.



But over the years, it ended up more like this:



Every time I found a recipe online, I would print it out and stick it in the front. So something had to be done here.

With improvement in mind I went on pinterest to see how others stored their recipes. Seing all of those pretty recipe boxes, I decided that this was what I needed in order to organize my recipe situation.

I already had index cards, and only needed some type of container or box to hold my recipe collection (with enough space for it to grow). At the $-Store (or since I am in Germany the EUR-Store) I found the right item.



A cheap light green basket (picture is not true to color), that was the perfect size for my index cards.
At home I grabbed my scrapbook paper and started tracing out divider cards on some dark green cardstock.



I used a small nail polish bottle to trace on tabs as well.



I cut out my dividers and made sure they fit.



Next, I used the white portion of the my scraps, to create lables to go on the divider tabs….



… and attached them with the white side up on the dividers.



Then I decided I also wanted to label the recipe box itself, so I took yet some more scraps and worked on that.



I used Jute to attach this label to the front of my recipe box.



And finally I started copying my loose recipes onto those index cards. That will probably take me a couple of nights. However, even if I should get lazy at some point and I can still cut whatever I wrote or printed a recipe on to size and just stick it in the box.



So, what do you think? Isn´t this better than my previous overstuffed recipe binder?



At least, now I have quite some space for new recipes ….

Linked up here:

- Tuesday´s Treasures

Organizing my "Office"

Last month, I shared how I was able to update our main living-room/bed-room/office to include a functional work area using my childhood desk.

This was working much better than what I had before, but the organzer in me wanted to go a step further. Since I am using the desk drawers as dresser replacement and the space behind the door as storage for diapers, I didn´t really have a lot of space to put away paper-work, office supplies, and cables.

So on Sunday while over at my parent´s house, I remembered a little desk-top organizer with drawers, which I had purchased at Ikea about 15 years ago or so.

You have probably seen these before. However, I am not sure though whether they are still being sold at stores.

Once I cleaned out the drawers (there was my make-up from 15 years ago in some of those drawers - yuck!!!) I got crafty.

I made a template and then cut out 4 copies of the template on pretty paper.

Late Night Project - So I have bad pictures again.

Next, I attached my cut-to-size paper to the drawers using spray adhesive.

Within half an hour of work, I was able to put my newly decorated drawers in place and to start re-organizing my desk.

See, now I have a space for my notebook cable, the cell phone adapter and a few other cables I use frequently. This is perfect spot for keeping them out of sight, but easily reachable.

I made simple lables for each drawer and put them into the designated slots.

What I like about the drawer organizer  is, that it gives me storage space on two levels. One to hide stuff and one to show off stuff. Perfect.

Now, I would love to paint it white but that will have to be for another month, since paint is not in the budget. Same goes for the desk by the way. Plus, I am not going to attempt painting furniture for the moment, since we have a beautiful -14 C outside (6.8 F). No way I am going to paint furniture with such pretty temperatures, lol.

As for the budget, this project cost me nothing. The drawer unit was mine from many years ago, I already had the scrapbook-paper and I also already had the glue.


Linked up here:

- Before and After Party
- Tuesday´s Treasures

Navy and Lime Living Room

I´ve realized, that lately I was looking up a lot of decor items and rooms incorporating navy and lime green. I just love how fresh and inviting this color combination can be.

Since I love to create mood boards, I went with the living room in navy and lime this time.

Here you go:

1. I started my board around this rug from Overstock. The trellis design is just gorgeous and very contemporary.
2. This arm chair from Ikea tucked into the room´s corner could be part of a great reading nook.
3. I decided to go with the Ektorp sofa (also from Ikea), as many people have raved about its comfort level. The Lack coffee table is also from Ikea and has space below to add a basket for the controls and other odds and ends.
4. In order to bring in some lime green I chose this pillow from an Etsy seller and these curtains from B,B&B.
5. A set of navy toss pillows from Target completes the assortment of textiles.
6. To bring in some lighting I thought that a tripod lamp, such as the one in the picture, would look great.
7. The blue and grellow wall art from Target pulls all the colors in the room together.
8. The large white TVstorage unit is also from Ikea and provides lots of open and closed storage. Decorative vases and candles in the color scheme as well as books and family pictures in pretty frames will all look great in here.
9. For the reading nook, I added another floor lamp from Ikea.
10. Finally, for the walls I added a neutral beige color (such as Glidden´s Water Chestnut). 

 What do you think of this mood board, and the navy/lime green color combination?