Spring/Summer Cleaning

Guess what my boyfriend and I did this weekend? Went on an exotic vacation? Rocked out to a ear-splitting concert? Had a fancy dinner in NYC? Nope! We cleaned my apartment! And I loved every minute of it! haha It started out as steam cleaning the carpets. We moved all the furniture from one area to another, I vacuumed with the regular machine (got all those spiderwebs and dust bunnies lurking in corners) and then DBF went through with the steam clean machine. While he was doing that (it takes a while), I cleaned, dusted and organized. Then I started looking around and thinking - hmm, wonder how those bookshelves would look on the other side of the room near my desk? Then we could move that armchair into the corner where the bookshelves were. By the time he shut off the machine, I had a whole plan worked out. Poor guy, signed on for some carpet cleaning and got a whole redecoration instead! :)

Once we got going, we started throwing away some old stuff that I'd been meaning to get rid of for a while. I think we made 5-6 trips out to the dumpster. There's something about taking everything out of its "spot" to make you reevaluate it and whether or not its worth keeping. Some stuff was very old and shabby, like the two lamps I had on either side of my entertainment center. I picked one up to move it out of the way and the base totally disintegrated.

About six hours after we started, the carpets in the living room, dining room, hallway and bedroom were clean and smelling fresh. Everything had been dusted and scrubbed. We grabbed dinner at Ruby Tuesday and did some home decor shopping - throw rug and wire basket for mail and circulars at Home Goods, table lamp, white board and kitchen decor at Target, beautiful painting from Bed, Bath and Beyond and a new lamp from Walmart. Combined with the couple of decorations I got in Virginia last weekend and moving some furniture around, I feel like I'm living in a whole new apartment!

I love this whole desk/office area now. It makes more sense to have the bookshelves in this corner and opens up the space a bit. My armchair used to be here and it took up the whole corner. Don't worry, that's not a dead mouse or anything by the plant in the first pic. Just the kitties' skunk toy.
My mom picked up this country star for me on a recent trip to Lancaster, PA. Such a beautiful shade of blue.

Love this white board/cork board set we found at Target. DBF made them happy boards for me. Happy boards with quite the uni-brow.

Another Target find. DBF spotted them and we both loved their older feel. I think he's trying to encourage me to cook more. HA!

Picked up this baby in Virginia at the Kirkland Home store. The pieces are smooth metal and I love the mix of the burgandy and brown. This was my second find from Virginia. We hung it above my couch and I feel like it ties in the colors from my armchair really well.
This painting is living right above the armchair and I'm crazy about it! The light below adds a cozy touch to the space, but its a little dimmer than I expected since the shade is a dark brown. If I want to do any late-night reading in the chair, I may have to flip on the dreaded overhead light. Oh the agony.

Another cozy corner, this light is so cool! We found it at Walmart of all places. I love the wire basket on top of the tiny shelf (found it at CVS on clearance! The shelf that is, found the basket at Home Goods). I stole the idea from my sister who has something similar where she keeps her mail.

That's all for now folks. Thanks for stopping by for a visit! :)