Long Weekends are the Best!

Every weekend should be 3 days long! In fact, yesterday my husb promised that eventually all of our weekends will last 3 glorious days. Someday :) Best news I have heard in a while! Of course, we have several years of hard work to put in before our weekends can start on Thursday afternoons... 

Our Memorial Day Weekend was seriously exhausting. But oh-so productive! We basically did a whole house overhaul ~ replaced furniture, swapped out wall decor and pillows from room to room, added a new entertainment center and monster TV to our living room, and crafted a new decoration or two to add to our little home. Friday night we went on the *big* TV excursion. Thanks to some awesome sales, we scored a 50" flat screen to finally complete our living/entertaining area (2 years later...) and I have never seen my hubbs so excited for something in my life! 

{Click on pictures to enlarge if you want a closer look!}

10 p.m.: Setting up huge TV on miniature stand

10:30 p.m.: Aftermath of the new TV. That I was too tired to clean up.

After bringing home the newest addition to our family on Friday night, it was pretty obvious that we needed a bigger entertainment center for it to live on. We knew this before we bought it, it was just a matter of finding one that didn't break the bank too much. It also became apparent that my beloved black and white photo wall (which Andrew was never a big fan of to begin with) would need a little TLC.  The TV was so big that the pictures looked too small, too low, etc. 

So on Saturday afternoon, after a couple hours of studying and laying by the pool, and a much needed mani/pedi - take a guess as to who did what - we headed to Ikea in search of an affordable 70" long entertainment center. My criteria: under $300, wood, dark brown, storage hidden by doors. This sucker fit the bill! It was our first Ikea furniture experience.......... I can tell you right now that despite how happy we are with the way this looks now, it was not worth the cost savings (my opinion) to weed through the self-serve furniture area to find the exact pieces/parts we needed and haul it all home to assemble ourselves. 

I wanted to rip my hair out. Thankfully  have a handy husb who put this thing together in about the time it took me to make a quick Target run and pick up Chipotle for dinner!

Andrew and his assistant hard at work...

Every time we turned around Bella had a screw or some plastic piece in her mouth. Bad girl!

I wasn't allowed near the construction process of the entertainment center. Which was fair, seeing as I nailed a hole up through the top surface of our last one on my 7th attempt to assemble it without any backward pieces. Since I was banned from this process, I busied myself by moving the old living room TV into our bedroom, and the old bedroom TV into the office.

I realize how ridiculous this thing looks on our dresser... but until we get the chest of drawers to complete our bedroom set this is where it will stay! {Not worth mounting on the wall, because we'd be responsible for the hole repair when we move out.}

Most exciting part of this picture? I can now watch TV from bed without my glasses. Woop!

The drapes are also new-ish (Target clearance find, yay!). And they double as Bella's favorite climbing apparatus.

Before we put the new TV up on its new stand we decided we'd first tackle the B&W wall. I re-purposed some floating shelves (Crate & Barrel) that we had in our office and used them as picture ledges above the TV. We have 2 more shelves that are not mounted yet... my poor husb was growing impatient after hours and hours of shopping, assembling, and cord-organizing, so he decided he needed to plop down for a while and enjoy the fruits of his labor!

Looks sooo.much.better.omg.

First time I've seen Sports Center on in a long, long time. Am I in trouble?

Do you see that smirk?? How excited is he?!

I also was sick of the red accents in the living room. I decided to swap out all red and leave the brown and green. I'm shopping around for some curtain panels, probably something in the sage family. And I'd be content throwing that area rug into an incinerator, but I haven't quite decided what to replace it with - so while I'm still scouring the internet for ideas, it can stay.

Feet up. Sports on. Bud Light cracked. Ahhh he loves his life!

As excited as I was about relaxing in front of our latest splurge, we had a cookout planned for the next afternoon and I just had to get the rest of the house put back together before I could call it a night! I didn't take before pictures of our dining room wall... but suffice it to say, the only thing on it was a silver mirror.

Boring. Blah. Bare. {You can see what I mean in the background of this post}

Since my random collage wall above the TV was no longer in existence, I decided it should be recreated - but better - in the dining room! Here is what I've got thus far.....

Framed chalk board and book page "B" tutorials to come in a later post!

Chalk board idea via

I made a framed chalk board to hang in that room and decided that every so often I would change the Bible verse or inspirational quote so that we could commit some encouraging words to memory. Growing up my mom would always help us memorize scriptures and told us to "hide them in our heart." I love that this is a way for Andrew and I to both commit a few new things to memory and hide them in our hearts to draw on when we need the inspiration most! I got this idea from a blog I love and it was so easy and inexpensive.

I also made the "B" hanging on this wall using a square of styrofoam, a steak knife (woops?), hot glue gun and recycled book pages. Again, easy and inexpensive! I'll give more detailed instructions for both of these DIY decorations in a later post. This one is already a billion years long :) Finally, on to the office/guest room!

The "work" side of our office/guest room

Sorry for the dark pics. Half of these are from my phone...

The "sleep" side of the guest room/office. I'm so glad we decided on a pull-out couch in here!

The old entertainment stand, the mini bedroom TV, and all of the red accents from the living room were moved into the office/guest room! I have been doing some remote work for my Aunt that has to be done on a PC (yuck) so I've been spending about 8 hours a week in this room and am sooo thankful to finally have a TV in here to watch while I work! I also finally got around to hanging up our vision boards, and for now I stuck my painting on this wall to cover up the gaping holes left behind by the screws I muscled into the wall when I was hanging the shelves (now in family room) by myself a couple years back. The husb was not impressed with the craters caused by my a) disinterest in following the directions and b) failure to purchase the required drill. I'm on the hunt for some touch up paint ASAP!

I'm loving the change of scenery we get as we walk in the door! It is so refreshing even though the bulk of what we changed around were things we already owned.

New view of the dining area from the entryway! (Complete with cookout prep set out!)

And finally, the view of the living room, TV, entertainment center, and wall shelves from the entryway!

After working our buns off getting things organized, purchased, set up, built, decorated, and the like all night Friday, most of the day Saturday, and the better part of Sunday... we were so excited to unwind and relax with some friends and enjoy beautiful sunny day with a little pre-Memorial Day BBQ on Sunday afternoon!

I'll share my favorite summer dessert recipe with you all soon! I was too rushed to take pics this time.

Hi Friends :)

 Yummm!

Phew! That was a lonnng post. Sorry, everyone! I just was too excited to share my weekend updates and pictures with you all to trim this one down! Last but not least I'll leave you with a couple of iPhone shots of our beautiful city that I snapped on the drive home from Ikea... 

Thoughts, suggestions, etc. regarding our home decor? Feel free to leave me a comment or shoot me an email ~ our home is always a work in progress!

I love ATL :)

The end!