Kitchen of Mine, Tell Me Where Have You Been

Flat top stove

Second entrance from the hallway

Peek into the nook on the left :)

View of the living room and stairs from the kitchen

Marshall Fields, Chandeliers, Shopping Bags, and Muckross

One of my favorite places in my condo is an unexpected area--there is a little nook off the eating area of my kitchen. The nook has a big picture window that looks out over the front of the building to see the front door and sidewalk.  (I can spy who's at my door before walking downstairs, or peek out at the parade of dogs and people walking by the front of the building) Previously, there was a high top table with stools, but I'm not one to often sit at high-top tables.  I'm not sure if it's something that comes with being tall, but I'm not a fan of my legs dangling above the ground when I sit.

So, genius idea, and I have to give my dad credit for this one--put a black leather loveseat in the nook, and enhance the sitting area of the kitchen! Here's a look at what the previous owner had in this area:

(look past the table and cabinets to the far left corner...see the high top table?)

Now to outfit the nook, I drew upon an idea that my Nonnie had years ago.  When Marshall Fields was closing (tear), she told my mother to save one of the bags and frame it one day.  So my mother, the queen of organization and design, safely stowed away this shopping bag and the idea of framing bags and hanging them on a wall.  Enter my kitchen nook, and my Nonnie's idea finally became a reality. 

The chandelier (from Hobby Lobby) adds some fancy lighting to the nook

The opposite wall that the loveseat faces lay the perfect opportunity to expand the Marshall Fields bag idea. Collecting bags from vacations and various family members' shopping excursions (thank you, Patrick), I was able to create a full wall of framed bags.  Again, my mother's eye for design brought this idea into existence. 

I love how you can see the wall of bags when going down the stairs to the first floor.  It spruces up what was before simply a plain white wall.  I'm currently enjoying my nook as a great place to read or sip coffee, and soak up memories.  The yellow "Mucros" bag, for example, was from a trip to Ireland, and an excursion to the gorgeous Muckross House in Killarney.  I walked out with a beautiful wool scarf that was woven on the grounds in that bag. The gardens inspired many poets, such as Y.B. Yeats and Alfred Austin, who wrote: "If mountain, wood and water harmoniously blent, constitute the most perfect and adequate loveliness that nature presents, it surely must be owned, that it has, all the world over, no superior."
And to close, a shot similarly angled to the "Before" photo at the beginning of this post:

Boris watching for me out the picture window..taking full advantage of the loveseat. He isn't into high top tables either.

50 Shades of Blue (and Gray)

Living Room

I’ve always wanted to decorate a room with shades of turquoise and blue—in fact there is a very specific color that I always see and admire when roaming the aisles of HomeGoods, scouring over catalogs, and perusing Pinterest.  A few months before I bought my condo, I bought this glass vase from Hobby Lobby:

Original Color Palette Inspiration

 I chose this color and various shades to star in the color palette of my living room, with gray as a secondary color.  The condo has relatively new gray carpeting, so this was something that I wanted to keep for now.  Bonus is that shades of blues go well with gray!

My design goal for this room was to keep the room simple and modern.  A new couch was the first purchase I made; I’ve never actually owned my own couch before this purchase and have survived for the past couple years in apartments with a tan leather love seat I bought with babysitting money in middle school.  (That’s right—I was the kind of kid in middle school who saved her money for a leather loveseat.)  As much as I love that piece, it doesn't lend itself well to entertaining when it's the biggest seating area in your living room.  Then again, it forces you to get cozy with your guests ;)

I visited most of the furniture stores in the tristate area, and finally found a gorgeous gray sectional at Macy’s Furniture that fit exactly the style, comfort, and price range for which I was seeking.  What I love about this piece is that it has an expansive amount of seating, the gray back pillows aren’t secured in place so I can switch them around, and the chaise section can be moved around as well.  The day I found the sectional couch, I stumbled upon the light blue/green loveseat that introduces the color palette of the room.  

 

Macy's Sectional (The standing lamp is from Ikea)

Macy's Loveseat and Sectional and HomeGoods Blue Lamp

The pillows on the couch are from various stores in the area and mix both a laid back style (the blue patterned pillow) and a fancier (the light teal) style.  The light teal pillows were actually a find of my mother’s (who has been my ultimate style/project guru throughout this process) from our favorite project location—Hobby Lobby! (Download the Hobby Lobby app and get 40% off any item per visit!) The pillows also helped bring the different shades of blue into the room.

When reading articles on interior design, several mentioned finding an “Interest Piece” that’s odd or interesting to pull the eye into the style of the room and initiate conversation, while making your room unique.  My “Interest Piece” is a lamp in the front corner from Ikea. It stands on a tall silver post and I love the crazy LED light arms—you can move them around to different angles, and they cast a really cool glow at night.  They also mirror the trees that you can see right outside the window, which is an opportunity to pull in the natural design of the view out my windows! (Thank you to Kelly and John for paying attention to my design plans for weeks and bringing the lamp as a gift the week of my closing! This makes it only that much more special of a piece in my room). You can see it while sitting on the gray sectional couch.

Close Up of my "Interest Piece"

 The glass table in the middle of the room and the glass side table I bought four years ago at Value City, and they work well in this room.  Their edging helps continue the blue theme in the room, and glass helps make the room look bigger.  The blue glass lamp on the glass side table was also quite the hunt to track down.  I finally found the perfect shape and color at HomeGoods and especially love the modern look of the shade. 

Take a look at a BEFORE SHOT of what the room looked like (decorated by the previous owner) and a similar camera angle of AFTER shots of my room:

BEFORE shot of the previous owner's room

 

AFTER shots and a peak into the kitchen

More later on other pieces of the living room—the bar, painting, black ladder shelf, and glass cabinet have unique stories of their own :)

Love,

Shannon

A Look Into My Past...

There is something that feels so good about decorating a place that is your own. I’ve lived in countless apartments over the years, and before I share my recent creative process, I want to give a little background to why this has been so exciting for me.  When I was modeling and living in New York and Miami, I mainly lived in “Model Apartments.”  For those of you who have not had the pleasure to experience them, these can be less than stellar places.  Sorry Tyra, but the ones on America’s Next Top Model do not mirror reality.  Girls pay their agencies by the week to live in them for much cheaper than you could get anywhere else in the metropolitan cities, but the catch is the agencies can stick in as many girls as they can provide beds (and sometimes there’s additional overflow). An average of six teenage-ish models from all over the world living in a crampted apartment does not equal clean, beautiful living. 

Picture a one bedroom Miami apartment—the building is tall and white with its name posted down the front, but one of the letters has fallen off over the years and a dirty silhouette remains in its place. 

Two sets of bunkbeds chill in the one bedroom with stained concrete floors and large Florida bugs that bravely strut around the room (like your roommates practicing their runway walks).  Suitcases are strewn around the room, with shoes, clothes, and hair products vomited about. Move into the living room and you witness the luxury linoleum floor, mismatched furniture (the pleather of a chair repaired with duct tape in several places) and another set of bunk beds in the corner.  Girls try to spruce it up with personalizations like fashion pages on the walls, comp cards, and a chandelier (with broken bulbs), but bunkbeds in the living room need a bit more help than the pages of Vogue and Glamour. 

Miami living room lookin' good after a thorough scrub-down.

Halloween in the living room

suitcase suitcase everywhere

Jet up to New York City, which is truly the city of dreams, but unfortunately very small rooms.  And in model apartments…more bunkbeds.  Two of my different rooms in NYC were barely bigger than the bed itself.  Cockroaches, mice, and fruit flies commonly came for visits.  One time Louie the mouse chewed a hole through an entire loaf of one of my (five) roommate’s bread.  (When she called to report the vermin, the agency was more concerned as to why she was eating bread.) Oh yes, and more bunkbeds and suitcases in the living room. Sure we did things to make the place our own..adding curtains to blindless windows, flowers to spruce up the bad paint jobs, flowers and candles to improve the smells; in one place I hung a beach towel on the wall as a decorative solution over a hole that an angry roommate made after punching the wall after speaking to a cheating boyfriend a thousand miles away.  Granted we also didn’t spend much time in these apartments, as the city itself was our beautiful playground.

View into the living room from the kitchen (spot the bunkbeds?)

Although I do miss those gorgeous, exciting cities, I do not miss the rough and exhausted model apartments, and getting to decorate and outfit my very own place has been a constant source of excitement and pride. Some nights when I would lay in my bunkbed, I would think about this imaginary place in my head that I would one day own and all of the things I would one day do to make it feel like mine...  More to come soon on the beginning of that exciting process that has now finally come into fruition.

I added pretty curtains to this NY bedroom.. Hop enjoyed them.

...and bunkbeds.

Hello friends,
I bought my first home on May 31, 2013 :) It is a beautiful two bedroom, 2 bathroom condo in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, and although I loved it from the first day I saw it, I had lots of fun plans to make it my own.  CondoVision is a place for me to share projects, design, inspiration, and progress with those interested in my condo's transformation :)
Love,
Shannon