Hi Friends,

I thought I would pop on and share a bit of what we’ve been up to at our house lately and also some dining room tour photos (because everyone loves pictures). This past summer I made it a goal to get a real dining room table. Previously, our dining table was a high top that seated four people. It’s great when you don’t have a whole lot of friends and family or are living in a small townhouse, but neither of these were our reality. We had each of our families over for meals and would end up half sitting in the living room and half in the dining room. As interesting as that was, I wanted to have a space where we could all eat together.

I had been searching for the perfect table for the longest time when I found this one from Target posted over on Emily Henderson’s blog. It was on sale and exactly what I had been looking for.

I should warn you right now a lot of the stuff in this room (and our whole house, if I’m being honest) is from Target. The square cement succulent planter, the table it’s on, and the round jute chargers are all Target. They just have cute stuff, okay?

Also, the tufted dining chairs: Target, my friends.

The three black chairs in the back are from At Home. If you’ve never been, it’s pretty amazing. They call themselves the home decor superstore for a reason. Literally anything you could want for your home, they’ve got it, aisles and aisles of it. The black bench was built by yours truly. I couldn’t find one in my price range to buy that I wanted so I made it happen.

Our gallery wall hasn’t changed…yet. I’m debating adding more to it but I just have too many other projects going on right now to think about that.

That’s it for our new dining room, although I recently added a few autumn accents to our tablescape that aren’t pictured here. 🙂

As for the rest of our house, we are currently remodeling our basement bathroom! It’s already been about 6 weeks and we are getting so close to the finishing touches stage. I’ll share some early progress pics soon. We were originally just going to do a little refresh (new floors, paint, paint the vanity, etc.) but after an unsuccessful attempt at epoxy painting the vanity top, we decided to get a new vanity. Once we got a new vanity, it was clear the old tile tub surround had to go as well. So we started almost from scratch! (Only kept the cast iron bath tub which was in good shape). I’m so excited about how it’s turning out and can’t wait to broadcast the final product!

I have a couple other small projects I’m working on. One is slowly switching out all our door hinges, stoppers and door knobs to matte black. Our house currently has an interesting mix of brass and brushed nickel. It’s funny how a little thing like this can make a big difference. Another “project” is slowly filling three long shelves I put up in our living room a couple months ago. I don’t mind taking my time on this because I want to put up things I really love and that doesn’t happen overnight. I think that’s the hardest part of renovating and decorating: the battle between wanting everything to be done and wanting everything done right. It’s easy to buy generic pieces and fill a shelf to make it look Pinterest worthy. It’s also easy to rush through a big project and cut corners and make small mistakes. I’m trying to be patient and work more slowly to make sure I’m making a home I’m proud of that’s filled with things that make it feel like my house and not just anyone’s. Anyway, that’s all for now.

If you have sources for pretty brass and/or black finish lighting, send them my way. I’m on the hunt for a new fixture for our bathroom!

Thanks for reading,