Finally.. making our house a home

Sorry for the long absence, guys. It has been really busy around here lately.. and let's face it, in our downtime, we've been watching the second season of Bates Motel on Netflix. I can't give many details, but Graham has to go out of town for training for his new job. So, we've been trying to maximize our family time as much as possible.

Anyways, as a continuing part of the "Starter Stories" by Compass, I'm blogging about how we started to personalize our home when first starting out. There were a couple of things I wanted before we moved in: a new dining set that would seat more than four people, counter stools for our kitchen's breakfast bar, and a painted, stenciled wall in our master bedroom. We couldn't afford to do all of the things we wanted to do, so we had to prioritize what was most important to us.

First, the stencil we got was the Sophia Trellis Moroccan stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils. It looked relatively simple and a better alternative to wallpaper or a plain accent wall. So, we did two different colors in our bedroom with a varying color for the accented stencil. Our walls were a horrible yellowish beige from the builder, so we needed a more cool-toned color scheme to match our current espresso furniture and bedding. Here are the photos:

 Graham was our master painter.

 Here's the accent wall. We ended up painting the ceiling as well.

Finished stencil. It actually looks better in photos than in person because you don't see all of the small mistakes. But, it still looks fabulous. I will have to post another picture with our furniture and bedding in front of it.

So, the furniture we picked was from Target, Cost Plus World Market, and Pier 1. Since we had a breakfast bar, dining stools were a must. We needed a new dining room table because Graham and I both have large families that visit often, so we needed a big table to seat 8+ people. I have an older modern, espresso-colored buffet from West Elm that also needed to match the table set. I thought about getting the matching dining set from them, but it would have been too matchy matchy for the look I was going for. I had my heart set on a dining bench for the kiddos, too, so that was on my list. We also have a unique feature in our dining room--an electric fireplace--so we needed to have furniture that would work around this.

 Here are my Avington counter height stools from Target. Excuse the lime green color of the place mats. They are a little bright, but look great with the navy blue Fiesta dinnerware we own.

 Here's our Francine dining bench from World Market with the Garner extendable table from World Market. The bench and table don't match exactly but you can't really tell.

Here are the accent dining chairs from Pier 1. You can also see our beautiful Moroccan style rug we got at Costco ($80-90 for an 8x10 rug!!).

So, this is how we started to make our house our own! We couldn't afford to do much all at once, so it's definitely still a work in progress. I have some other projects that I'll share later as well. Our next big items are a fire pit in our backyard (currently in progress), a new sectional for our TV room, and paint in our dining room and downstairs family room.