Hello, Penny Darlings!
Happy Friday! I am so happy to be sharing more and more wedding details! I absolutely love it! I have some excitingly new content coming your way soon! I can’t wait to share it!
But, as I was looking back, I was realizing that I hadn’t given you an update on our home tour! As you know, Preston and I are habitual renters! (that millenial game!) and I always struggle to make rented apartments our own without doing any un-doable damage!
So this post, I want to give you a quick peek into our living rooms!
This is an overview of the whole living area!
I knew that I wanted to bring lots of color and brightness into the room (to take away from the VERY white walls!) and grab a statement piece of furniture!
So I made this gallery wall with all types of retro, colorful, quirky, & very us!
So let’s talk about the art!
Top Row from Left
Calligraphy from Amour Artistique that is an amazing quote from Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812. “Chandeliers & Caviar – the war can’t touch us here”
Bumpy Cake Watercolor from Cheryloz on Etsy – I first saw this print at the Liz Louize boutique when I went out to Michigan and became obsessed!
Luke’s sign was a Christmas gift from my equally Gilmore-obsessed best friend & MoH!
Black & White Photographs: they are actually negatives from my Uncle Kevin (who passed away before I was born in the AIDS epidemic). He was a total artist type and was absolutely friends with Keith Haring. These are some shots from when he did some modeling for a friend. My grandmother had these hung in her house until she passed, and now they hang in my house!
Water Slide World Pennant – Water Slide World is this totally amazing kitschy water park up at Lake George (where my family vacations every year!) and I found this vintage pennant and had to have it!
Bottom Row:
Date Nite at Disneyland was actually an AMAZING find from Amazon and had that fabulous retro vibe that I love!
The colored pencils canvas was actually a steal from Ross!
The Martha’s sign is a custom piece that my amazing friend, Preston’s groomsman, and our roommate, Jeremy Patterson. Check out his art here. Martha’s is an ice cream place at Lake George that means so much to me!
The Dalmatian picture was what started the big gallery wall idea in the first place! I had seen a picture years ago of a just black and white version and it made me laugh a LOT. Preston and I came across this rainbow dot one right after the holidays at Home Goods and knew it was the perfect fit!
Gallery Wall: Part Two
We hung this lake sign, because of course we did, as I mentioned, we’re HUGE Lake George fans and all things lake are totally us! This colorful lake sign was something we snagged at Gabe’s!
I nabbed an old Candy Land at the thrift store for a buck and repurposed the game board to be part of our gallery wall!
This last piece is another Jeremy Patterson original of Misty Copeland, who is the amazingly gorgeous, first African American Female Principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. She is STUNNING in real life. She is truly gorgeous and I think Jeremy captured her natural lithe features!
Art Close Ups
The TV Stand
My teal TV stand is part of the Wyndham Collection for Target to add another pop of color to the room! It’s super fun to have accent color furniture! It’s a non-committal way to brighten up the typical neutral tones of furniture!
I then added this retro yellow phone (a thrift find!), this adorable heart teapot, vintage camera, and bunny ears alarm clock (which were all things I snagged from TJ Maxx! I swear, TJ Maxx is my other home. I’m, like, embarrassed about how many times a week I go to TJ Maxx.)
The Rug
This 8×10 rug was another find from Gabe’s and it totally transformed the space! It added lots of color, defined the space, and Lebowski thinks it ties the whole room together! And bonus: it’s plush and Harvey loves to roll around on it, which is v. cute.
The Music Shelf
This was actually the first TRUE decorating in the house. Preston and I love to spend lazy days off hitting the thrift store. I found this AMAZING stack of records with some incredible mid-century art. We grabbed a bunch and totally up-cycled them into a big piece of fun art!
The Coffee Table
This coffee table was a snag from Craigslist! It has a lift top (which if you’ve never had – 10/10 would recommend!). I paid $30 for it before I even had an apartment because lift top coffee tables can be kind of expensive – so I was jazzed it popped up online for such a steal!
I also decorated it with this ADORABLE cupcake tray (which is a great catch all for the table!) from Gabe’s (and I paid less than $5 for it!) This is such an inexpensive and fun way to pretty up even non-colorful furniture!
Plus, it’s nice to have magazines out – one is The Knot (’cause ya girl is getting hitched!) and Susquehanna Style (’cause ya girl has a byline!)
Other Details
So anyone who knows us, knows that we are OBSESSED with scented candles and I have found the BEST and longest burning candles of all time. This Freshly Brewed Coffee candle and this Peppermint Bark candle from Candelles are LITERAL GAME CHANGERS! They burn forever (we burn them every day for more than a month and still have more than half left!) and they are so soft and gentle but really add a nice scent to the room. We seriously use these EVERY SINGLE DAY! I’m a weird person that likes to move the coffee candle around to wherever I am. (so it goes at my desk, on the coffee table, in the bathroom during showers, etc.)
This cute laundry hamper was repurposed to be a blanket bin in our living room! We have so many throw blankets and we kept them all folded in the corner of the couch all the time. So we went to Gabe’s, bought this bin for $8 and made a totally cute throw blanket bin. I picked the one that said Spotless because it made LOL (because the whole room in polka dot!
These are my three favorite throw blankets (all from Ross!) and I got pink doughnuts, don’t go ‘bacon’ my heart, and ‘brie’ mine. I love pink, being cozy, and a darn good pun. For less that $8 a piece, we use these almost every single night!
I just wanted to show off this impossibly cute cupcake tray again for our coffee table!
This throw pillow was another awesome find at TJ Maxx (it was on clearance so we could only snag one!) and it’s so big and comfy and Harvey gives it two paws up!
That was a tour of my living room! It’s small but mighty and colorful! It’s my favorite room in the house! It’s so fun and welcoming and totally makes the space home! What are your favorite tips for transforming a rental space? Let me know!
SO HERE’S THE “END OF BLOG” SPIEL!
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Love all you wonderful ladies (and gents!) out there!
How Very,
Abby
Penny Darling 