Dining Room, Revealed

The Dining Room called me last night.  She said she was ready for her close-up.  Not one to disappoint, I obliged. 

Here are the goods:

(If you look carefully, you'll see Mitchell's head poking into this photo.  Always a camera hog, that guy.)

Anyone else get the sense that one wide-angle lens could have decreased the number of photos in the post to A Single Picture?

Yuck No More

You may recall my previously-stated feelings about this guy, our dining room light.

Yeah, he's pretty ugly

So ugly, in fact, it took a triple effort between me, Matt, my parents, and Matt's family to finally slay the beast.  I found this gal (seriously, she's too pretty to be a guy), Matt okay'd her, my folks bought her as Christmas present, and Matt + his parents and sister installed her.  Good bye, Mr. Yucky.

the installation process

What do you think of our new, glamorous girlfriend?

 

Close up of the capiz shell dangling bits:

Welcome to the family, Sloane

Matt and I were lucky enough to have received a full set of red and white wine glasses as wedding presents.  Awesome.

However, they spent the last 8 months living in Basement Purgatory because we didn't have any room in our kitchen to properly house them.  Not awesome.

So, for the last 5.9999 months, I'd been trolling Craigslist for a stylish wine rack...and come up with a whole lot of junk and one decent option that was horribly overpriced.  Bummer.

Thus, when we received a Crate & Barrel gift card for Christmas, I did a little happy dance, because I knew that we could finally justify buying Sloane.  Hooray for Christmas, gift cards, and more storage space.

What do you think?

 

A close up of the decorative elements:

And what's in the drawer?  Fresh napkins (why did no one tell me that cloth napkins need to be ironed?!) and Madame Julia herself.

Dining Room Wants...

Feeling really triumphant about the dining room.

It's currently the only room in the house that is done. Well, by 'done', I mean it is not marred by boxes, saddened by bare walls, or shamed by hideous 1970s vertical blinds. It is 'done' in the sense that we could have guests in this room without apologizing (e.g. "Sorry there's no nightstand here in the guest room...our TV is sitting on it right now in the den" or "Sorry there aren't pillows on the couch...we just can't seem to find any we like").

Nonetheless, that doesn't mean the dining room couldn't get *even better*.

Primarily, I've been coveting these last two things to really complete it:

This chandelier (West Elm)

And this wine rack (Crate&Barrel)

We'll see how long it takes to get these or some similar lovelies. I'm keeping my eye open for sales at West Elm / Crate&Barrel, plus watching Craigslist and Ebay. For now, the sideboard (and by 'sideboard,' I mean Ikea Expedit console table) is a fine bar top and my wine glasses will remain hidden in the kitchen cabinets...plus, I've already mentioned my plans for the really unfortunate light fixture...

Chandelier - Painting Project

The dining room is looking good, but we really need to do something about the old, country light-fixture in there.

Now, I'm going to be generous and say this fixture isn't terrible. It's a little spider-like, I think. In any case, it's not what we need. I'm thinking of spray painting it glossy black. Seems like that will coordinate nicely with our dining room palette of aqua, gray, white, and black. Plus, it should help tie in the black sofa (yeah, I don't love that guy, but it was free and sometimes free trumps stylish).

minor success in the dining room

Matt and I received two gorgeous contemporary 11x14 frames as wedding gifts.

Unfortunately, between our photographer, Photobucket, and the Target photo center, we are being foiled at every turn when we try to print oversize photos to fit these frames.

However, I had to beg Matt to hang them, because I the wall I'd planned to put them on was horribly lopsided in their absence.

They looked really silly displaying the store decal on the wall.


Then, in a moment of genius, I thought of a great temporizing measure...I downloaded a great free font (Traveling Typewriter) from DaFont, typed two quotes from our wedding programsaved them as a PDF, and went to the UPS store to have them printed on 11x17 paper (only 50-cents!).

They turned out pretty cool, I think.

Now, these aren't permanent...I'm still hopeful that we can find some gorgeous black&white photos to put in there. Plus, it kind of kills me that I couldn't print them in white text on a black background (it would look so much better with the white mat), but for 50-cents, it's a darn good temporary fix.

Blue Dining Table...Done & Done

That blue table? Well, here it is: