Love the one you're with

No I am not talking about Matt, though I do love him dearly, I'm talking about our house. It's still on the market and my hopes of selling it swirl further down the drain every week that passes. I'm beginning to come to the realization that now may not be the right time. I haven't yet admitted defeat, but I have been doing a few things to make our stay in this house a little more enjoyable, no matter how long it may be.

One thing I wanted to do was create more of an office setting for myself, since I'm now consistently working from home 3 days a week. The kitchen table was nice (more on that later) but didn't feel office-like enough to really motivate me. Enter the desk in the guest bedroom. I love having a guest bedroom and it's an absolute must for me because I love hosting visitors, but given our distance from most of our family it is sadly a bit neglected. It's a nice big room with two great windows and gets tons of natural light. Perfect. Here is the before as seen in our listing photo:

BO-RING.

Enter Bryn, a super-talented (and not formally trained) interior designer in Charlotte who's blog I've been a long-time fan of. She put together this great office space and inspiration board which I just loved. So, I made my own! It took me 10 minutes and approximately $4. Cheap and quick, love it.

I took this old white frame with pictures from college that had been stuffed under my bed (so 2004), took the glass and pictures out, cut a piece of cork board to fit and covered it in black burlap, put it all back together and tada! So cute! I added a cute little white pencil holder I got from Target, a stack of white books with a piece of Pottery Barn coral on top, a candle, and voila! Sorry you can't see the frame hanging, Matt apparently locked me out of his tool chest. Not cool. He must know I'm on the rampage.

I admittedly went a little color crazy when we moved into this house and have long since wanted to change the light blue in the guest room. But with the new white accessories I think I can actually live with it. It feels much more chic and beachy now. I plan to snag two of these botanical prints from This Young House to hang over the bed and a cute small pillow for my desk chair and call it a day.

Now, about the kitchen. When we bought the house from Matt's parents they were sweet enough to leave us this kitchen set because they no longer had a place for it. It has served us well, but was never really my style. I finally decided to act and sold that baby on Craig's List for almost enough to buy us a brand new set! We pick up our new dinette on Saturday and I can't wait to share. Thus begins my obsession with Craig's List. I'm ravaging the house looking for more things to sell. I really am the opposite of a hoarder, though sometimes I think this purge mentality can be just as scary-- at least for Matt. He's afraid I'm going to sell or give away everything down to his socks. Hmmm...I wonder how much they're worth??