Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Decorating is Done


So Saturday I woke up with a bee in my bonnet to finish decorating our apartment. This included the kitchen pics in my last blog post, but a few other lingering projects that I wanted to get done. My mom and sister's upcoming visit was a motivating factor, but also hitting the 6 month mark this week made me realize if I don't get it done NOW, we won't be able to enjoy it for the rest of our time here.

So, a trip (or two) to IKEA later, here is what we did...

We filled in the space between the living room and entry door with this shelf unit, some mirror frames and a vase. It was a big, blank white space before.

We had purchased the coat rack and "shoe bench" a while ago of necessity, we just needed a place to hang our jackets and put on our shoes. The "bench" is actually a shelf unit that can go horizontal or vertical, it works perfect for this wall. I finished the wall off with three photos I've taken on our travels here. They are all converted to black and white with a "touch of red" in them to match the theme.
And here's a wider angle view of that area:
On the wall between Brandon's bedroom door and our bedroom/bathroom entry, we have a small table that we use to put our keys on. We added a fourth photo to match the three above the shoe bench, and a red vase to tie it together. Everything except the vase/flower and the plant actually came with us from the US. I've had these frames forever - they just keep working!
Here's the view of the living room shelving units, which are also full of books, TV and some decorative touches. We are really happy with it! It made it feel even more like home and now we can enjoy it for our next year and a half here. Come visit and see it in person!

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Kitchen Composition


My latest painting project has been a decorating one. Today I just finished painting the 5th of my "Kitchen Composition" paintings, to go above our kitchen table. These paintings are all 20x20cm on stretched canvas, my first experience with that. They are simple compositions, I painted directly from life without drawing, playing around with that some more.

I like how it turned out overall. Right now I'm all about bright colors and I love the orange and green we have decorated our kitchen with. I wanted to bring interest to the wall above the kitchen table, it's such a big white wall!


This is a close up of my favorite painting of the series, the oranges.

If you want to see the paintings each on their own you can view them in my painting album. I think I'll do some more of these small canvases, they are quick and fun!

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I Still Exist...

My friend Becky in Corvallis has been giving me a hard time for not updating my blog, so you can all thank her for getting myself together to do an update. Things have been busy and it seems like Patrick keeps everyone updated, but I still have my things to tell you, don't I?

Here are a few photos of our Sunday afternoon drive last week. We set out without a plan and just drove to see where we would end up. It was fun, until we found ourselves hungry and it was the break between lunch and dinner on a Sunday. Oh well! We'll have it all figured out eventually, probably around the time we head home. :)