This is my home | Kitchen

My favorite thing about our apartment is how much of it Mike and I have made ourselves. Last summer, Mike revamped the furniture that was rotting on our old back porch, and he even built a new bench out of the spare wood. I got some cushion on sale at JoAnn's, some fabric, and made a cushion for the top.

Our kitchen is full of bright greens and yellows. We spend a lot of time in there, so it was important that it feel like a happy place, even in the endless night of winter. 

Mike and I bought this bread box at a thrift store in Vermont around our first year anniversary. We were already anticipating our September move into our very own place, and buying this first piece for our apartment felt so very romantic. Even now, stuffed with bagels and leftover banana bread, piled with Oreos, it feels like the first bit of a home we're building.

As convenient as it is to use Pinterest as a cookbook, I like the meditative nature of working from a stained and floury cookbook every now and then. 

Yes, that is a Megatouch. As in those table top games you see at bars. Mike won it at a Boys & Girls Club auction in Western Mass last year, and now it sits on a little bar in our kitchen, entertaining guests without fail.

One of my best friends Nabila painted that painting. She and I used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen when we lived together, so it's kind of nice having a bit of her there all the time. 

Where all the magic happens.

Mike's sister made this out of paint swatches. It's part of a really great series she did, and it matches perfectly with the colors in our kitchen. 

And here's our makeshift wine rack. It's not as impressive anymore; the holidays have drained us of our reserve. Guess it's time for another trip to Trader Joe's!

What parts of your house make it a home?

Made | Crocheted star tree-topper

After decorating our tree, we realized that we didn't have anything to go on top. We tried to find something at Target and the Dollar Store, but nothing really stood out to us. When that happens, it usually means you should just make it yourself.

So that night we put on Christmas Vacation, and I whipped up this little guy. I used this crochet star pattern, but you can find all kinds on Pinterest, depending on your size needs. It took me less than an hour to make this. First, I crocheted two of these stars in a mustard yarn. Next, I made a mini star pillow out of pieces of felt cut into a smaller star shape. I sewed them together by hand (pretty roughly, since the seams won't show), and then stuffed them with Polyfil before closing it up. Then I sandwiched the pillow between the two crocheted stars and sewed them together with the mustard yarn and a crochet needle. 

I would love to make another one of these with some yarn laced with gold or silver thread. Next up on the Christmas decoration to-make list is a tree skirt. Luckily, Rachel recently posted a tutorial on vintage-inspired tree skirts over at Smile and Wave.

What's on top of your tree?

Deck the halls.

December is really here, I can't believe it. My dad always jokes that time flies faster the older you get, but this year I'm inclined to believe him. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Mike and I spent the day putting up the tree, decorating the house, and listening to Christmas music. We hung up all of the ornaments Mike had and then made some new ones out of some Christmas Story stress balls in the shape of the famous leg lamp and bar of soap from the Target dollar section. Mike strung up a couple of his ViewFinders and their picture reels to go on the tree as well. 

And now I welcome the long evenings because there's nothing cozier than curling up under the glow of Christmas lights on your very own (first since moving to Boston!) tree. 

This is my home | living room.

There is not much better than a cozy place to come home to, is there? I've always been a bit of a homebody, so I tend to make my home—whether that means a room I'm renting or a whole apartment I'm sharing with M—a place that feels like a big hug. In my last two years of college I lived in the tiniest room I have ever seen. I could barely fit my twin bed and my desk in there, but with the right lighting and by shoving everything into my closet, I managed to make it a little cove. I loved writing and reading in there, waking up and falling asleep in there, and despite its size, I was proud to show it off when people came over. Look what I did with this space, I thought. I made it a space I belonged. So that was our goal when we moved into our apartment. My first impression was that it was too small. I had grown so used to sharing three bedroom apartments with roommates, the thought of downsizing that much and paying more seemed unfair. I'm glad I came around. This place is the perfect size for the both of us, and even when we entertained about 20 people a couple of weekends ago, sleeping 5 people here overnight, it was comfortable and cozy.

Our living room is where we spend the most of our time. Isn't that funny how that changes? I went from working from home at a desk in my room, from stuffing everything to my name in one room in an apartment of three, to having an entire living room to do my living! And a bedroom that primarily serves as a place to sleep! Such novelty! Such luxury!

My favorite part about our living room is our vintage camera wall, hands down. But there are other little details that I love, like these prints from Etsy that I got M for his birthday our first year together. Or his collection of View Masters on the windowsill. The crates we bought at Brimfield (one of them has the name of M's hometown on it!) that now serve as a bookshelf. I love every little bit of this room because we spend so much time in it, but also because it's ours. It's a perfect mixture of our tastes and personalities, and I'm proud to show it off when people come over. Look at this space we made.

I'll show you what you can do with a mini clothespin.

It's amazing to me how it feels like we're constantly moving in to this apartment. Whether we're rearranging closets, purging old clothes, figuring out where to stuff store the air conditioners, or hanging up decorations we've been meaning to hang, it's just like Gilda Radnor said: It's always something. 

I bought some maps from Black Ink last week, and they've been hanging out wherever I put them in the office since, so I thought I'd finally hang at least one of them up today. I had also picked up some mini clothespins from the Target dollar section a while back, and thought they would be a cute way to get this map on the wall. We were also low on Command strips, so I couldn't just stick them on the back of the map and call it a day. Besides, that would have been boring. 

Step 1: Attach the mini Command strips (or any easily removable wall sticky) to your mini clothespins.

Step 2: Figure out where you'd like your map to hang, measure the width of the map, and hang your clothespins about a half inch in from the edge of the map.

Step 3: Hang your map! Yeah, this didn't really need steps, but I got excited.

Step 5: Bask in the glory of using those mini clothespins that your boyfriend said you had no need for!

On displaying vintage cameras and trial & error.

One of the exciting parts about moving in with M (and away from roommates) was being able to decorate each of the rooms for our own tastes. M was especially excited about displaying his vintage camera collection, and when I saw this from Pocketful of Pretty, I knew that was what we had to do. We went to the Brimfield Fair in July and picked up these six frames for about a dollar a piece (and now we're wishing we'd grabbed more, because we have about eight more cameras and no more frames). We wanted a less uniform look and laid out the cameras on the floor to see what we wanted. 

When we were satisfied, we attached fishing line to each camera. Depending on the type of camera and the available nooks and holes on the design, you should attach the fishing line close to the top or middle of the camera. Originally, we wanted to save the walls and use only Command strips and Command hooks. That went out the window when our second camera fell soon after hanging. We still used Command strips to secure the bottoms of the cameras and to keep them from readjusting themselves, but we ended up using little metal picture hangers to attach our fishing line to. 

Though we wanted the fishing line and hanging contraptions to remain hidden by the camera and creating a cool illusion of floating cameras, there were some that we just couldn't make work. We'd rather keep these beauties intact than risk a fall to their death, so one or two have the fishing line visible. But! That's why we used fishing line, so it's not as much of an eye sore. 

This has been one of my favorite projects for the apartment so far, and even though it was a process of trial and error, I think it turned out great.

How do you display your vintage cameras?