Odds and ends

Lately I've been making smaller tweaks to our apartment rather than tackling bigger projects. The office and laundry room were the last major room to-dos (aside from buying new bedroom furniture, but we're gonna need to save for that...and really, might just wait until we're back in Missouri so we don't have to haul back more furniture). So I thought I'd share a few of those little changes with you all!

First, I finally found a home for the lovely green rhinoceros that I bought from TJ Maxx and shared on Fab Finds Friday! Originally I mentioned that I might paint him a glossy white, but the more I looked at the color, the more I loved it! It goes really well with the tones in our living room.

I placed him on top of a stack of past issues of The Missouri Review, one of my favorite literary magazines. I interned there as an undergraduate, so my name actually appears in the masthead of some of these!

He goes quite well with the rest of the decor on the coffee table.

The next small addition to our living room? Two lovely print block numbers, one and three, signifying our wedding date: Friday, January 13! Yes, we are kooky and not super superstitious so we had our wedding on Friday the 13th. (Another one is coming up this week--and I think all the Friday the 13ths in our future will make me smile!) 

I found these two numbers on Etsy a while back from the same seller, Preserve Cottage. She was selling them separately, but they just happened to be the same size and similar font styles, so I grabbed them both. They cost me $12.00 all together (including shipping). For the longest time I wasn't sure where to put them. I contemplated grouping them with the other print blocks on our entry bookshelf, but I thought that looked too busy. Finally I decided they'd look good on our TV stand! The wedding picture by them isn't actually us--it's my sister and brother-in-law. I thought about switching it out to one of our photos since the 13 is for our wedding, but I think we have enough of those up in the hallway, and I love this shot of those two, so it stayed :)

Another fab find has found its perch (har har)--my sweet white birdy looks great in between two photos of me and my parents, with an amber hurricane in the back.

I also changed up the photos above our little mail/key station. Before, we'd hung a blonde frame with a landscape shot and a way old (unflattering) picture of me. So when I saw this awesome map of the Mississippi River's courses on Pinterest (thanks, Kristin!), I knew I wanted to frame it and replace the old frame. Ideally I'll get a larger print of the map in the future (maybe a 11"x14" placed in a matted 16"x20" frame), but for now it looks good as an 8"x10". Since the new frame was a little smaller than the old blonde one and I hung it on the existing nail, there was a little space below it, so I used some velcro picture hanging strips to hang a frame I had sitting elsewhere in the kitchen.

I was able to find a PDF version of the map here--I downloaded the entire 170-page packet for free. To make it easier for anyone else who wants to print it, I saved the map as a single page PDF: get it here. (It is a large file, so it will take a bit to download). I also downloaded the image from this Tumblr, but it isn't as high quality as the PDF. When I printed the map, I chose to zoom in on part of it so I could better read it, but you can also print it so you can see more of its length.

I also made a few changes to make our bathroom shelf more functional. Before, it held more decorative items on the second shelf--picture frames and a votive holder I never used. I switched those items out for the more practical (but still pretty) items from the first shelf--the jars hold my cotton balls and Q-tips. Then I rolled up some of our towels and placed those on the bottom shelf. That way, when the others on our towel bar get dirty, we can easily grab them! The top shelf holds a basket with my hair supplies, along with some of my blue glass jars and one of the displaced picture frames from the second shelf.

So those are some of the little odds and ends I've been adding to our apartment! Sometimes small things can make a big impact. I really do smile every time I see the print block numbers and Mr. Rhino sitting in our living room! And the bathroom shelves are more functional now, but still lovely!