If you’re a person who likes to have a never ending list of project, then I have a tip for you: buy a home and you’ll be set for life!  …Or be a Washington, DC wedding photographer, either or will do the trick, although photography lists are fun and home lists not so much. I digress… Rob and I purchased our first home a little over three years ago and it was in pretty great shape being only ten or so years old. The biggest caveat was the sheer emptiness of it all; coming from a one bedroom apartment, we didn’t have much furniture and everything was white! We have worked hard ever since to make it truly ours, painting our blank canvas into a place we could call home.This year we had several changes that I’m really excited to share! Here are just a few miscellaneous decor updates, including an updated wall with our portraits from our Paris anniversary session with Abby! 

After first moving in, much of our house was filled with hand-me-downs! We spent all our money on the down payment and didn’t have much left for anything but the essentials. So in came my parents’ old couch, tube TVs, and worn out mattresses. That’s not to say I wasn’t grateful for these things because we absolutely were, but I think we can all agree it’s nice to have items that are “yours.” We’d been saving up for a new couch and with the help of our parents at our birthdays and Christmas, we were finally able to purchase a new one! As a plus, we were able to move the old one downstairs (…in spite of Rob’s insistence that it wouldn’t fit. Turns out, you just need to be the most stubborn one and it may work =P ). It changed the entire look of the room and we absolutely love it!

If you’ve been following for a while, you know that if Rob and I are lucky enough to get any money back on taxes, we simply take that and place half in our savings and half into our home. Last year we got our cabinets painted (finally!) and this year we thought it would be nice to add crown molding as buyers love that on resale. We already had it on the majority of our main floor, so we finished it out and then also did our bedroom.

Later in the year, I had the itching for a DIY project and decided to take on the downstairs bathroom. This was the one room in the entire house that was the exception to the “white” room. See the previous owners loved to play with paint. And in this room, they opted for dark green paint mixed with rough sand and gold sparkle… yuck. So much so that the people who flipped the home didn’t even want to deal with that! Well I took it on and am pretty happy with the outcome! It’s pretty amazing what a coat of paint and new fixtures can do to a room. For less than $200, we changed it entirely!

Last, but certainly not least, we re-stained our deck! And by “we” I mean Rob. To say this was an enormous undertaking would be an understatement, but it ended up being so worth it in the end. The two-tone wasn’t planned (we waffled on colors… AFTER we would finish an entire section) but I’m in love with the way it turned out! I will say this, we try to DIY as much as possible, but if the deck needs stained in the next, oh, 10 years, we will hire someone! Shout out to my parents for this AWESOME patio set — we love it! Best anniversary gift, ever.