Apartment Refresh 2017 | Living Room

Hi loves! Welcome back. If you've been following my blog for a while, I used to talk about how I was going to be moving out of my apartment soon because my lease was up... buuuut, 8+ months later we're still here! Our landlord let us go month-to-month and we haven't found anything that blew us away, so we decided to stay put for a while!

With that said, I was really looking forward to moving solely for the fact that I could redecorate. I honestly love where we live so much (that wall though), it'd be hard to give it up. Anyways, my redecorating itch got the best of me, so once I took down all of our Christmas decor, I decided it was time to refresh our place!

My Apartment Christmas Decor | 2016

As you may know, I live just across the Hudson River from NYC (does my blog name make sense now? ;)), which means small living spaces for high prices. Luckily, I love where I live so much I'm totally okay with paying a little too much for a tiny apartment!

With that said, I can't go crazy on Christmas decor just yet since I just don't have the space to showcase everything I could dream of. Today, I decided to put together a post detailing the simple decor I've accumulated over the past 3 Christmas's we've spend in this apartment.

Affordable Home Decor | Autumn 2016

There's nothing quite like fall in the North East. It's easily my favorite season and I swear it comes and goes so quick-- which is why I love to make it feel like fall in my apartment. Like most young twenty-somethings living in and around NYC, I don't have funds to be redecorating every single season, but luckily some of my favorite home stores have such cute decor for amazing prices this year!

Get the Look: Modern Minimal Living Room | Guest Post by Luxe Decor

Hello everyone! I’m very excited to bring you this post. I mentioned I’m in the process of looking for a new apartment, so I was super excited when the ladies at LuxeDecor reached out to me. Today’s post is by Amy at LuxeDecor and she’s bringing us ways to help living rooms everywhere look minimal yet elegant all in one.

Current Wish List | H&M Home

Hey guys! I'm currently gearing up for a move, so home decor and furniture have really been on my mind lately. We're not positive when we're moving out, but we know in the next 3 months we'll be be moving into a new (bigger!) place, so I've been searching all over Pinterest for inspiration.

DIY Christmas Decor!

Now that Thanksgiving has past, I'm in full blown Christmas mode! This is my second winter living out of my parents home, so it's my second time decorating for the holidays. Last year's decor was pretty basic as we had just moved in and were more concerned with decorating our place in general, so I knew this year I wanted to get some additional Christmas decorations and go more "all out."

Our space is pretty small, so I knew I only needed a few additions. I was determined to DIY something and when browsing some decor websites I stumbled upon a Christmas-themed shadow box I knew I could recreate. Keep on reading to see how I made this extremely easy & quick (literally 3 mins) DIY!

My Current Apartment Tour!

There's nothing I love more than getting a little sneak peak into other peoples' apartments (is that creepy???) I just love seeing how people choose to decorate and set up a place and love pulling inspiration from them so I thought I'd give a little tour of the apartment I'm currently living in!

As you may have guessed from my blog name, I live in New Jersey just across the Hudson River from NYC. I work full time in the city so this location is absolutely perfect for commuting reasons (25 minutes door-to-door to work?!) even though the price tag on my place is quite high for the amount of space I have. You pay for location in and around NYC so I was prepared when I started looking to move out.

I moved out of my parents home a year ago and I moved in with my boyfriend of 5.5 years. We pay $2,200 a month ($1,100 each) for a 420 sqft one-bedroom apartment, which I knooooow sounds crazy but I couldn't imagine living anywhere but here at this point in my life (do you see that wall?!) I love everything about the apartment and the area I live in so I'm willing to spend 50% of my income to live here (yes, I know that's very bad but I'm young so whatever lol)

Anyways - Keep reading to see how I've decorated my place! I've managed to keep is girly, but not too girly for my very masculine roomie :P

DIY Product Organizer!

I've officially been in my apartment for 4 months and have been getting a little anxious (what else is new) about some of my storage situations. I've been noticing a lot of things (products, clothing etc.) that I haven't touched since I moved in, so this weekend I went through all of it and got rid of a lot of stuff and I immediately felt better!

Now the issue was I didn't like how my products were stored on my dresser. I have the long, 6-drawer MALM dresser from Ikea, so it's not that there wasn't room for all of my stuff on top, it just looked messy and cluttered. So I took to Pinterest for some ideas on how I could store my stuff where it looked pretty and was also practical. I noticed a ton of people using tiered cake stands in my search and though they looked adorable! And so, my DIY tiered product organizer was born :)

Small Apartment Hack: DIY Shelf Bedside Tables!

If you're anything like me you always pictured your first apartment to be the size of a small mansion, fully equip with walk-in closets, double sinks in the master bath, waterfall shower heads etc. But as a 24-year-old working an entry-level job living minutes to Manhattan, you know very well that's impossible. While my apartment is small (420 sq ft to be exact....), it's newly renovated with exposed brick and stainless steal appliances so naturally I couldn't say no. All of this being said, the bedroom is tiny. Luckily, we're able to fit a Queen-size bed and two IKEA dressers, but the only wall we could put the bed on is shared with our closet leaving no room for side tables. While not totally necessary, I'm used to having somewhere to keep my phone and a water bottle next to the bed overnight, so I was determined to find a solution - And luckily, I did!

Fully Customizable DIY Photo Ledge

Pinterest truly creates unrealistic expectations of decorating and furnishing your first apartment. Literally everything is either super expensive or super hard to recreate and it's quite defeating when all you want is a really cute apartment you can showoff to your friends. That being said, I was on the hunt for something to put on the blank part of the wall between the two windows in our living room when this photo ledge was born.