justem: little bits of this and that

Found: Vintage Roll-up Map

I am very new to the whole world of thrfting/craigslist etc.  Our old house in IL was very small and pretty much decorated to the max, but our new house is much bigger, much neater, and has so many more opportunities to decorate!  I've gone just a little bit crazy lately purchasing (cheap!) things for our house.  It's really fun. (And, for the record - I was right, and the ONE item I wanted from Friday's Estate Sale walked out the door 10 minutes after the sale started, while I was still standing outside with my number waiting to get in!) If you follow me on Instagram, you have most likely already seen  some of my recent finds. I thought I'd share some of my favorites here, too!  

First up today is probably my #1 favorite "found" item. It took me a couple of weeks to "figure out" Craigslist - what boards to follow, how often they update, how to contact people, how to search, etc.  Once I discovered the search option, I started looking up a few things that I knew I wanted for the house.  At the top of my list was a vintage roll-up school map.  These things are worth their weight in gold right now - It's almost impossible to touch a good quality vintage school map for under 100 - and most are on Ebay and Etsy for $150 or more.  To see some really amazing ones, check out this seller on Ebay - a girl can dream, right? ;)

I started searching on Craiglist for map/vintage map/antique map, etc.  It's a bit hard because ANY listing that includes a map of the location would come up in the search.  But - crazily enough - there was one!  It was a beautiful vintage map of the Roman Empire that looked to be in good condition.  The seller listed it at $60. I (being the cheapskate I am) asked if she would be willing to drop to $45 - I would have bought it at $60 but it never hurts to for a lower price, right?! ;)  The seller agreed to $45 and the map was ALL MINE!!! 

(The picture I posted on Instagram the night I picked it up)

Here it is in my living room, along with a yellow Dwell Studio/Target pillow that I also happened to get from Craigslist. My husband was a little unsure of me buying pillows from Craiglist, but I promise they were clean and from a good home! ;) When I first started looking at maps, I was hoping to find one of the United States, but honestly, this is even better than I had imagined. The colors, the images, everything is just perfect!  The previous owners had used the twine to hold it up, and after looking at the map both with and without the twine, we decided to keep it!

I love that my home is slowly starting to resemble the home I want it to look like. ;)  I'm constantly adding and changing things, and I will continue to share more photos here! Have a great Tuesday!

Our New Old WI Home: Living Room

Hi! If you follow me on Instagram, you know that we've been busy with a lot of home updates the past couple of weeks!  Now that my husband is finally home from work, we have time to get some things accomplished! My mom came down last week to hang out with the kiddos so I could do a bit around the house. It's so fun to see it all starting to take shape and feel like "our" house!  I previously shared some photos of the living room room built-ins.  Today I have some photos of the rest of the living room! I took the photos a few weeks ago, and things already look different!!!  First, here are the living room listing photos...

This room is SO much larger than our old living room. I feel like our current furniture looks ridiculous - we don't even have a full sized couch in here!  It looks a little better in the photos than it does in real life - it just looks really bare.  There are so many things I want to change.  I have visions of a fun, colorful space.  If you've ever checked out my "Living Spaces" Pinterest board, you know my style is colorful and crazy.  Here are the photos of it right now (and by "right now" I really mean "a few weeks ago"). I'm keeping it real in these photos - yes I picked up the toys, but please disregard the table covered in fingerprints and the baby. ;)

While the green paint is not my ideal color, it's totally fine in the living room for now! Eventually I'd like to paint it a shade that's similar to the current one, with only a few more blue undertones! Nothing was up on the walls in these photos, but we have a few things hanging now, including my best-ever Craigslist find, a vintage map of the Roman Empire. It's pretty much perfect! The rocking chair was purchased from a local antique store.  I like the idea of a bunch of mismatched furniture, and this piece was just calling my name!! The rainbow pillow is from Target.

Our loveseat (which we bought because the old living room did not have space for a full sofa) is basically destroyed. The leather has pretty much disintegrated. Eventually, I want to get a new couch that is a lighter neutral. I would love a funky colored couch, but I think I would be vetoed! I've opted, instead, to just get a ton of colorful pillows.  Not everyone understands my obsession with pillows. ;)  I also think a rug would look great, but right now it would probably just be destroyed in a week!

Our current coffee and end tables are hand-me-downs from my mom.  They are not my favorite. ;)  We actually bought a new (old) mission style coffee table from Craigslist that we sanded and re-stained. I also committed to buying some old-school end tables from a woman on Craiglist.  I contacted her over a month ago, and I still don't have the tables, so I'm starting to think maybe it's a lost cause. She was a bit...unusual...to put it mildly. ;)  Should I ever actually acquire them, I hope to paint them a deep blue/green/teal color. 

The sheer panels on the windows in this room are new. The previous owner had cats and her window treatments were full of cat hair. After washing them, they were still rather unappealing, so my mom helped me find the cheapest possible treatments to just give us some privacy. There are a lot of windows, so I wanted to just find something to get up quickly. For about two weeks I felt like we were a spectacle to all the neighbors!! These are definitely not great. The quality is very poor, but hopefully I will replace them with something I like better someday!  

There also about a billion other things I want to do with this room, a few of which have already been accomplished since I took these pictures!! I have a Pinterest Board dedicated to this room, if you'd like to see more of my vision for it!  As I've mentioned before, when we first moved in, I walked around to every room and created a giant to-do list for every room. Nothing was too big or too small to go on the list!  Here was the list for this room - I have checked off everything that we have done so far, even though some of it is not evident in these pictures:

• Repaint/Touch up Paint
• Sheer Panels for front windows
• Curtains for side windows
• Refinish floors
• New light fixture - get rid of fan!
• Outlet covers
• Pictures on walls
• Bins for bench storage
• New Couch
• Painted Tables
• Coffee Table
• New Lamps
• Pillows!
• Redo piano bench cover
• Rug
• Repaint Radiator

I am liking this room more and more everyday! I will continue to share photos of the progress! Have a great Friday!!  It's Birthday weekend for two of my three kids here!!  I am so not prepared... ;)

**to see more photos of our "new old home" click here!**

Our New Old WI Home: Playroom

Hi there!  Happy Saturday!  I decided that it would be okay for me to show rooms in our house that are not perfect - only so when I finally share the "finished" look (which, really, could take years!) you will be even more impressed, ha! ;) So - the playroom, which is very much "in-progress!!" Here is the photo from the realtor listing:

This a unique room, because it includes a door that leads to to the second-story sun porch (a favorite feature of the home that we can't wait to use when it warms up!).  The house has four bedrooms, and we were already planning on having the two big kids share a room, so we decided to turn this "extra" room into the playroom, so that we will be able to go in and out to the sun porch at any hour and not have to worry about waking the kids up.  This room was originally white and was at the bottom of my "to paint" list - until we moved in and realized that the walls were really, really dirty. It quickly jumped to the top of my "to paint" list!  

We ripped off the wallpaper border, only to discover some totally awesome stenciling. I'm kidding. I hate the stenciling. ;)  We have yet to paint over that because one section needs a little repair, but one day on a whim I decided to just paint a little white over it to see how it looks - even with one see-through coat, it already looks better!!  

In true Emily fashion I quickly chose some paint (without testing a sample), and away we went. I will admit, the Emily style of choosing paint doesn't always work, ha!  And, truthfully, the "lighter" of the two paint colors is way darker (or maybe I mean brighter?! Clearly I am not a paint expert!) than I thought it would be.  I like the darker color on the wall with the shelves, but I am now wishing I would have painted the other three walls one shade lighter!!  I feel like the colors are very misleading in these photos, too. The dark blue is really not as bright as it looks in most of the shots.  These were all taken with my iPhone, so they are not super great quality.

Everything in the playroom came from our last playroom...and pretty much everything in the room came from IKEA (book shelves little table, little chairs, rug, kitchen) or Land of Nod (all the bins and the stuffed animal bin, which is really a ball basket). The blue in this first photo seems to be the "truest" to the real color.

At some point we will hang our family photos from the picture rail. We have four that hung over these shelves in the old room, and I love them!!  Although, I might need to update them since in them Henry was a baby in them and Ollie was non-existent!  We have some vintage toys that I've found at various shops and flea markets that sit on top of the shelves.  Sadly, the last few crayons in our crayon melty art were tragically ripped from the canvas, never to be seen again. ;) In these photos you can get a good look at the fabulous stencil job as well as the place that needs to be repaired.

The wall opposite the shelves is long and blank. ;)  In our old playroom we had art wires where all the kids' artwork hung.  I don't know that it will be possible to do that in this house because it was quite a process to get those wires up, and we aren't totally comfortable putting ginormous holes in the lath and plaster.  I was thinking, instead that perhaps we could hang some large bulletin boards from the picture rail along that wall. We shall see!

Look how much better it looks without the stenciling!!

There is one serious design flaw in this room, which is that the closet door and the bedroom door hit each other, and you can't open one without opening or closing the other. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it's a playroom, so the kids are constantly going in and out of the closet. We are thinking about just removing the main bedroom door for now so that it's less of a pain! The blues in this photo are definitely not true to color!

We tried to maximize the space in the closet by using a shelf that had previously been in my scrapspace. That big silver thing is our space-age air conditioning in-take. ;)  

There are still a lot of things I want to do in this room. When we first moved in, I walked from room to room making lists of things (even the tiniest things) that we wanted fix, and we are slowly crossing things off of them.  Here is my list for this room:

• remove wallpaper
• paint walls
• repair section of wall above picture rail
• paint ceiling + above picture rail
• paint all trim and doors (Right now it is cream in all the rooms but one. That needs to change!)
• paint closet
• closet organizer
• replace outlet covers and light switches
• new light fixture (It's a white fan right now...totally fine for the time-being.)
• colorful curtains for the window
• hang pictures/wall art
• hang artwork wire or bulletin boards 
• hang poofs (old playroom had cute colorful poofs hanging from the ceiling...would like to do that again)

Hopefully when Justin is done with his busy season we will be able to knock a few items off of this list (and all the others)!!  Can't wait to share with you more photos as we get things accomplished! Have a great weekend! :)

Our New Old WI Home: Living Room Built-ins

Happy Friday! I've decided to start sharing a few bits and pieces of our new {old} home!  I have lots of work to do before the house looks the way I want it, but here are some "along the way" photos! I am by no means an interior designer or a legitimate home blogger, so be gentle, ha!  Today I am sharing just a tiny bit of our house, but it happens to be one of my favorite parts!!  When I first saw our house on realty website, the photos of the main living spaces immediately caught my attention...especially this end of the living room with wall-to-wall built-ins!!

(listing photo)

One of the first things I did when we moved in was fill up these gorgeous book cases! I don't know that they will stay exactly the way they are - some of the shelf heights are not ideal, but when your goal is simply to empty as many boxes as possible, you don't really worry about the logistics of everything fitting perfectly! ;) The left bookcase holds all of our "regular" sized book, and the right is a random collection of books, picture frames, and piano books right now.  My good friend who helped us move in just unpacked a box of frames and put them all in the right case. I'm guessing the right case in particular will be changed when I have the time! The bench under the window opens up, and we will probably store blankets in there, however it's not finished on the inside, and I want to get some large bins to hold the blankets so they aren't up against the raw side of the house! I also would like to eventually paint this room, but it's HUGE so it will probably not be one of the first things we paint! ;)

I'm also not entirely sure about what to put on the tops of the bookcases. I'm so excited to have this space to decorate. I like the left side a lot, but the right needs a little work! I've been keeping my open for cute thigns to put up there! If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!!

(old globe that I got for $5 at a flea market, gorgeous canvas from Red Letter Words which was given to me by my closest friends for my 30th birthday, vintage music books, S sign from anthropologie)

(pillows and S from World Market, yardstick star from a friend, blue vase from City Farmer in Door County, orange vase made by my talented friend Rhonda, vintage 5 sign from Vintage Archeology, family sign from Wilco/Zulily.)

Have a great Friday and a fun weekend! Thanks for stopping by! :)

Our New Old WI Home...

Hi! I’ve been getting a lot of requests to share photos and information about our new house! Personally, I think it’s a pretty great story. ;) To give a little history on our house and our move, we knew during the summer that we would be moving to the Madison, WI at some point during the next year. My daughter will be starting school this coming fall, and we wanted her to go to Kindergarten in the district that she would remain in permanently. I had been researching towns and school districts for a few months and had decided upon the town/school district that we wanted to be in. Even though we had no plans of moving immediately, I always have loved surfing Realtor.com for homes. I'm totally a sucker for old homes, and often just go on there to see cool houses. One day last spring, I came across this beautiful 89 year old "arts and crafts style" home in the area that we were looking. It had gorgeous original woodwork, amazing built-ins, four bedrooms, an updated kitchen. It was perfect. It was calling my name. But, we weren't planning on moving yet...

Over Memorial Day weekend, I talked my husband into going to see the house – even though I knew that it would never be our home. We figured we would probably move in the Summer of 2014, right before the new school year. I knew it was a little rude to make the realtor show us a house that we would never buy, but it was so beautiful in the photos…I just had to see it in person. After we visited, I was in love. It definitely wasn’t perfect, but there were so many wonderful things about it. I looked at the online listing photos at least once a day. I constantly thought about the house. I even dreamed about it. I had plans for this house – including an entire secret Pinterest board dedicated to how I would decorate every room. ;) I knew that this house was meant for our family.

To make a very (very) long story short – the house stayed on the market, we kept in touch with the Realtor (who was AMAZING. – if you ever need a realtor in the Madison area, let me know…she was phenomenal), I went back to work, we had a baby, Justin’s job situation changed, I ended up quitting my job, and somehow, against all odds, we are now living in THE house. It is truly my dream house – although, it’s OLD and needs a lot of love and care. After our final walk through before we bought it last November, I said to my husband, “Well, I think in about 20 years it will look exactly how we want it to.” ;) But there is so much to love. For the first month we lived here, I would sometimes stop in my tracks and look around in disbelief that the house was OURS.  Since I first saw it back in May, I have scoured every real estate site looking for other homes, and I have yet to find a home that I like more - for maybe the first time ever in my life, I don't have any buyer's remorse!!  

As for the house itself, I'm kind of reluctant to show a lot of photos because, thanks to home blogs and Pinterest, I want it to be perfect before I share them. ;)  So...in 20 years you can see some photos, ha!!  No really, I plan on sharing more about it - and the ups and downs of owning an old home!!  And if you follow me on Instagram, I've created the hashtag #ournewoldwihome so you can quickly see photos with pictures of the house.  For now, here are the two listing photos of the front (which I have shared before)...

And here is the outside photo that I took once it snowed (so pretty!) and we cut down those obnoxious trees!!

Do any of you own an old home?? I'd love to hear about it. I've been looking all over for decor ideas that feature the original wood trim. It seems like most of the blogs I read have homes with white trim...which I do love, but it is not realistic that we will ever paint ours! Hopefully I'll be back soon with some indoor shots!  Have a great day!

#workspacewednesday

Happy Wednesday! So, I've never played along with Workspace Wednesday before, and I highly doubt this will become a "regular" blog feature, but I thought maybe today I could show you a photo of my current scrap space - which is completely a work in progress!! As most of you know, we moved into our new home less than two months ago.  Packing scrap stuff was insane.  I'm truly embarrassed at how much I have. Before we moved, I purged a ton. I donated several huge boxes of product to a local home for girls that I used to volunteer at, and I also sold about 10 flat rate boxes jam packed with product. I feel like I still have enough product to start my own store. ;)  One of the things we love about our new home is the attic, which was renovated by the previous owners.  It it a perfect space for a scrap area, a small workspace for my husband, and someday it will probably also serve as our playroom.  

Here is the picture from the house listing: 

In our old house, I had tons of cabinet space and room for a few shelves. This space is fantastic, with lots of natural light, but it doesn't have nearly as much room for shelving.  We put our IKEA Expedit shelf up here, because it was truly the only place in the house that it would fit!!  Here was the "bare bones" of my workspace a couple of weeks before Christmas:

Looks nice and clean, right? That's because nothing was unpacked yet. ;)  Here is a look at it yesterday.  If you can believe it, I've already packed probably 15 boxes in addition to all of THESE boxes!!

The shelves look like they are decently put together, but I actually just threw stuff up there haphazardly as I unpacked it, and I haven't even unpacked the "bulk" of my product yet - that's all packed in about 10 individual pizza boxes.  

And finally, a close up of what is on my desk right now - Project Life, Week 2!

I have a LONG way to go in this space. It feels wrong spending time organizing my scrap space when there are still other sections of our home that are in disarray!!  But, I am happy that it's gotten unpacked this much, and that I have a place of my own to create!  I think when it's finally finished it will be pretty fantastic!  I will continue to share photos of the progress, as well as photos of other parts of our house!  Have a great day, and link me up if you, too have a Workspace Wednesday post!

Meet Doc...

...otherwise known as "The World's Most Boring Elf". ;)  I've seen a lot of other elves out there - elves that do fun things like make marshmallow snow forts and hang with Barbie. I've seen elves that are a bit naughty...I've even seen some elves that are like...really naughty. You all know the ones I'm talking about. ;)  And then...well, then there is Doc.  Doc does not have fun, and he is most definitely not naughty. He is at our house to do a JOB, gosh darn it.  He takes his "watch and report" duties very seriously.  There is no time for shenanigans in this house!  He has found some very benign spots to hang out around our new house to do his spying...

Perhaps some year Doc will discover his inner feistiness, but for now he's content just sitting there and looking cute...and not the least bit creepy. ;)

A new project...

Our family has some big news! We are moving...to a new home, and a new state!  As many of you know, we currently live in the 'burbs of Chicago, but we have decided (now that our family is as big as a basketball team...) that maybe it's time for us to head back home to Wisconsin.  I'm very excited, but also extremely sad to leave my job and my friends behind. We have purchased an 89 year old home just outside of Madison, WI. It's kind of like my dream house, with a few realistic downfalls! ;) (One car garage....ugh.) It is going to be a great change for our family, and while I will likely keep most of the move/house details on my personal blog (email me for username/password) I was thinking that maybe I'd share some of the house progress here, because, while it's not scrapbooking, it may fall under the category of "other creative things"! ;)  So here it is...our new house!

First up on our extremely long list of things to do?  Cut down those trees!!