Amazing transformation

Weekend is here again! I can't believe September is right around the corner. August was a rush for me. What are your plans this weekend? J and I have an exciting thing going on, BUT that's a story I'm hoping to share with you next week. In the meantime, let's start sharin' eye candy. Yum!

I just found Tim and his incredible condo make over. It took him two years, but it was all well worth it. Best of all is getting to see the before and afters... LOVE them.

LIVING ROOM - before

LIVING ROOM - after

Another view of the living room.

KITCHEN - before

KITCHEN - after

{gotta love the dark flooring in contrast with the white kitchen, great job!}

HALLWAY - before

HALLWAY - after

FOYER - after

{I love the mirrors in both this room and the living room}

BATHROOM - before

BATHROOM - after

{little things DO make big changes}

BALCONY - before

BALCONY - after

You know I have a thing on beautiful balconies. I really adore this one. The blue and the lanterns are dreamy.

Which is your favorite room?

Happy weekend!

If you want to check Tim's blog, click here!

Before and After

Hi y'all!
I'd like to show you my newest "Before and After"

It's not about any room, though. It's all about me!

Normally I don't speak about myself, but today I'm happy about my new haircut, and I want to share it with you.

In this last year, I've had 3 different styles (which are far too many for me):

1. Really long and curly.

2. Short and curly.

3. Now: short and straight! (ok, that's just for today, let's see how it turns out when I get it wet!)

What do you think?

The So Called Foyer

Remember the first room into our house, back in the house tour?

It's supposed to be a foyer of some kind, a little room for us to receive guests into our home. Mmmhhh. We're thinking: do we really need this? ¿Would it be useful?

We didn't quite think so. Our house doesn't even have enough rooms (and all of them are small). We do need a family/tv room, since we don't want a tv in any of our bedrooms (at least not our first tv), nor the living/ dining room.

So once we were settled, and bought the tv, we started making some little changes: we painted one of the walls with a rosy kind of brown. I wasn't sure about the color at the store, especially with so many interesting options, but I absolutely looooved the final result. Then we used a couple of sofas my brother and sister gave us (they're a bit overused and they actually don't fit right in the area, but I have plans for them while we're able to buy new ones). With those changes, the space became this:

We also used a couple of cube drawers we had from my daughter's former nursery for the TV.

That's how it looked until we had enough of it. Of course anything was better than nothing, but it looked very jammed! And the TV seemed to be falling down, all to one side!

Then a week ago we remembered we had an old coffee table waiting to be used. This seemed the perfect spot.

Voilá. A new TV stand in a matter of minutes (of dealing with wires and stuff):

Here's the before and after (after being meanwhile):

Our current family/tv room is a work in progress, I know it's far from what I'm dreaming it to be, but it has come a long way from where it started from! Best of all we didn't spend much on it (except for the paint).

What does your TV room look like? Is it a nice, relaxing space? Do share!

The House Tour

I've been delaying this post for a couple of weeks, but I figure it's time for me to give you a house tour. This way we can have a "before" to work our way up and compare with. A starting point.

In order for me to give you a proper starting point, I asked a neighbor of mine who is just moving out of her place if I could take pictures of her empty house (all of the houses here are exactly the same). I wish I had these pictures of my house, that way I could show you the problems we have been dealing with, but then again, remeber I met the bloggosphere just a few months ago?

So, prepare yourself  for some very (and I mean VERY) blah scenes. The first room you walk into is a kind of foyer, and it looks like this:

Ta-dah! Nothing to look at! (Don't say I didn't warn you). If you take a look at the right, you see the street.

And this how it looks like to your left:

I know, let's move forward! The next room is the living / dining room. As you can tell, all of the rooms in the house are tiny! This one is 19 feet long and 10 feet wide. First a look at the dining area, towards the little garden.

Now a look at the living room area, next to the "garage". Again, you see the street.

If you turn around, you face two sets of stairs: the ones going down take you to the powder room, the ones going up take you, well, upstairs.

Upstairs, the rooms are also very small. There are three rooms. The first two have very similar looks: a window and a closet.

The Blank Canvas

We found our house two years ago, and fell in love with it. Brand new house. We knew it was rather small, but apart from that, it was what we were looking for. It was oh so very exciting! Everything seemed perfect.

Not quite. Home builders around here are not very responsible people. I'm not saying it was terrible, but it definitely wasn't what we expected. There were some details (both minor and major) to take care of.

Since we weren't getting married just yet, we decided to place it for rent (wisely adviced by family members).

While we were busy with the wedding preps, a wonderful, small family lived here. We're very thankful at them for taking care of it (and patiently dealing with the issues that kept arousing). Lucky for us, the construction company was around at that time, and somehow managed to solve some of the problems.

Time passed by and the nice family left for some other place. This gave us two months to get our house ready to welcome us, but then again, those couple months were the busiest for us (remember the wedding?). Anyhow, we were at least able to bring in the fridge. And our bed. That was it, that was all we had!

We were also able to paint the whole place white.

Our blank canvas, awaiting.

Two months later we got married, and voilá! The small and not-so-perfect house became our home.

I love the sound of it:

OUR home.