Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

So Avery and I have been plagued by oatmeal our first few years of marriage. Both being grad students in a big city, we have had to rent our residence. This has meant that we aren’t able to put paint on the walls, change the flooring, or anything that would add any real splash of personality to our space permanently. We had the standard hand-me-down furniture that most students have, and we took it quite gratefully as new furniture is expensive.

In May we moved to a new apartment that we both love but is also MUCH smaller than our previous places. Our over-stuffed couch, large loveseat, and over-sized coffee table now took up nearly all of the room in the living area of the apartment.

We were making it work. Then my parents, being awesome, offered that as our Christmas gift they could help us buy a couch. This set us off on the journey of seeing if we could redecorate a small apartment space without paint and on a tight budget. To top it off neither one of us have any aspirations of being interior decorators and we scared that we might not be any good at redecorating a room. In the end I feel like we pulled it off and we are both very happy with the space. We went to bulk and wholesale furniture stores, couponed, sold things on Craigslist, and Cyber-Mondayed like champs. All of this made it so that a few hundred bucks later we have a beautiful and apartment-size-appropriate living room. There are still a few finishing touches to add, but I think it is safe to say we have left the land of oatmeal.