Virtual Home Tour: The Guest Room (Before & After)

It's been awhile, but it's time to continue the Virtual Home Tour. Here's a look at before and after shots of our guest room plus some text about some things. Enjoy!

THE GUEST ROOM

I love our guest room because it's actually very spacious, has a gigantic closet, and is the one room in our house that gets a lot of sunlight. Our first step when we decided to do up this room, like every room in our condo, was to paint it white:

Yay!

But we wanted to make it fun, so...

Stripes

We decided on green stripes because a) It's gender neutral (we're optimistic about starting a family and making this into a nursery one day, so...), and b) Why not? It's so fun.

And now, time for current shots of how our guest room looks like:  

Guest Bed

Here we have the guest bed that Husband built. We can't claim the idea for this. I love looking through home decor blogs and pictures - this bed was inspired from this post.

Little triangle shelf Russell built

Work Table

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I love this window sill. It gets a lot of indirect sunlight throughout the day. We also make it our makeshift greenhouse. Most of our plants thrive when we place them here. I've taken to rotating the plants in and out of this room. But one of the recent things we've added is this little herb garden attached to the wall.

Another thing Russ made

Here's the door. Only two of our walls are painted in stripes.

Hey there

The third wall of this room consists of one giant closet. The mirrors also make this space that much bigger which is why I love this room so much.

We've christened the guest room as our creativity room. Husband will normally work in here during the day. We store our art and crafts items in here. I didn't really do a close up shot of our bar cart, but it's the blue cart from IKEA which I use to store all my sewing supplies. The yellow chest in this room (also from IKEA) is meant to be an entertainment center but we use it to display plants and artwork, and in the drawers we store canvases, paint brushes, paint, etc.

Thanks for reading! I hope you liked this installment of The Henry Home tour :)

Original post on The Henry Home.

I've been reading and writing more lately. Did you know I've kept a diary since I was 9? I would keep notebooks by me and write. Then sometime around the age of 12 or 13, I began to write even more regularly, about 2 - 3 times a day. Then when I was in high school, I wrote in my journal at least once a day. It wasn't anything special. Mostly I recounted my day in my journal because I didn't feel comfortable sharing the minutiae of life with any of my friends. And for a good 3 years while I was a teenager, I kept a public livejournal where I made lots of virtual friends through the internet. My virtual friends and I would read each other's livejournal entries and comment on each other's day. They actually did feel like my friends, even if I had never met them in person. This is not sad. Please don't read this and think what a sad life. It was actually the opposite. How wonderful that I was brave enough to share my teenage written true-life stories with strangers! I'm no longer that brave.

For most of college, I kept up my habit of writing in my journal everyday. In addition to that, I'd even write hand-written letters and send them via post. I remember I had a callus on my right ring finger where my pen often rubbed against. I no longer have that callus and it causes a deep nostalgic pain in my heart. All for a missing callus. Most people try to get rid of their calluses but that is one callus I wish I could have back.

But sometime in college, I met a boy who is now my husband. Sometimes I wonder why I don't write as much anymore. And I beat myself up over it. I want to record my days in my journal, just like I used to since I was 9. But sometime in college, I met a boy. During my last year of college, for the first time in almost a decade, I stopped writing in my journal everyday. I wrote almost everyday, but not every day. That was a big difference. My journal no longer became my confidante. It was no longer the holder of my secrets or--let's be honest--the keeper of all my boring stories. Sometime in college, this beautiful boy suddenly started listening to all my retellings about my days, and he actually enjoyed them. He wasn't a blank empty page waiting to be filled. He was a human being who responded to my stories. He'd laugh or smile, groan and scoff at the right moments. I don't know why this is so important to write down. But I need you to understand that when I stopped writing consistently after a decade of dedication, it was for a good reason. One that I never regret. I started loving a boy, and he loved me back.

Now, I am writing and reading more. And the beautiful boy who I met while I was in college lives with me. And now it's him who nudges me towards my laptop or notebook. Now he's the one encouraging me to write, and who understands if I'm not ready to share a story yet but instead tells me to write it down.

It's come to a full circle and I finally have the same joy and passion I had when I was 9 -- when I received my first diary and discovered what it meant to write.

Currently...

Took down the Christmas decorations last week and finally got around to transforming the living room into a new seasonal look. I was going for more of a winter look, but this is as close as I got.

A couple changes for this new look:

• Sewed new pillow cases. Stuck with a white, gray, and blue theme. Money spent: $0
• Hung new wall art above the mantel. Russ and I found the stick during one of our walks. Then I bought a ton of oranges that were on sale for 19 cents/pound. Dried the oranges and strung them together because oranges are a winter fruit, right? Money spent: $1.05 for the oranges
  
  Tutorial on how to make the Bohemian Orange Garland can be found here.

It's the little changes that make me happy. Happy winter, everyone!

P.S. I swear I don't pose my dogs for these shots.

2016

Hello 2016!

In 2015, I...

• Stopped working full-time in an office and went completely freelance/contract-based.
• Launched Budding Goods with Russ.
• Traveled to Seattle and Portland to celebrate two years of marriage.
• Did my first art show booth with Russell to feature our Budding Goods products.
• Moved out of Carlsbad and back into Orange County.
• Bought a condo in Foothill Ranch (!!!). I still can't believe I did such a grown up thing like buy property.
• Spent months fixing up said condo--painting walls, buying furniture, building furniture, and adding little touches to make our condo a home.
• Bought a ton of plants.
• Learned how to sew on a vintage sewing machine. Also learned how to do macrame, needle felting, embroidery, and cross-stitch.
• Traveled to Florida and visited The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando!
• Traveled to Chicago with my husband, brother, and sister-in-law.
• Found out I'm going to be an auntie!!

In 2016, I...

• Will write more.
• Hopefully launch Living Moon Studios successfully with Russell. (Ah, yes. Haven't really written about this, nor have I really talked to any of my 1-3 readers about this.)
• Will get over the fear of failing and to keep trying new things.
• Will pursue more creative outlets, even if it's for fun. Because that's the best kind.
• Will try to exercise more.
• Will finish writing and stop seeing every step-back as discouragement.
• Will hopefully get to start a family...? ;)