As of today, we have been in our new home for six months! We closed on the house and moved in on February 1, during the coldest weekend of the 2006-2007 winter (that was fun).

We’ve painted almost every room, remodeled the kitchen (and learned how to tile in the process), tore up the carpet in the bedroom and put in bamboo floors, changed light fixtures, setup a library, and of course… we’re freshening up our not-so-nice bathroom. I’m proud of what we accomplished, of the new skills we’ve picked up, and I love that we own tools now like a table saw and an air compressor.

We have so much to do though.

Nice, but those curtains need to be hemmed.

I find myself looking at rooms and wanting to repaint or move the furniture around, but there are other areas of the home that need attention first. I’m still looking for wallpaper to go in the dining room, but I haven’t fallen in love with any single pattern yet. The outside is plain, pushed to the back of our to-do lists, waiting for next year. We need to put bamboo flooring in the studio. I still haven’t learned how to use my sewing machine. That aforementioned bathroom needs to be finished. Yes, there is still plenty to do around here!

A huge thank you to all of you, lovely readers. I’m inspired by you and your comments, and by all of the other wonderful blogs in the design community. I do hope that I’m giving some of that inspiration back. Here’s to the next six months!

We don’t have a family room, or a den, or a finished basement. We do have a living room, and we do most of our living in that room (haha), and that includes watching television. The floor plan is a little limiting – there is really only one spot where the TV can go and only one wall where the sofa can fit, so they’re opposite each other. It works just fine. If I’m going to be facing the TV even when it’s off though, I want it to look as nice as it can.

Here it is in the old apartment too (photo on the right). Pretty similar. After I posted that photo, Holly from decor8 said that has the same TV and the same stand (from west elm)! Pretty funny.

I was glad that it fit so well in the new house because I really do like it a lot. We have a gazillion video game consoles that I just can’t stand looking at all the time (you can see the Playstation 2 above the DVD player there, but there are 3 more systems behind the doors). The stand we had before was from IKEA, and it was all open.

What do you do with your TV? Is it behind closed doors? I like it when people do that, but I don’t think it works for all spaces. I know in my home, it would be a big hulking piece of furniture (and everyone would know the TV was in there anyway!).

p.s. I painted the living room! It’s “wild aster” by Benjamin Moore.