The Hyphen House

I bought this at Ikea several years ago and still love it. My last apartment was tiny so anything we could put on the walls was a storage solution. In this house, we have huge white walls (that we couldn't paint) so it helps fill in some of the blankness.

At Christmas, we take off the magazines and decorate it like a Christmas tree. We use silver garland and white ornaments, and either a tin foil star or a Santa hat on the top.

Magazines of choice: Relevant, Change, Travel and Leisure, Cooking Light, ESPN, Mutuality, and Priscilla Papers.

1) Fireplace

Someone referred to this as our wedding shrine and that's an apt description. That's our wedding album on the floor and a pic of me in my wedding dress on the first shelf. The top shelf holds my silk wedding bouquet, a pen and ink drawing our good friend made from one of our wedding photos, and our toasting goblets. On the wall, we have two portraits from our couples' shots and our vows. We wrote our own vows and my roommate at the time wrote them in calligraphy on scrolls my mother-in-law made. The letters were actually our cake topper, custom made by an Etsy shop, that we simply removed the rod and put them in the shadow box with the vows.

This is one of two fireplaces in our floor of the house. Sadly, it's all bricked up. But the black hearth surround is original we think.

2) Tapestries


I love the tapestries from Urban Outfitters b/c they are so multi-functional. I've used them as drapes, to cover file cabinets, and as wall coverings. In this case, my mom surged the edges and we've hung them to a curtain rod using rings with clips on them. Since we have 12 foot ceilings, we really needed something tall to fill up that space and I think they frame the windows nicely.

Today's items were Eric's idea to show.

This is Morgan, our four year old black lab. She's yawning and very cute in this photo. She's got quite the set-up... complete with a doggie bedwarmer. Yep, that's right. Our house is very drafty and the floors are cold b/c of the pier and beam foundation, so we bought her an electronic blanket for dogs. The red flower pillow was on the ground long before we put her bed in that corner, but sometimes she flips it down and lays her head on it. Like she's a human.

We love her.

This item requires some explanation. Our unit has a very odd layout. It's a U-shape. So when you walk in the front door, you enter a foyer. You go to the right to enter our living room. Proceed to the dining room, where the only bathroom in the house is. Walk through the hallway to the left (the bottom part of the U) to enter the kitchen, then hang another left to the bedroom. The storage spaces are really crazy here, and this closet under the stairs next to the bathroom is no exception.

Remember in the first Harry Potter when he had to live in a closet under the stairs? That's why we call it the Potter Closet.

I'm stealing this post idea from Brandi, who I'm pretty sure stole it from someone else... but that's how creativity happens, right?

We rent the bottom floor of a 1920s boarding house-turned-duplex. It's chock full of charm (and problems!). I think it's such a unique space and we worked hard to decorate it and make it reflect us for our first home. So here are my two things for today:

1.) The black and white wall

When I moved to this area four years ago, my roommate and I decided to collect black and white photos and hang them in black frames haphazardly on our living room wall (an idea I got from an Ikea catalog, of all places). We requested them for housewarming gifts and Eric brought me one on our first date. :) So they are photos from all over the worlds, taken by friends or us, or cut from posters or calendars. A few of my favorites (besides Eric's) - library street sign, prints from my trip to Venice, Houston skyline, and 1929 suffragette poster.

In the Hyphen House, we have a strange little hallway leading from the living room to the kitchen and it was the perfect place for the photo wall.
(The window actually goes into the bathroom... This was maybe an exterior wall at one point?)

(Opposite view - And I just noticed the vacuum. :)
We hung a floor to ceiling sheer curtain to soften the opposite wall.

If you decide to do something like this, I recommend laying all the frames on the floor to figure out what looks best. If we accumulate more frames we just add to the wall.

2.) Vintage Apron = Wall Hanging


Our kitchen is decorated in red and black (with blue accents). We had a big chunk of wall space to fill so I hung up my great aunt's sewing apron. I think it's adorable. And since I don't sew, it became wall art.

A while back I wrote about our house on This Ordinary Day if you want to know a little more about it.