Designing on a dime. Or a nickel.

I’ve always had this thing for interior design. I remember walking into a friends room and convincing them to rearrange, “You know, you’ll have more space if you move your bed on that wall..” I once convinced my mom to give me 50 bucks for the makeover of my friend’s room. She had dark wood paneling and I remember thinking it had a jungle feel. So off to Wallmart we went, purchasing everything from an elephant lamp to a fake plant. Here I am, years later, armed with ideas of paint colors, pillow ideas, and more. But I’ve yet to be able to act on it due to one minor, well major, neccesity: money. If being a fulltime student and mother isn’t reason enough to not have the extra money to hook the place up, being with a cook trying to work his way up the culinary ladder is. Yea the bills get paid, the food gets bought, but the walls are yet to be painted. But that’s not to say that I haven’t done a fabulous job with what I’ve gotten my hands on, which, by the way, is hardly anything. I know so many people who have furniture luck. So many people who were given a couch, a bed, a dresser when they moved out into their first apartment. People who are in the right place at the right time and just happen to find fabulous shit. I’m always complimenting something in our friends apartments and hearing the story of how “Oh, my boss was getting rid of that” or “My friend is a painter and gave that to me” or some random -you lucky bitch- story.

We started with nothing. Literally. Our first apartment stayed empty for a year. We slept on our clothes the first night and an air mattress the first year. It was nuts. But then again, back then I had no job, I was milking my unemployment my freshmen year in college and the BD was putting himself through culinary school. But when we moved into our brand new apartment in May of 07, I was determined to make it happen. I often pride myself on my shopping skills (I’m great at spending my money wisely, just not so much at NOT spending it). If you walk into my apartment you’ll find art that I made myself; collages, painting. I can walk into a 99 cents store and find things that no one would guess came from there. I picked up a cutlery holder and fruit basket, both made of metal, that could pass as evidence of a visit to Crate and Barrel, but no. A red metal dishrack compliments the Italia feel in my kitchen, because there was no way I was putting one of those God awful plastic ones on my marble countertop. The white microwave and refridgerator drive me crazy as it is. We went to Ikea with 500 dollars in our pockets. Most people walk into Ikea with that kind of money and come out with one thing. I put my skills to work. We came home with a loveseat, three bookshelves, a computer desk and chair, chairs for the kitchen table, bedspread and pillows for our bed, accesories for Bri’s room, and some funky wood stick and vase thingy. Yea I substituted an expensive couch for an “okay for right now” couch and a nice 200 dollar red shelf for three 20 dollar bookcases which i linked together. In the end, I’m happy with it, although we are going back for a new couch soon, keeping the old one as the loveseat by the door. I still need a coffee table and lots of fun accesories, which will replace things as I go. Having a two year old makes it harder to put the cute accents around the house anyway. My main thing is painting and the place will be fabulous.

My point is, don’t feel like just because you don’t have the money to just let your apartment look like a hodgepodge of shit people gave you. If the things flow together, thats cool, but if they don’t, make it work. Just make that the point of the room. Okay so I have a green couch and a brown couch, make it work! Accesories bring anything together and colors truly have no boundaries.

I know that when I’m older, when I own rather than rent, I’ll tone it down. I’ll go with earth tones and big huge couches with huge coffee tables. But for now, I’m young and I can get away with the artsy feel.