This was a busy weekend!  Adam and I have lived in Chicago now for about four months and he has been working at his new job at Aon for about three months.  We have slowly been making this place our home and these past few weekends we have been working on some home improvements.  Staining shelves, painting furniture, and painting the dining room and kitchen.  It’s been really exciting!  I remember as a kid HATING going to hardware store or sitting around for what seemed like HOURS while my parents debated wall colors or new furniture.  It was pure torture.  But now I find that it’s exciting to debate wall colors and new furniture and I don’t mind spending time at the hardware store.  Guess I’m getting old!  Oh well, I thought that I would share some pictures of some of the things that we have been doing around here and share some exciting news about what I have been doing for the past few weeks!

 

Last weekend we stained this Ikea shelf that we have been using as a pantry in our dining room.  It’s actually a very dark brown, not black like it looks in the picture.

This weekend we painted our dining room and I absolutely LOVE it.  We went with red (torch red if you want to use the fancy name!) and I think it looks awesome.  It’s nice to finally have some color in the apartment instead of a bunch of white.  I was a little worried that we went too bold with the red, but it works so well.  We also added some of this same red in the kitchen….

We didn’t want to have two rooms painted the exact same color but we wanted to add a little something to the kitchen.  I really REALLY don’t like having an all white kitchen.  Not only is it a little boring, you can see every speck of dirt and grease which drives me bonkers!  Painting the cabinets with a little bit of the red made the kitchen just a little less boring.  I love it!

Last weekend I also painted this kitchen island Adam built me from an old vanity.  It used to be plain white and now it is a light grey.  Kind of hard to tell the difference, but it looks much better.

In other “home improvement” news, these past few weeks I have been taking an online course to become certified as an Advanced Sports Nutritional Advisor.  I finished on Friday and got my certificate.  I am really excited to finally be taking steps towards some of my career goals.  This upcoming week I am going to be getting myself organized and ready to start working with clients.  I will let you know more details once I have those ironed out, but I hope to work with not only athletes looking to improve their performance with nutrition, but others who just want to have a healthier lifestyle for life.  I promise to keep you updated with all of those developments!

I hope that you all had an amazing weekend and are enjoying to fall weather that is starting to work it’s way into the midwest.  Anyone else been doing some home improvements lately?  Let me know in the comments.  Have a great Monday!