Home in a New City & Giveaway Winner

858 miles from our farm in Astatula, Florida, we've made it to Alexandria, Virginia.

This is our new home for the next year.  It's near the Metro so that Captain Project can pretty easily commute to his office.  And it's a five minute walk to all sorts of shopping (grocery, dry cleaners, Home Goods, at least a dozen restaurants, etc.).  Our plan is to scope out a place much closer in town by March of 2014 (long story short:  we needed this bigger place now because my sister and her pooch are living with us for a while).

Want to see the inside?  I've done with it what I can given it's a challenge renting a place when you can't paint.  All the white walls are killing me!

Walking in the front door:

The living room:

Captain Project really wanted his zero gravity chair (good for his back problems) in here:

I'm not a huge fan of this chair but it's the perfect excuse to make some changes.  I've started by adding this new, tin side table (from World Market) and the new, more modern rug (from Joss & Main):

The other side of the living room:

I have plans for more changes ~ stay tuned.

In the meantime, this is the "dining" room.  Pfft!  No room for a table, so it's really just wasted space.  Our huge, antique side board that used to be in the foyer of our farm house sits here now.

The little, tufted, blue chair?  Scooped that up for a song too at World Market (it's one of the shops right around the corner from us so I've been there a couple of times already).  I used some vintage, chenille fabric to make the little pillow.

Beyond the living and "dining" rooms is the kitchen.  It has this wonderful eating area that makes up for the lack of the "dining" room.

We have room for our kitchen side board and Hoosier but down-sized from our farm house table to this new one (yep, World Market again).  I chose this table and chairs because I think they're a good change to a more transitional/less country look.  Underneath is another new Joss & Main rug.

Next is the kitchen.  The good news is that the foot print is a decent size.  And the cabinets are real wood.

When we moved in the refrigerator wasn't working and it took the landlord 12 days!!! to replace it.  Sure wish he would've spent the extra $100 for stainless.  Almond fridge + white microwave + black stove + stainless dishwasher = yuck!  There are about half as many cabinets and drawers as we have at the farm so we ended up donating a ton of kitchen stuff and are learning to make do with less.

Off of the kitchen and at the back of the house is our deck.

Sniff!  We had to sell and donate most of our gorgeous, vintage porch furniture because of space issues, but again, we've done our best with what we kept.

I still need to take pix of the upper and lower floors and will hopefully share those soon.

Though I miss the farm, this is beginning to feel like home.  Sure feels good to have everything unpacked.  Best of all, Twyla seems to like the place too!

Congratulations to Cori Lynn of Poodles & Pin Curls!  You won the $50 gift card to Shabby Apple!  Please email me (Cindy@RetroRevival.Biz) your address so that I can send you the card.