Moving In with SabbeSPOT

**Hi All! Please Welcome Stephanie, she is also a new friend who just moved to Boston. Her blog, SabbeSPOT is full of crafty secrets and every time she talks about making something she inspires me to run to the closet and dust off my own sewing machine. Though to be honest I have nothing to show for it just yet, with the colder months lets keep our fingers crossed for some progress! Enjoy Stephanie's post!**


Hello, let me start with a little background. We tremendously downsized when recently moving from our 1400 sf house in Memphis, TN to our teeny tiny 700 s.f. apartment in Boston's South End. My key to design happiness was moving things around, and around, and around until it finally felt right. Unlike our larger house, that we were constantly trying to fill out, a small apartment is like a puzzle. You have to be more creative. And I LOVE being creative.

I am a huge interior recycler. I had a friend email me a couple of months ago about a blog post I did on the craft nook I carved out in our bedroom. She was amazed the dining room table from our college days was living on.

Our dining room is another great example of my re-purposed interior

1. The art is an Ansel Adams calendar I had matted and framed.

2. The rug is by Interface FLOR. If you haven't discovered carpet tiles, you must check out their site. My dining room was larger in my last house. So I just deleted a row of tiles and ta-da, the same rug fits in a much smaller space.

3. The table and chairs were a consignment store finds. I painted them black and recovered the chairs.


4. The fireplace art is a damask fabric that I stapled over a piece of plywood.

5. We had some pots that we used for outdoor plants at our last house. Our new apartment does not have enough natural light to keep plants alive. I bought a bag of Moss from JoAnn's, wadded up balls of newspaper, and spray glued the moss on top.




6. We received a lot of serving platters when we got married. When I'm not hosting a dinner party I use them as decoration. They are too pretty to keep in a cabinet.

So my entire dining room may have originally cost me $200, but as far as my for my new home in Boston...it was basically free.