Assorted House Updates

There have been a few small updates happening around here and since none of them are big enough to need a whole post, they're getting turned into a virtual grab-bag today. Let's start the room-hopping on the first floor and see how things have changed.

Two things here. A) I don't think I ever gave you a good look at the sweet trolley car print from my sister. B) Its frame used to be black. This looks 9 million times better.

I used to really hate that floor lamp. It's kind of been an orphan in this new house and it got plopped there on moving day because we had no other use for it. But now that there are a lot of other neutrals in this corner of the room, my urge to set it on fire has gone down. So that's good.

Another update was in the main bathroom. Just look at all of this progress; first I whiten the grout, and then I buy a new bath mat! You can see the old, dark gray one in this post.

I really want to do the countertop next, and then see which pieces of my art hoard would work in here. Among other things, obviously, but I'm still feeling the baby steps for this project so we'll keep it slow.

We also spontaneously got a new duvet cover:

It's this one from West Elm, and the day we wandered into the store it was an additional 20% off the clearance price. Boom! There weren't any shams left, though, but it worked out fine for now since we had some solid white ones hangin' around.

Now that it's on the bed, I realize we REALLY need to paint in here. It's been on the list for a while, but the yellow/beige combination is a little clash-y in person, so that's a kick in the pants. (I'll be painting the picture frames white, too, like their downstairs colleagues.)

For a trip down memory lane, here's how the house looked about a year ago, and here's the mishmash we had going on after living here for two months. Have you made any little decor upgrades lately? Do you also forget how rooms used to look until you go back to the pictures? What's your favorite bite-sized change to make?