Little Changes - Making the House a Home

Okay, I know I've been MIA from the blog world. I'm doing my best to get back into the swing of things!
This past week at work was pretty tiring, we've started receiving our Christmas shipments - so that means I've been unloading trucks, hauling boxes and rearranging toys in the store. Yawn!

Over the past few weeks, we've been tackling a few little projects here and there. Nothing particularly blog-worthy on their own, but I figured I'd compile them all to fill everyone in. :)

I added a mirror and shelf to our entry way. I love mirrors in entries. Hanging this one made a huge difference, especially since it bounces all the sunlight around!

 

Since our TV is hanging over our fireplace mantle, I've decided to use this new little shelf as my "decorating mantle." So now it's spruced up for Halloween, but in a few weeks I'll probably skip right over Thanksgiving and go full on Christmas ;)
Everything is from Ikea:
Stave Mirror - black-brown
Ekby Jarpen Shelf - black-brown
Ekby Stodis Bracket - black
And below all that is our trusty Expedit 2x2 - black-brown

The hall bathroom also got a mini make-over. Bob removed the shower doors and old curtain rod and replace them with a new curved rod. I got a new shower curtain and rug that worked with the blue tile, and the bathroom instantly felt more put together:

Getting rid of those doors helped SO much! I'm thinking we'll paint the bathroom the same grey that we used downstairs, it should match the shower curtain really well.
Croscill Fairfax Slate Shower Curtain (and matching rug)

Along the lines of mini bathroom updates...
The fan in this bathroom stopped working a few weeks ago. Seems like an easy fix, right? WRONG!
I picked up new fans for both bathrooms, thinking everything was a standard size (except the obviously gigantic ones). WRONG! They were WAY too big for the holes in the ceiling. So we brought them back and got the only fans that were smaller - and they were TOO small.
Apparently, the fans used in bathrooms 30 years ago aren't the same size as today.
So, Bob finally ordered the right sized ones online. His dad came over yesterday to help install them - which turned into an all-day project. Things just didn't line up, and they didn't have an easy time with it.
Eventually both fans got installed, though! Woo!

I know, those were some exciting photos ;)
Obviously the bottom fan (with the light) gave them the most trouble, as indicated by the dirty fingerprints all over the ceiling.

Bob also discovered TONS of camping equipment and some photo developing equipment in the attic. Who knows what else we'll find during future projects!

And finally, I cleaned out the laundry room. There had been a lot of items left there from Bob's grandpa, and I finally found the motivation to clear everything out. It's not a gorgeous magazine-worthy laundry room by any means, but it's SO much better in there. The shelves were previously overflowing, making things very claustrophobic.

I eventually plan to paint the laundry room the same blue we used in our old apartment (Ozone by Behr). Laundry rooms and blue just go together - it's a very clean color, and it should brighten up this window-less cave.

So, there you have it. Four small projects that have been happening behind the scenes over here!
Eventually we'll work up the energy to tackle one of our bigger projects, but there's no rush. We aren't going anywhere anytime soon ;)

In case you were wondering, the guest room (aka, the never ending project) currently looks like this:

Yikes!