Thankfully when I moved in, there wasn’t much I had to do in the condo; for the most part, it was move-in ready. I didn’t have to paint any walls, and the flooring was in good shape. (Minus those ugly lights in the main bathroom, I still haven’t replaced those yet.) I’ve been slowly working on making the space my own, and these past few weeks, I finally got around to adding things in the living room and fixing up my office.

Back on my four day weekend in the end of October, my mom and I went to Home Sense and TJ Maxx to find pieces to hang up in my living room. The other weekend, my parents came over to help me hang them up.

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Yes, I know my Halloween/fall decorations are still up. Next weekend I’m going to start decorating for Christmas. And no, it’s not too early. Even just the few new pieces make the space feel more full/lived in.

As for my home office (aka the second bedroom without doors), I tackled it myself. It was in fairly good shape, but there were rogue nails left in the wall and a few holes, too. One of my weird talents is being able to putty, sand, and paint holes in drywall that I put to use when I re-did my bedroom at home over last winter.

Here are the before photos. See, nothing terrible, but I wanted to get rid of the holes and hang up things in different places; what’s hung up in these photos were on the rogue nails that were left.

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Sunday afternoon, I filled in all of the holes with putty and let it dry for a few days. Tuesday night after work, I sanded and painted, and the walls looked brand new. Last night, I hung everything up. I only hit studs twice, which isn’t bad; thankfully what I was hanging up covered up the holes I left.

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I was waiting to see what I was going to do with my office, but since I work from home twice a week now—Wednesdays and Fridays—I figured I should make it look nice in there. The black tri-pod style lamp is from Walmart and the 5-headed lamp is from my college days. Since there’s no overhead lighting, I have to rely on the lamps, especially now that it gets darker earlier when I’m working.

I’m not sure if I’ll do anything on the big wall in the office, but I wanted to leave it blank for now. Next year, I might get a small table to put in there to hold my craft items. I’m happy with how it came out, and I’m glad it didn’t take me too long to get it all done.