Jacque's apartment: Before and After (but not finished)

This past summer, my sister Jacquelyn moved into a new apartment and "hired" me to help decorate it. By hired, I mean asked nicely. She is my sister (and probably has some really embarrassing stuff on me!).

Jacquelyn just graduated with her MBA and found a new job in Fort Worth. Since she moved from Houston to go to TCU (Yay!!) and lived with my parents for a year, she didn't have a lot of furniture, but the stuff she did have we needed to work with. Also, since she is just starting out in her new position, and there isn't already an existing pile of money to draw from, we are buying stuff along the way and not all at once.

Jacquelyn is a single 27 year old, and she chose a really fun part of town to live in, just west of downtown by some of the museums. Since she is still young, single, and is in a fun part of her life right now, we wanted her apartment to reflect that so we painted some of the walls a light shade of yellow (one of her favorite colors), and accented it with peacock blues and greens, with browns grounding the scheme.

Here are some "before" pics from moving day:

Your basic apartment.

Here we are after the walls have been painted. They turned out so well and really help to lighten and brighten the place up a bit!

And now for the latest pictures that I took earlier this week when I was at her place for dinner.

Some inspiration in the form of a feather wreath.

The sofa with some new throw pillows and one of her 2 new side chairs (which are really comfortable by the way!). The lamp is kind of temporary until we can find one that she likes and is in her budget. Also, eventually, she'd like to get a new coffee table (which normally isn't crooked like it is in the picture).

A shot of the other side chair and the long expanse of wall to the left (in the pictures) of the sofa area. We plan to fill this void with a large gallery wall....

... that will look kind of like this! James Dean will be replaced with another picture, and there are a few frames in need of repair.

Here is kind of a long shot from the sofa area towards the front door. In the niche, we set up a little bar area for her.

Here's a closer look at her bar. We chose a small bookshelf from Pier 1 that can be used someplace else in the future. We added a sparkly lamp and a big mirror to reflect more light into the dark apartment.

Sorry that it's kind of messy - these were from Wednesday night, so her saddle is not normally chilling on her chair like that. But I wanted to post these so you could follow along on the progress! We still have a few things to do, and then I'll share the "After/Finished" pics with you!

Have a great weekend!!!