Mini Apartment Tour + Upgrading Your Art

The other day Ben pitched a hissy-fit about our apartment being too cluttered for him. He said every surface was cluttered and full of knickknacks. I was inclined to disagree, considering most of the knickknacks are my beloved knickknacks - candles here and there, twinkly lights there, a jar full of rocks there. And then, this weekend, as I realized that the apartment, no matter how clean, rarely feels clean, I came to agree with Ben. There are too many knickknacks. So many, in fact, that you notice none of them. They're all obscured by each other and our room lacks a real focal point.

We had that sort of focal-point distraction happening all over the house. Our gallery wall was a bit haphazard (a bird painting, a typography painting, a photograph, a family photo) and felt unfinished in the context of the room. We'd been slowly upgrading our furniture and accessories, but the room wasn't feeling very polished.

With an awesome opportunity to get some new pieces from Minted's independent artist's collection of art, we were able to upgrade a bit of the room. We actually started our refresh by adding two new prints to our gallery wall. What was originally a wall composed of a bunch of left-over photos from former apartment's gallery walls, is now a gallery wall with a color motif (sea blues), some matching typography pieces, and photographs that have significant meaning to us (an aerial photo of our wedding ceremony location and an old portrait of my ancestors. We picked two prints that complimented each other from Minted's huge line of beautiful pieces (it was rough to have to choose). The first was a beautiful print of heron's in their nest by artist Annie Moran and the second, an oil painting of a distant pier by Julia Contacessi. I love that the blues in these photos bring out the other colors in our gallery wall and compliment each other.

The gallery wall upgrade helped launch an all-around apartment update. We removed some side-tables and ugly lamps that weren't serving any purpose other than to blind the cats and increase our electricity bill. We tamped down the figurine/knickknack collection and removed a lot of the seasonal gourds from the living room surfaces. Once that was complete, the entire room felt pulled together in a way it hasn't in a while and our eyes are immediately drawn to the prettiest pieces in the room: the cat. Just kidding. Sort of. :)

Couch: Henry Sofa, West Elm; Bar Cart: Wayfair; Blankets: Pendleton; Barstools: World Market; Coffee Table: World Market; Heron and Pier prints: c/o Minted