Decorating our NYC Apartment

We are in the process of trying to decorate our first NYC apartment on a (very) small budget and I thought it would be fun to document the process. We have dreamed about moving to NYC someday since basically the first week we met, and when we got married we decided we would not try and invest in furniture or anything nice until we we settled somewhat permanently for medical school. We knew that we were going to have to save every penny to pay for medical school applications and school itself, so we outfitted our apartment with cheap IKEA furniture and a couch we found on Craigslist. When we moved across the country to Virginia we left almost half of our stuff behind and as a result are living pretty sparsely in our apartment right now. We are slowly saving up for big furniture items like a couch, new coffee table, and entertainment center. I have been building a pinterest board for the past year and scouring the internet for ideas, we both really want our tiny apartment to feel like home. Since we both are going to be working/going to school full time and barely home, we wanted it to be a place that feels warm and welcoming when we come home each day. As a result, we are trying to think through each purchase we make, knowing that it will probably stick with us for the next 4-8+ years until we have real income coming in. Here are a few pictures of what our apartment looks like now, and I may post more later as it starts to come together more!