dining nook before and "during"

This is our dining nook before shot. As you may remember from this post, I started out my grown-up decorating adventures trying to use all my favorite colors as much as possible. Unfortunately, I didn't know much about small spaces and dark colors, and I quickly transformed our all-white apartment into a dungeon.

When I couldn't take it anymore, I bought a few gallons of light gray paint, and tried again. Here's the "during" picture - it's not an "after" yet because I still have to put stuff on the walls. It's a little plain right now, even for me! I'm looking for a giant mirror with a pretty frame but I'm open to ideas. My grandmother gave me a beautiful original painting with some blue sailboats on it (perfect for me with my love for nautical decor, right?) that would look great, but it's at my parent's house, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get it across the country yet.

The canvas on the wall is something I'm really proud of. I wanted some new art, and Michael's had a sale on canvases. This thing is HUGE, and it's usually around $60 or so, but they were having a 40% off sale so I snatched it up. Some gray paint and about 30 minutes worth of stamp-applying later ... I had this:

Here's a closer look at the detail.

I love how the lines aren't exactly straight, and how sometimes the stamp has really light paint, and sometimes it's pretty dark. I wanted it to look original and unique.