Living Room Archives - home is where my story begins...

Big Changes in the Living Room… BIG Changes

November 21, 2017 By Becca Leave a Comment

Over the past few years, we’ve been having a difficult time deciding on a room arrangement in the living room. I found an arrangement I liked, but the kids said there was too much glare on the TV. We found an arrangement that worked for TV, but I really didn’t like the way the room felt. It just seemed crowded. Recently, our big couch in the living room broke and we decided it was time to seriously think about new furniture. The couch and love seat set was the first thing we bought when we purchased our first home, almost 20 years ago. That couch and love seat had a good run. The pressure was on! We had to think like designers, which we clearly aren’t!

Here’s what we decided and you can see why it’s a BIG change.

We decided to go with a giant sectional. This is the Radley sectional from Macy’s furniture. It comes in just about any size and configuration you can think of. Friends, I’m in love with this. This room is mainly used for two purposes. First, we use this room for family get-togethers. Before we had the giant sectional, several people had to sit on the floor. Now, I think we could probably put 20 people on this sectional and there are still three more chairs in the room. The second thing we use this for is as a teenage hangout. We don’t have a bonus room in our house, so the formal living room was to transformed into our bonus room a few years ago.

Here are a few more pictures so you can see the rest of the room

This room is very cold, compared to the rest of the house, so I bought that little space heater that looks like a fireplace. It’s small, but it works to warm this room.

The big wall above the sectional needs something more. We bought a lamp to put in this corner, but the base didn’t fit under the couch. I’m not sure what we are going to do now. I may have to find a few more pieces of art to put on the wall.

Now, let’s talk pillows! I decided to start out getting some Christmas and Winter pillow covers. I love Courtney’s (Golden Boys and Me blog) pillows and I emailed her to find out where she finds them. She told me she shops at H & M. I had no idea they even carried pillows. Their online selection is amazing and the prices were awesome! I think the Christmas covers were both $5.99. I bought a couple to use in Spring that were only $3.99 each.

I loved this star pillow. This may stay around well after Christmas. I’ve always loved the sweater pillows so I bought three of these covers. I bought my pillow forms from Jo-Ann Fabrics and used my coupon.

I found this shelf on Wayfair. I think it’s slightly smaller than I want and I think I mounted it a bit too high. This area is still a work in progress but I knew I needed a place to put cameras, antiques, and pictures.

We may find ourselves some barnwood boards and make these shelves a little longer.

Yay! If I make the shelves longer, I’ll have more room for old cameras.

So, that’s the story of the BIG change in the living room. We still have changes to make and work to do, but I’m in LOVE with the giant sectional. The kids are going to have to fight me for use of this space.

Happy decorating!

Etsy Purchases for a Cozy Living Room

February 11, 2017 By Becca Leave a Comment

Last week I shared my new living room arrangement. It’s been growing on me as the days have gone by. I think it might be a keeper.

The big problem I’m having is with the space to the left of the tv. It’s empty wall space that is calling for something to warm up the room.

This room is usually colder than the rest of the house and the couches are not that comfy. It needs something cozy and inviting.

I ordered this blanket ladder from an Etsy shop called JustKnotWood so that I can lean it against the wall in that corner. My friend bought one and I love the way it looks in her room. You can choose your own stain color, so I choose a dark brown.

I can’t wait for it to arrive! Now, I need a thick-knit cream blanket to hang on it. I thought about quilts because I have so many of those, but the room is already busy with patterns. I think the cream blanket will add texture without overwhelming the space.

I also found the perfect pillow cover for the pillow that sits on the rocking chair. This is from an Etsy shop called SoVintageChic. She’s a local gal, so I just had to support her! I’m in LOVE with this pillow! It has our home town and the longitude and latitude coordinates. I bought the 16″ pillow cover. Hindsight, I wish I would have gone bigger, but it still looks great and feels personalized for our family.

I love everything about home and family, so this feels special. I also love that it’s sitting on my great-grandmother’s rocking chair.

So, that’s the style update for the living room. Now, I’m just waiting for my blanket ladder to arrive!

Happy decorating!

Home

January 26, 2016 By Becca Leave a Comment

I always struggle a bit this time of year. I just can’t stand the dark, gray, gloom that surrounds the Pacific Northwest during the winter months. (Who am I kidding… it’s most months here.) Don’t get me wrong, we have beautiful days here and there, but for the most part it’s pretty gray around here. I love being outside and working in my yard, but this time of year everything has died and there is just a muddy mess of leaves that we didn’t get around to picking up and skid marks of mud where we once had grass.

It’s dreary, Friends.

Well, at least we don’t feel the pressure to work in the yard every weekend when it’s a muddy mess.

My attention turns to inside this time of year and making a cozy and inviting place for my family. I focus more on cooking, baking, cleaning, organizing, and decorating than weeding, planting, pressure washing, and dead-heading.

As I was feeling down about the gray and rain again today, I reminded myself how much I LOVE home. I want my home to wrap my kids and husband with coziness. I want it filled with smells of good food and the sounds of laughter. It’s a happy place, and do you know what? It’s not so bad to be trapped inside because of the gray and gloom.

It’s a time to nest a bit and create as many memories inside the house as we do outside.

Home is a good place to be.

Happy Homemaking!

The Not So Formal Living Room – There.

January 21, 2015 By Becca Leave a Comment

I’ll start this post with a side story…

Many years ago, when I was going to college and living with my sister, I remember a conversation we had about the way people look when they are ready to leave the house. My sister said something about how sometimes people just surprise her because we all know that they look in the mirror at themselves, finish fixing up their hair or their makeup, and then say, “There.” Our conversation was about how sometimes people just need to take another look before saying, “There.” Maybe a second look would prompt them to see that their hair was not quite “there-worthy” yet.

Years later, we still use “there” in our conversations, on regular basis. My sister and my mom see my constant rearranging of furniture or painting of rooms and ask, “When are you just going to say THERE and be done?” I would love to say there. I would love to be done. But I can’t. I’m just never to that point where I’m backing out of my living room, looking at a beautiful space, and ready to utter that one little word, “There.”

Well, maybe, just maybe… today might be the day.

You see, I bought some new chairs for the living room about 3 years ago. As much as I loved them in the living room, I found that we really NEEDED them in the family room. I moved them over to family room and they served (pushed together) as our make-shift couch for the past few years. Well, just this week my new couch for the family room arrived, freeing up my chairs to go back to their rightful home in the living room.

I love that this room has plenty of seating now. It looks warm and inviting.

There is still plenty of space for games and activities on the floor, but adults aren’t forced to sit on the floor because of lack of chairs. I think it’s a pretty good looking space and I may even venture so far as to see that it looks complete.

I’m looking at this space today and tentatively saying th..th..there.

Yep. There.

Home

January 7, 2015 By Becca 3 Comments

It’s dreary, Friends.

My husband and I were chatting last week, while we were both home and vacation, and as I looked outside on our muddy lawn I said, “Well, at least we don’t feel the pressure to hurry up and enjoy the sunshine, because we know it won’t last too long, or feel the need to work in the yard every weekend.”

It’s a time to nest a bit and create as many memories inside the house as we do outside.

Home is a good place to be.

Happy Homemaking!

My Playful Living Room

January 30, 2014 By Becca Leave a Comment

Yesterday I shared two of my favorite Playful Learning classes. Playful Learning Spaces was the first eCourse I took from Mariah. I signed up for this class a few years ago and fell in love. The Playful Learning style is exactly what I want in my home, the homes of my students, and in my classroom. I have shared the books and eCourses with countless parents in my classroom over the years.

Today, I’d like to share a space in my own home that has become a family favorite. Welcome to our living room.

When my kids were really little, I thought of this as a formal space. I had really beautiful lamps and over priced pillows with really pretty tassels. Guess what… no one ever went into the formal room! They knew I’d freak out if they used my pillows in their forts. There were no games or puzzles in this room, and really nothing to do except sit. In my brain, I was planning how I could add a bonus room above my garage because the kids needed a place to play. Then one day, it came to me. I had plenty of space in my house. We just didn’t use it. Long story short – I sold the fancy stuff on Craigslist, bought some fabric to make pillows and curtains, and hit Target for lamps, cheap decor, and an ottoman to throw our feet up on.

Just like that, we had our bonus room.

I moved all of the board games and magazines into this room too. Yes, we even broke down and bought a tv, so it could be a video game space when my son had friends over.

Then, Mariah came along.

One of her Playful Learning eCourse lessons was about looking around your house to find unused nooks, and make way for playful learning. At the time, my son kept all of his guitars, stands, music, and amps up in his room. I decided that if they were downstairs, where we all live and play, he’d use them more. As a result, he does in fact play more. I play more often too. Just yesterday I grabbed a guitar, flipped to Amazing Grace, and played just for fun. My daughter even ran down and picked up a guitar to join me. It was only 3 simple chords and 10 minutes of time, but it was something we did together. More importantly, it was something that we wouldn’t have done together if the guitars had been hiding upstairs.

Why, yes, there is even a microphone in this space! Call us crazy!

If you have kids, you know exactly which songs we are hearing belted out these days.

Let it go. Let it go. Can’t hold it back any mooo-ooore. Yep, that microphone plugs right into the guitar amp and there is some serious Frozen going on! My daughter has also been taking piano lessons and we had just enough space to fit a small keyboard. It’s not fancy, but it does the trick.

I’d have to say that creating this Playful Space for music has added some noise, but it’s a joyful noise.

Happy music making!

One Thing Leads To Another

December 31, 2012 By Becca 1 Comment

Merry Christmas to me!

My new dining room hutch arrived two days before Christmas. I finally have enough room to store my dishes. My hubby says I have too many different sets of dishes. I tried to explain that you can never have too many dishes, but he doesn’t seem to agree. Regardless of his opinion on my dishes, he agreed that a place to store them was good idea!

The wood tone is very similar to my Costco table and chairs that I got a few years ago. The hutch came from a discount furniture store in Snohomish. Hey, discount furniture stores are a step up from my normal Craigslist furniture finds!

Once the big hutch was in place, I had to find a home from the old cabinet that used to be in our dining room. I love this little cabinet from my hubby’s side of the family. I have grand plans to restore it, but haven’t gotten around to that yet. After taking the tree out of the living room, we started rearranging furniture and found a perfect spot for the cabinet.

The ottoman is now the coffee table, since this room isn’t a “formal” living room anymore. The boys like to pull up a seat and play some games, eat popcorn, and drink sugary soda. The ottoman encourages play, and a place to kick your feet up. I’m kind of liking this new arrangement.

The old coffee table is now in the family room, which is a whole other story. (Pictures to come later.)

The cabinet in the living room is the perfect place to store my fancy silver. (Ok, I really don’t have any fancy silver, but it sure looks pretty in the cabinet!) I love going to Goodwill and finding silver platters and bowls. You can usually find them for about $1-$3. I buy them whenever I find them. They are the perfect things to keep on hand for taking food to parties. They look very pretty and they are cheaper than plastic platters from the party store.

(Wow, when will I learn that I need to use a tripod if I don’t want blurry pictures?)

The top of the cabinet is now home to my pottery collection. I LOVE this pottery from The Weedpatch, in Country Village. My sister in law bought a piece for me for Christmas and apparently they are not going to carry it anymore.
(insert frowny face here)

So, you can see that one thing leads to another in my house. It all started with a new hutch in the dining room, and ended with three rooms being totally revamped.

Happy rearranging!

Shelves in the Living Room

April 19, 2012 By Becca 2 Comments

I haven’t been feeling well (AGAIN) this week, so I’ve had lots of time to sit and look around my house. I really hate it when I can’t “do” anything more than think about DIY home improvement. Here are a few of the living room pieces I’ve been pinning this week.

I think this first one was from Young House Love. I love the built in look. It has room for the tv, but when you look at the space it doesn’t scream, “TV!!!!”

Again, love this built in look from Coastal Living. I’d need space for the tv, but I love the way they styled the bookshelves and their use of old books.

I know built-ins would be very expensive and we already have have a tv stand, so I thought these shelves from Home Decorators would be a good option. The were a pretty good price, but the problem is that my budget is quite a bit less for this project. Actually, I don’t even have a budget for this project.

So, here’s my living room. The space to the right, has been taken over by the boys. This is now the gaming room. I gave the plant to the thrift store. The old window found a new home in the hallway, and the bird cages are in the dining room. I traded out the buffet/console table for a black one that I had in the dining room. Essentially, I think the room has lost the “pretty” that I loved about the room. Having bookshelves on each side of the tv stand, would give me the space to pretty things up a bit.

I was looking on Craigslist last night, and found these. Now, I know they don’t look like much, but can’t you picture them painted black? They are huge and would really fill up the space nicely. I was so excited, and I think I even had my hubby on board with this little project. The person selling them even said they would deliver! Now for the problem…. they were 2 inches too tall for my room. Grrr.

Guess I’ll just sit and think about it some more.

How We Use Our Formal Living Room

April 3, 2012 By Becca 7 Comments

Want to know how we use our formal living room? Very informally.

A few years ago, I let go of the dream of adding a bonus room above our garage and decided that we need to live in the space we already have, rather than always wanting more, more, more. You can read more about that here. I sold everything formal about the formal living room. Gone were the $30, “don’t touch”, pillows. The beautiful lamps found a new home with a nice couple from Craigslist. I went out and bought new pillows and lamps from Target, and they were cheap. If someone kicked over a lamp, while doing cartwheels, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Pillow fights with the pillows? No problem. I bought some fabric, made a few things like curtains, more pillows, and chair covers. I even moved all of the kids’ games and instruments into the living room to encourage them to play in there more often.

I tend to find myself right there, in the corner of that couch, blogging at about 6:00 am on Saturday mornings. My friends always ask how it’s working out for us. Do the kids still use the space? Does it drive me crazy to have a mess in the living room? Would I do it all again?

Well, you can see there is usually a stable and a horse show set up in the living room. This is my entryway, so I usually have to ask guests to step over the corral.

The pillows are never put back the way I’d like and there are often games, toys, and music taking over.

Books and controllers are always left out.

The electric guitars come out daily. And they’re loud. Really, really loud.

My house is not always neat and tidy, but we live here. I love the saying, “Please excuse the mess. The children are making memories.” I think I need to make a sign for my house, because that’s my motto.

Would I do it all again? In a heartbeat. Does the mess drive me crazy? Sometimes. Does it make me happy to see my kids playing with their friends, right smack in the center of our home? Always.

So, here’s my advice if you have an unused formal living room. Make it informal, and just excuse the mess. The children are making memories.

Happy playtime!

Goodwill Finds

February 14, 2011 By Becca 8 Comments

The conversation usually goes something like this:

Me: ” I have a bag to drop by Goodwill while we’re out.”

Hubby: “Anything to get another bag out of my garage.”

Me: “While we’re there, you guys can drop off the bag in the back and I’ll just run in really quickly.”

Hubby: “We don’t need other people’s crap that they didn’t want.”

Me: ” It’s not crap. It’s treasures, waiting to be discovered!”

Here are today’s treasures.

You can find silver trays at thrift stores for about $1.99. They are often passed by because they look filthy and disgusting.

The trays and plates I bought today were only $1.99. What a steal!

This big bowl/tray was my splurge at $4.99.

I couldn’t wait to get home and polish them up. I like the Tarn-X. It really smells horrible, but the results are amazing.

They just sparkle now!

You might be wondering why I would need four silver plates. Well, what do you do when you need to take a dessert or appetizer to a party and you don’t want to lose your good platter, or you know you’ll need to leave it there? If you’re like me, you run to the party store and buy something lame, plastic, and cheap. Oh, $1.99 seems like a good price for a plastic platter. So there you have it. Instead of paying $1.99 and showing up with your lame plastic, you’ll show up with beautiful silver!

I do use silver around the house in my decor. This was a platter that my hubby and I received for our wedding. It has a few scratches, but I still love it. It sits a little table in the kitchen.

This tiny bowl was a .99 Goodwill find. It holds antique spools of thread in the living room.

This bowl was only .79, at Goodwill, because it had personalized engraving. No one knows, once you put a few old pocket watches inside.

Hit your local thrift store and see what you can find. There are treasures just waiting to be discovered. Just don’t go to my Goodwill, because there aren’t any silver trays left!

Happy thrifting!

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