It’s been a little while since the last update! Thanksgiving seemed to come and go in a flash and I’ve been busy busy away over at my other site.
Life around here has been quite festive, as we’ve been trying to still fill in some of the odds and ends in our living room as well as decorating for the holidays. First, I wanted to show you our new couch:
See that bad boy in front of the window.. yeah that was the love seat I was talking about just about four months ago. Yeah.. we ordered it the weekend that I wrote that blog post and it just arrived last Friday. It really did take them four months to deliver it. And if you don’t believe me, check out the tag on the armrest still. Pretty crazy, eh?
You’ll also notice a number of other sa-weet additions to the room, no? Well, that new leather cognac colored chair we got the same weekend we ordered the love seat. But in contrast to that, this one came about three days later. I’m not sure why I didn’t update you all on that new addition. We love it, it’s small so we can get around it, and the color is perfect.
The next addition… the cream shaggy rug. That one was a few months in the making. My husband and I debated long hours and weeks over the perfect rug. If we wanted to get a really nice one and make it an investment piece. We were both really torn on the price, because the ones we liked were running well over $800. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to buy. We didn’t like the idea of shag in there, but after we saw that this 8′x10′ baby was only $150 at Home Depot, we reconsidered. We bought a smaller one (around 2′ x 3′) and brought it home to lay out on the floor, see if we liked the feel of it on our feet, and to see what we thought of the color. Surprisingly, we loved it and ended up getting it just a few days later, hauling it home in our little Jetta. It really lightens the room up we think.
Next was the art above the mantle. I found this print on Pinterest a while back and was in LOVE with the colors. We looked in to the rights on the image and found out we were free to use it as we wished, as long as we weren’t selling it. So we sent it off to a canvas print company and got it blown up HUGE for around $150. Seriously, this is one of our favorite pieces and we love love love the colors in it.
As for the prints above the sofa – that’s our newest addition to the room (well, aside from the holiday decor). This project was put up about a week ago. We had plotted and plotted what to do with the space above the sofa, because it was so expansive. I had the idea of this 2 x 3 gallery and Tyler loved it. We picked up a few frames from IKEA that were big enough to cover the space nicely. Together, we went through all our photos from our travels and picked out our favorite six, sent them out to Costco, and put them up. We love how they’re really personal to us, tell a story of the places we’ve been together, and that we change them out as we feel in the future. Here’s a closer look:
Our travel photos from left to right, top to bottom: San Diego, San Francisco (this one is spectacular – this photo doesn’t do it justice), Snoqualmie (from the day we got engaged), Saint Lucia (our honeymoon location), Portland (our first trip together), and Bellevue (at a local park).
Some other recent purchases include the giraffe on the mantle, a few other mantle pieces, and the metallic coffee table tray. We are yet to become expert mantle designers. Tyler likes the look, I think it looks cluttered. Nonetheless, it works for now.
The last few things that are new are hand-me-downs or thrift store finds, like this old chest that was my great-grandma’s.
On top is this gorgeous blue glass pitcher that was my other great-grandma’s. She had a whole collection and I got this piece and another piece sitting on the mantle. And this mirrored silver tray was $15 at the local thrift store. We thought it was gold, then started polishing away and found out that it was actually silver underneath! Halfway through, we both decided that we liked the patina better than the shiny silver, so we just dried it off and called it good. And of course my cute little metallic birdie and reindeer from Michael’s. I love how the old and new work together in our home.
We’re pretty pleased with our living room updates. Since it’s really the only area we’ve spent much time or money on in the house so far, we have a long way to go. But it’s not too shabby for only being in for six months.
What recent home updates have you made lately?
