Its Getting There

Since moving back in our home a few months ago after re-building our house due to a fire, I've been in the constant state of bouncing around from various projects [did you notice that too?] I work on areas around on home verses completing an entire room then going to the next project. Mostly due to what's on sale and priority of need etc. Our living room hasn't received much love love in the past few months. Which is odd because its the first room you walk into when you enter our home, its also where we spend our time as a family since our small rancher has no separate family room.  

So far we've added a pair of matching sofas, added a grey Dhurrie rug with a large scale print and sprayed painted a coffee table found via Criagslist. I also recently refinished a vintage campaign dresser I found out a antique store, that we're now using as our TV Stand. We found that all the drawers in the dresser are the perfect size to hold our constant growing DVD collection. I few weeks ago I painted the inside of our front door a deep grey. The new interior color adds so much color in our living room and helps define our small entry. 

With the long Holiday weekend, I wanted to knock some things off my to do list. Namely making our living room feel more like us and a little more like home. Before I share our living rooms recent new additions, lets look at how far our living room has come this year. Earlier this year our living room was completely gutted down to the studs along with our entire home. During the rebuilding phase of our home, we decided to widen our doorway between our living room and dining and kitchen, I'm so happy we did this! This change makes a huge difference, our home now feels more open and even bigger. 



Our living room after being dry walled and our new door hung, love how you can start seeing our home taking shape again. 



Finally our living room right before more in, lots of blank walls and good bones. 








After months of trying to decide what drapes to go with for our living room, I decided to keep it simple and go with linen drapes. Since most of the drapes will be blocked by our sofa that sits in front of it, I though a pretty neutral would help break up all the grey we currently have going on. Plus, I've always loved pretty white drapes [who doesn't?] I hung a black curtain rod, the same one that's in our dining room high and wide. We have eight feet ceilings and crown molding, I didn't want to hang the too high so I opted to hand them 10 inches below the crown molding and 10 beyond the window in each side. I ended up buying Ikea Aina Curtains in white for our living room, I loved that they were 100% linen so I knew that would hang nicely. I also used the same drapes in Avery's nursery in chartreuse. After months of having no window coverings, I'm so happy we finally have pretty ones hanging up!! I love how drapes really soften the lines of windows and make a room feel a little more polished and finished.


The drapes come 98 inches long, I used my sewing machine to hem the length about 6.5 inches. Even though the color states white, they're more of a creamy white then a bright white. I'm finally getting around to finishing up some pillows for our sofas, so far four down and four more to go. I can't wait to get the pillows down, they'll bring in so much color! I also added a black and white throw I picked up at Ikea, hands down besides my faux fur throw its my favorite throw! I love keep throws in baskets for winter cuddles or our sofas for even easier access. 



Our living room is still in need of several things: artwork, side tables, lamps, maybe a small console table? And more personal touches. The good thing is, its getting there, which is such an amazing feeling. 

Our living room now is filled up with Christmas, which I'll be sharing on Monday along with lots of Holiday inspired posts from Holiday Decor Ideas & Gift Guides. 

Have a great weekend! 


Our Modern Thanksgiving Table

As promised last Wednesday, today I'm sharing our Modern Thanksgiving Dining room. I hope everyone had a Thankful & yummy Thanksgiving weekend! To be honest, I'm still a little stuffed from turkey and pie overload [I'm thinking its a good thing lol] This year we stayed home for Thanksgiving a first for our family and it also marked our first Thanksgiving since moving back into our home a few months ago. For our dining room table, I took a more modern approach by using colors we already had: shades of aquas and chartreuse. Now with our new vintage dining room able, we're able to seat six, which is perfect since we had a small Thanksgiving dinner with my sister and nephew.  




When I first was planning on our Thanksgiving table, I planned on using a white table cloth I bought at Target but changed my mind. I'll likely use the table cloth daily & for Christmas. A paired our everyday white dinnerware with white rimmed aqua salad plates I bought from Target for $1.99 each. The salad plates are a pretty pop of color on our white dinnerware. I bought the sliver chargers at Micheals for $1.50 each. The napkins were a simple DIY Project, I bought a six pack of cotton napkins from Amazon and used metallic silver paint and Stoch 3M painters tape. 


Instead of using a runner on our table, I used a trio of vases and candle holders. One of the 'vases' is actually a cheapo Sangria wine jug that doubled as a vase to hold fresh greenery. I placed fresh pears on each place setting which add more color on our table. The fresh greenery ended up being my splurge item for our dining room table spending $4.99 on it. 







One of the best decisions we made during our rebuilding was widening the doorway opening in our house. I love how open it makes our house feel and its allowed us to be able to sit six people of dinner in our small house. I love the mix of our Klimos chairs paired with vintage dining room chairs, I'm planning on painting the the chairs white to match the dining room table. In the future we plan on adding a banquette in our dining room and placing it under the window. We'd love to create a similar look in our dining room as this



Here's a better wide view of our table, we served a combination of family style on the table and buffet on our kitchen counter. 




Lets chat about how much I spend creating our pretty table. As you all know, I'm a budget girl and my Modern Thanksgiving table setting was also done a budget. I spent less than $45 buying one time investment pieces for or table setting that we can use over and over: white rimmed aqua salad plates, charger plates, napkins and candle holders, and a cute glass butter dish from Crate & Barrel. While $45 isn't cheap, I'm happy that what I purchased can be used year round. Instead of spending money and buying all new items for our Thanksgiving table, I used items we already had and incorporated them into our table setting [vases, pie plates, glasses, appetizer plates etc] 

We spent our Thanksgiving weekend eat lots of pie and doing a little Black Friday shopping. We got a super late start Black Friday shopping, compared to the norm. We didn't leave our house until 9am, I know super late! But we got to sleep-in a little and most of the stores were empty and no lines! Yay for late starts :) 

ON BLAST

You may have noticed this post and going forward all my posts will have now have Jump Break, asking you to Click to Read More of my post. It has come to my attention that there is a blog Lets Be Self Sufficient (link here)  that has been copying all my blog posts word for word and picture for picture since I started blogging in 2009. This blog has copied my most personal posts incliuding my wedding the arrival of my baby to our House Fire that I have shared with all of you and this person pretended it was their own post. This pisses me off in so many ways and I find it so hurtful that some random person cant take your words and re-post them on a blog as if its there own. I added a Jump Break into my blog posts hoping this will help discourage another person from copying my blog word for word / picture for picture (make it more work!?!) I know I'm not the first blogger this has happened to and I'm guessing it comes with the territory when you open your life up to people, but I still find it to be crappy [shitty] My plan of action is to file a Removal Request with Google, the blog Food Corner shared a recent post about dealing with Blog Copiers. Just wanted to give all my lovely readers a heads up on the recent posting change. Now back to Thanksgiving. 


How did you spend your Thanksgiving? Any good Black Friday scores?