Family room
-
Spring touches
I love the clean feeling of spring. Everything is coming alive, we clean out the yard, we clean our houses. As spring approaches I love putting away the heavy throws, cozy pillows, and all the heavy winter decor. When I decorate and change a room for each season, I choose small things to change and refresh. This year I decided that I would change up some pillows on my family room couch to add a clean new look. I found a tutorial here online on how to make envelope pillows and I got some fabric and went for it. Wow…just that little bit really gave my room a new, clean…
-
Fall touches…my family room
I think I’ve mentioned before. I love fall. It is probably my most favorite season of the year. Most years I have gone all out with my fall decorating. I would use garlands, pumpkins, pictures…you name it. This year however, I decided to take a much more simple approach. I wanted to have a cozy fall feel to the room without the clutter of too much stuff. It is different than I have done before, but I like it. I did not want to completely tear apart my room to decorate for fall this year. Instead I just added a few fun touches. My blankets and pillows get added for…
-
A one of a kind shelf
So it a while back I found this great architectural piece of wood at my local antique store. When I say a while back, I mean probably a year or more ago. Every time I went into this store I wanted to buy this piece and create something with it. A few weeks ago I got my chance. A few weeks back I made a few changes to my family room and bought an old radio. This started kind of a spiral of sorts. I had a chair where the old radio was, so I had to move the chair to the wall where my cool arrow hung. Since I moved the…
-
Touches of spring – my family room
So I took the day last week and spruced my house up for spring. I put away my furry blankets, winter pillows, and candles. I replaced them with a few fun touches of spring. I got out my flower pillows, lighter throws, and created a fun spring display for my ottoman. A lot of this I did with things I had laying around my house. I feel that rooms don’t need huge makeovers every season, but a few touches like pillows and flowers really make a difference. I also love to raid my son’s old book collection. I totally gave him a bad time when he was bringing these books…
-
Changing it up
Isn’t it funny that in January most of us are craving a little change in our homes. I don’t know if it is because we are spending so much time inside from winter, or just that our spaces look a little plain from Christmas. Whatever it is, I know that for me, I need that little change up in my home in January. Usually it is just moving things I already have around to different spaces, or adding a few new accessories here and there. This year has been great because I found and got a couple of great new items that made my space feel a little more fun.…
-
Fun, easy, and totally no sew (or barely sew) window treatments
I love dressing up my windows. It just adds that finishing touch that every room needs. However, I am not a fan of large nineties window treatments. There is too much fabric which creates dust, and quite frankly, reminds me of shoulder pads. When I was thinking about the windows in my rooms, I wanted to add just the right touch without taking away from the window trim we added. I came up with a fun solution one day while shopping at Target. They had napkins on clearance that were just the right color for the room I was doing. Napkins were the perfect solution that I needed to add some…
-
Mixing it up with pattern
Mixing patterns can be tricky. When I talk to my friends about decorating their homes, how I mix up the patterns in my room is always the question that gets asked. I love pattern. I think I have decorating ADD because I get tired of rooms and decor pretty quickly. One way I have found that works for me to stay happy with a room longer, is to use patterns. My first rule is to keep the bigger pieces solid. This allows you to have fun with the rugs, blankets, pillows, chairs, and art. Next decide on a color pallette. In my room the main colors are gray and white.…
-
Vintage love
The new year has been busy around these parts. Christmas was great…winter was long!! Spring is upon us, and I feel like refreshing, cleaning, and organizing all my rooms. We finished our house in the fall, so I used all my fall décor to decorate the new rooms. Then I did the same thing at Christmas time. By the time I took down all my Christmas décor, I realized that I didn’t have anything to fill up my new spaces. So I of course had to do a little shopping. I had donated most of my old décor to the DI, so I was starting over. I knew I wanted…
-
Christmas in my Family room and Kitchen
I love December. I love Christmas. I love everything about it. The music, the lights, the spirit of giving….everything. I love putting up Christmas decor in my home for the holidays. Decorations we have collected over the years mean a lot to me and have special memories, so it is fun to get them out and remember every year. This year was especially fun for us because I have a beautiful new backdrop to display Christmas around. Here is the way my home looks this year in my family room and kitchen. I wouldn’t say I was a trendy Christmas decorator. The things I have, the ornaments I display have…
-
Molding…tons of molding!
There has been a lot of work going on in our home the past few weeks. Lots and lots of painting! I love adding wainscoting to a room, but it is a lot of work. Cutting, sanding, caulking, priming, and painting two coats of white. But it is worth it! Here is a peek of how some of the rooms are coming along. Here is the family room the day we moved in. I am so so so over brown! We took out the harth and added some molding around the fireplace. We spray painted the brass grills on the fireplace and painted the whole wall white. This is our…
-
Accent walls
We have still been working on finishing the main floor wainscoting this past week. We have the fireplace wall done…not painted, but framed out, and I love it! It started out a plain wall with just backer board nailed to it. We then measured, measured again, and measured again until we came up with the right dimensions for the molding. We ripped four inch MDF boards, measured again, and cut them to fit. Once the boards were ripped and cut we started assembling. It went pretty quickly at that point. We decided to trim around the fireplace with two inch boards. I want the wall to have a clean look…
-
Creating some Columns
Over Christmas we demo’d some walls to make an opening for new columns for our staircase. Well, after finishing the wood upstairs, painting the stairway, and painting the upstairs and entry, we finally are making progress on the columns. We drew up some plans, and went to work covering the two by fours with MDF and backerboard. Both products paint up nicely. We measured how big we want the recessed panel to be, and ripped some MDF strips on the table saw. We brought them in, put them together, and then nailed them when we were happy with how the seams looked. We decided to build out the bottom with…
-
Pop of color
We moved into this house two years ago with the intention of re-doing just about everything. This is not our first house reno and we are very seasoned DIYers. This house is just taking longer to complete than I hoped it would. There were a lot of not so fun projects that we needed to take care of first. I was prepared to be patient, live with the house the way it was until we got to each room, but I couldn’t do it any longer. I had to make a minor change on my main level to stay sane this winter. I had to do something with the dark…
