Home Sweet Home

I love that feeling that I get when we've been away from our house for a few days and then we return home. There's just something about being "home" and looking around at the things that make me happy. (And it helps that I usually try to straighten things up before leaving on a trip so we return to a clean house!)

When we first moved into the house we had the idea that downstairs would be our main living and TV watching area. The big comfy couch was down there, so why not? The upstairs would be more for sitting and talking and perhaps watching the weather before leaving for work. Silly us. That was before we had kids. Because people with kids know that stairs + babies = no way. After a day of trying to transport an infant up and down the stairs, we just made our nest upstairs. And then the infant became a toddler and we kept the stair door shut and had to have eagle eyes to make sure no one was going to fall to their death. Then the toddler got the hang of the stairs and infant #2 made an appearance. Repeat process. Repeat again for #3. Finally...FINALLY...we could probably be using the space downstairs now, except that it's become the place where all the toys are.

I really like my upstairs, but the furniture was never really intended to be our main hanging out space. And now that the kids are big enough for hanging out and watching a movie together, we (I) wanted a space where we could all snuggle together. Spencer wanted a flat screen so he could see the indiviudal blades of grass while watching football. We both got our wish!

It all started with an ugly, dusty fica tree. We took ugly dusty to the church yard sale and all of a sudden the room just looked wierd. Instead of trying to figure out something to put in ugly dusty's place, we just redesigned the whole room. For the record, we had been discussing this for a long time, but this was the push to finally get us going.

You would think that I would be a good girl and take "before" pics, right? Haha. I put the chair and sofa on craigslist just for kicks and the chair sold in 5 min. Within a few hours we had 4 offers and I finally had to take it down. A lady came by and picked it up that night. So...I wasn't really prepared for things to move so fast and didn't get a picture. But I fished around and found a few other pics that show snippets of the room.

You can see the sofa and chair peeking out behind me here:
Here is the old armoire and curtain. See the carpet? We had a lot of burgundy accents around the room. Now look in the carpet again...can you see the slate blue peeking out? That's our new accent color.

Another picture of the room after Claire had herself a puzzle party:
And a picture of the front entryway:

Here's the new room! You can see our storage bench in the entryway and Mr. HD Flatness where you can count blades of grass if you wish.

This side of the room has not changed much. The two black chairs are still there, we just moved the trunk over there to sit in the middle. And my favorite part....the big comfy couch! There is a chaise part that comes out on the side that is the best place to sit in the whole world. The whole family can spread out on this couch and there is still room left over for a guest or two :-)

This weekend, Spencer is going to repaint and do some design-y thing on the back wall. (I promise the un-centered mirror will not stay there!)

I always like the way my house makes me feel, but I've noticed that I've been especially giddy the last few days as I've walked past my new living room.