I realized it has literally been a year since I have shared a room from our house. This fall, I made some significant changes in our family room and in our living room with the help of Devin’s Mom. I am still mulling over some projects for our family room, but I decided I should post things before it gets too different 🙂 ! This will make some people gasp, but I plan on painting our brick fireplace in the future. I tend to like light, soft, and feminine when I decorate and I don’t enjoy how heavy the fireplace makes our room look.
My favorite parts of this room are how many windows it has because it means it is pretty bright. The only reason I ever turn on the lights in here during the day is because I have a pet bird that gets pretty darn grouchy if he doesn’t get enough light during the day 🙂 . I realized it doesn’t show in these photos, but there are french doors leading out of this room into our sun room which I use as my blogging and candle studio! I love how cozy this room feels and I love that we were able to decorate all of it extremely affordably; the curtain material was only $3 a yard for thick upholstery fabric!!
The white bouquet on the coffee table is the fake flower bouquet I carried around at my second wedding reception, the pinata is from a party my friends threw me for graduating from grad school, the trunk is from Devin’s childhood, the coffee table is from my childhood, and the painting of the Golden Gate bridge has a special story. Devin isn’t a huge fan of the cockatoo displayed below that I found at a thrift store 😉 .
The yellow suit case was my Barbie doll case from when I was a child, there are travel tins from a childhood trip to the United Kingdom, a Golden Gate bridge figure as an engagement gift from Devin’s Aunt, and some cute knickknacks that I have collected. All of the pillows are from World Market and a few are from thrift stores that we recovered.
Now, the story behind the painting is very special!
This painting was painted by Devin’s great-grandmother Irene and the frame was made from wood off of their farm in Iowa by his great-grandfather. It was originally a gift to a family member who became engaged at the Golden Gate bridge, but we never knew about it because after the divorce it was placed in a family member’s home. Completely randomly and without knowing about it, that is actually where we became engaged. As soon as it happened, family began talking about giving us this painting. It is incredibly special to me because it felt like we were getting a wedding present from his great grandparents. I’m always super proud that we can have this!
When we bought our house, this room had almost white carpet. I am not a clean freak, but having potential spots on my floor would drive me nuts and I didn’t think the carpet was a good fit for us wanting to have kids and pets in the future. We ended up having hardwood floor installed and I don’t regret our decision even one tiny bit. The hardwoods are so easy to clean, the natural stain hides a lot of stuff including scratches accidentally incurred, and I generally just feel really lucky to have this nice large entertaining space. I’m really pleased with our decision now and I really love this room! 🙂