Tag Archives: family room

Bit by Bit

Let me tell you a story. A beautiful little love story.
Girl meets Fabric (it just so happens that they meet on the Internet).

Girl falls head over heels for Fabric. She thinks it might be a passing fancy, since Fabric is on clearance. You know how those clearance types are.

Girl wakes up one day and realizes her undying love for Fabric. She and Fabric exchange Orders (that’s fabric for vows), and they live happily ever after in Home Decor Haven.

Did that get weird? Sorry. But, I really, really, REALLY love this fabric. It’s by Swavelle / Mill Creek. And it’s on Last Chance clearance at Fabric.com. So if you think you love it to, go get her before she’s gone!

With this swatch, I’m starting to decorate our bonus room upstairs. Now that we’ve got some furniture, we need some accessories (my favorite part!). I don’t love the fabric on the throw pillows that came with our sofa, but I lurrrrve this fabric (have I said that already?), and I know it will look amaze-balls against the charcoal grey upholstery! Is it out of style to match your pillows and your drapes? Because I would LOVE to make drapes out of this fabric, too. Come to think of it, I would love a floor-to-ceiling room made out of this fabric. Too much? Probably.

Anyway, with this color palette in mind, I’m starting to collect accessories. I’ve been assuming I’d put the Satchel & Sage feather print in my office, since everything that doesn’t have a place will probably end up in my office, but doesn’t it work great with this tealy-turquoisey glass candle holder? And the other print is a postcard that I received as a bonus for an order I placed with Mary Elizabeth Arts through Etsy a number of years ago.

So while this is just one tiny, tiny corner of our room (clearly)…

it’s a start!

How do you start decorating a room? Do you go all in at once, or bit-by-bit?

Summery Mantel

Ever since I took down our Easter decor, I’ve been completely stuck on how to decorate our mantel. And it’s been pretty vacant for the past couple months, save for the white lantern full of potpourri. I decided last week that this needed to change. I was tired of looking at nothing, plus, we were hosting a dinner party over the weekend. And I couldn’t have a naked mantel in front of our guests!

So I turned to trusty Pinterest for inspiration… and found mostly beach-inspired decor. I like the beach. I like walks on the beach and seaside-inspired beverages. But… we’re not beach decor people. I know a lot of people are, and I always admire the calm, casual feel it puts out. But, it’s just not our style.

Which begs the question… what’s a girl gotta do to get a summery mantel up in here?

Answer… go to Pier 1!

Where one will find oodles of options. Like hydrangeas and more lanterns.

And lemons. Not sure if we’re fake-fruit people, either… but we got ’em!

What does your summer mantel look like? Are you a beach decor person? Or a fake-fruit decor person? Or something else entirely?

New Furniture In Da Hizzouse!

Awww yea! We got some new stuff up in here!
But really, in all seriousness, we’ve added a few new pieces around the house. It’s surprisingly hard to choose furniture when you have a completely blank slate, but after 15 months of living in our space, I think we’re getting a sense of what will work for us.

Every entryway needs a little something to welcome guests through the door. So we’re starting with a simple console table, decked out in its Easter finery.

At some point, I’d like to add a mirror above the table. And dress up the walls with paint and maybe some moulding. But, it’s a good start!

Meanwhile, upstairs…

Our “bonus room” is finally starting to look like a room! Even if that means a rather sparse college/bachelor pad room. We’ve been using it as a workout space since we moved in. We’re keeping our elliptical in the corner, but we’re also planning to use the space as a more casual family room/hangout spot. We recently purchased a sofa, coffee table, end table, and brought our Ikea Poang chair and footrest upstairs. It sounds silly, but it’s nice to just have a place to sit down in this room!

(the TV stand is on its way)

Now all this room needs is a little color! And accessories 😉 I’m loving the shades of blue in the throw pillow fabric, so look for these colors to start popping up!

Update: if you’re curious, the console table is by Winsome Wood and was purchased via Amazon; the sofa is from Front Room Furnishings (Larkspur model by Simple Elegance).

How To: Create a Gallery Wall

Finally! After months and months and months and… you get the picture (ha! pun intended), we finally have a gallery wall in our family room. I thought the hardest part would be arranging the frames, but the hardest part turned out to be selecting what would go up on the wall! And dealing with a certain unruly zebra pencil sketch whose dimensions didn’t want to cooperate with the frames I’d purchased.

Let me give you a breakdown of how to hang it – I found this method to be SUPER helpful, and I would definitely use it again.

Start by tracing your frames onto paper. I’ve seen all kinds of things on Pinterest, like craft paper or newspaper. I started this after Christmas (yes, I realize that was nearly 3 months ago… I am notoriously/embarrassingly slow at completely projects), so I grabbed a pile of used wrapping paper that was, errm, still is, waiting to be recycled.

If possible, employ a frame-tracing helper. An 8-lb puppy is excellent for this task, until she starts shredding all of the paper all over the floor…

Once you’ve got all your templates traced and cut, arrange them on your wall with tape. It was awesome how easy it was to rearrange the layout until I was happy with it. And great to see a “true-to-life” size layout instead of just doing sketches on the backs of junk mail envelopes. I had also arranged the frames & pictures on the floor, but seeing the arrangement up on the wall made it a little easier to evaluate what went next to what, how close/far apart should they be, etc.

From here, you can mark where you want the nails to go, or nail directly through the paper templates. Then get to the good part… hanging!

If you’re curious, here are some details on what I chose to hang. From top left: hummingbird photo by EZ Pudewa (of Creature Comforts fame), which I purchased from her Society6 shop / watercolor tree print by Angie Vandenbogaard / culinary postcard / zebra pencil sketch from my dad’s aunt / leftover suzani fabric from my placemat project.

I like that we still have room to add onto the gallery, especially on the sides, or upward to the ceiling. I don’t feel like it’s quite “finished” yet, but at least it’s a nice little collection to start from!

Have you hung a gallery wall? Have you tried the template method? Or did another tip work really well?

PS – all of the frames came from Michaels. They offer quite a few options in a Gallery collection, and you can even find/buy templates to follow if you don’t want to create one yourself. They weren’t too pricey, but I made sure to stock up when they were on sale, or take my 40%-off coupons with me. Another reason why it took a while to put this together 😉

Weekend Recap

My holiday weekend was pretty low-key… it was so nice to have the extra day to look forward to! Why can’t every weekend be a 3-day weekend? Sigh… I really think we’d be a happier, more patient society if we just had a little more time to relax!
Anyway, my weekend included a bridal shower, a trip to the mall, and a trip to Panera. Oh, and watching pretty much *all* of Season 2 of Downton Abbey. I realize I’m ridiculously behind… please! No spoilers!!!

We also scoured a bunch of furniture stores in search of good President’s Day deals. We ordered a sofa for our bonus/game room upstairs! And I forgot to snap a pic of the upholstery/pillow fabric combo. Ooops. Guess you’ll just have to wait until it gets delivered in a month 🙂 Aaaannnd, we found a dining room table that we love! But I think our checkbooks would appreciate it if we wait a month or so to make that purchase.

And lastly, and I know, most-excitingly, I organized my growing washi-tape collection. (I was kidding about the “most-excitingly” part.)

Check back tomorrow for a washi-tape diy to see these puppies in action!