Living Room Redo

So this is more of a boring post probably, but it will have pictures anyway.  I talked about the book "The Nesting Place" here on my blog a few weeks ago.  It has inspired me to think differently about decorating. It has inspired me to actually decorate even if we are living in a rental and it has challenged me to do it any way even if my style isn't the latest in fashion or my decor isn't perfect. If I like it, what else matters? I am coming to believe it is better to try and have a failure than be too scared to try.  For instance, in my kitchen is a piece of plywood off of my dad's scrap/burn pile.  I spray painted it off-white and painted, in brown, the words: "Coffee & Friends make the perfect blend".  D told me it was so homemade looking, it was almost cool.  I like it and so it hangs on my kitchen wall at least until I try round 2 and find I like that one better.

The same goes for the living room.  The loveseat and couch are kind of squished together and you can't lay back in the love seat anymore, but the rest of the living room is more open.  I like it because soon Amber will be getting around and getting her own toys and now her toy area is more open to the living room and more visible from all corners of the living room, so I will hopefully be better able to watch her while she plays.

 This has become my new favorite spot in the living room.  I stole the stand out of our bedroom (so now I have things just sitting on the dresser because there's no place to go with my stuff, but that's another project), put it beside the couch, threw a little tableclothy thing on because the stand is ugly and my lamp that I also have dreams of repainting and recovering.  I actually like the lamp, but I have this hankering for a white fabric lamp shade decorated with white flowers, so...we'll see.  The cool thing is the stand has a shelf and I can hide things down there, like my stack of books waiting to be read for reviewing.

Someday before I am ready for it, I'm sure, this corner will be minus the car seat and the bouncer and my little girl will be all grown up, but until then, I will enjoy the messiness of baby stuff.  Really, the bouncer should go away, she pretty much never sits in it anymore.  Actually, it is probably time to make it into a rocking chair.  

 And this is my very unfinished toy corner.  Yup, that's an ivy growing around the toy shelves and a lamp and another plant all very close to the toys.  The decision has yet to be made: to babyproof or work very hard on teaching what is not okay to touch and what is.  And yes, that diaper box makes a really cool toybox after I cut it down and shaved off the one end and taped it back together and yes, I do have material to cover it.  I said this area was a work in progress and it really, really is.  Those photo frames are going to be painted with pictures on the inside.  There are buckets of blocks and wooden animals to be painted to join the toy section here.  All of this has made me realize we should have bought the eight cube instead of the six cube.

That door to the right leads into the office which is very neat and tidy at the moment.  It looks so much better now.  Sometime, I might post how I put some old wooden bushel crates to use in their to help organize and hold stuff.  

The living room is not finished. I have dreams of some brightly colored pillows for on the couch and I really need to do some thing behind the couch on the big wall. I know what I want to do, but it is going to take time and patience and some practice painting letters on boards because I don't want this one to look quite so homemadeish, but winter is coming and I am excited about having more time to do projects maybe.  

But now I am going to go sew on a quilt.