Living Room dilemmas

So, I was at Walmart a while back and I saw this pillow.

I thought "hey, this matches my living room drapes. Maybe I should get one to go behind some other pillows on my sofa and bring that pattern over to the other side of the room". Well, I didn't buy it at that time, but I saw it the other day and it was on clearance so I couldn't pass it up.

I got home and put it on the couch and because of the shape of the arms, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to put a lot of pillows on the sofa and have it look good. I decided that I just wanted one pillow in the center of the sofa and I am not sure if this is the pillow for the sofa now. I am afraid that it is all to matchy now and that I should find another pillow to go on there........

Sorry this picture is really dark, but I want to hear what you think about it. Is it to matchy or does it look alright?

Then..... I was sitting on my funny little chair holding my baby and contemplating whether I liked that pillow there or not and I got this wild itch to see what this room would look like with a different furniture arrangement.

If you remember back in this post, I showed 3 different possible furniture arrangements for this room. After living with the third option for awhile, I have found 2 things that I don't like about it; 1) I think that it feels like an alley way that dead ends at the window with the furniture facing each other and 2) It bothers me that the chairs aren't centered with the sofa and it will really be emphasized if I put a rug on the floor.

SO.... I got up and moved the furniture!

I moved the furniture to the second arrangement I had on that post and I love how warm and inviting it is.....

BUT.... there are 2 things that bother me with this arrangement; 1) I don't like how the brown chair is so close to the sofa. I had my husband sit in the chair while I sat on the sofa and we were playing footsie with each other (of course we like that but I don't think that others would like it to much :) and 2) I really don't like that the sofa is in front of the window. I won't ever get to open the blinds there if I leave it because this sofa fades very easily.

So.... what do I do? There are things that I like about both arrangements and there are things that I dislike.

Which arrangement is more appealing to you? Please let me know, I really am kind of stuck on this one!

Tip of the Week - Living in REALITY!

So often we look at homes in the magazines and see how perfect they are and wish that our homes could look like that.

Everything is in it's place and perfect... I don't know about you, but I don't live in that world. I live in reality where I have an 18 month old daughter, a newborn, and a husband who works from home.

My husband is in the process of finishing part of our basement so that he can have a private office down there. If you remember pictures of my office from before, it is way out in the open and isn't practical for him to work in with my girls always being so loud.... SO, he has turned our bedroom into his office! What does this mean for me... I don't get ready until 1:00 in the afternoon because my daughter is to noisy to be in there while he is on the phone and she is always where I am.

More of my reality....

This is how my coffee table looks in a perfect world....

This is how it looks in my reality. I finally I had to move everything off because my daughter thought it was fun to climb up on it, sit on the books, and dig her fingernails into the candles!

Here she is climbing on the baskets under my console table.... She usually pushes the baskets off and puts all of her toys on the shelves.

Here are her DVDs stacked up on the console table because she gets inside the baskets and tries to pull the DVDs out of the their cases and breaks them.

Here she pushes all of the buttons on the equipment........

and here are her toys on the floor, (along with my husbands weights).

I took these pictures all within 30 seconds and she ran from place to place to place... this is our life everyday!

And we can't forget all of the newborn items that come with having a baby...... (notice the measuring cup on the floor, Brooklyn loves to get into all of my drawers and pull out my cooking items.

This is my reality everyday! I try to keep my house as clean as possible, and at night, I make sure that it is clean and I can feel good about it. But everyday, my house has toys on the floors and pillows in piles.... and you know what, I wouldn't change it for the world.

This house is lived in, which means it is loved in! It may not be perfect for a magazine cover, but it is perfect for me and my lifestyle. I have kids and that is shown in my house, you don't question that when you come in, and that is OK!

I hope that you guys don't look at your house and wish that you could change all of these things about it. Make it the best that you can for the situation and lifestyle you have and be happy with it. That is sometimes easier said than done, I know.

You may not have toddlers like I do, or even have kids. Maybe you have pets or a family member in a wheelchair. These are all things that shape our home and how it is lived in. Design it to what works with your lifestyle and what is perfect for you.... Don't compare it to what others have, they don't have your life and circumstances!

BE HAPPY! :)

K E N I D I

Accessorizing Kenidi's room has been kind of slow but I did get her name made and put up above her crib. It has been amazing how hard it is to get things designed around the house... not necessarily because of my girls (but that is part of it), but I can't really leave the house to easily and so I can't get items that I need to get to make things.

But here is her name that I finally got put up. It isn't anything original or that you probably haven't seen before, but I really wanted to put her name up on the wall. Her spelling is so different from the original spelling of Kennedy that I wanted to highlight it in here. Her spelling is actually after my spelling, Lindsi instead of Lindsay or Lindsey.

Now Here is how I made it.

I went to our local craft store and purchased the letters for $3 each and painted them with

this brown paint from Home Depot. (Did you know that Home Depot now offers a sample size paint! I so wish they had these when I painted murals!)

Then I purchased 2 spools of ribbon, green and red, and staple gunned them to the back and tied bows on top.

Now hanging this is something that I had to think about for a minute (and of course I forgot to take pictures while I was doing it).

First - I found the center of the wall and marked it

Second - I laid a ruler on the floor and starting with the "K", I laid in on the edge of the ruler, where it ended I measured 2" from that and placed the "E" and continued through the whole name. When I was done, I saw that it ended at 27 1/2". I took half of 27 1/2 which is 13 3/4 and placed that point where the center of the wall is. By doing this, I knew that I was going to be centered on the wall.

Third - I had my husband hold the level with the ruler on it while I placed each letter in it's spot and nailed it in the wall.

I hope that makes sense if you decide to do one of these on how to hang it centered. I had every intention of taking pictures through the process but as I got started on it, I totally forgot.

We are building a beadboard cornice box for the window, so I hope that I can have that posted next week. Things just don't get done as quickly as I would like with 2 babies now.

Tip of the Week - Real or Fake?

Are your's real or fake?

Get your mind out of the gutter people... I am talking about house plants!!! :)

Some people wonder what should be used in the home for decorating... real plants or fake plants.

Here is my opinion and tip on the subject and that is all that it is, there is no rule on this subject, just personal opinions.

In my own personal house, I will only use REAL plants. However, I definitely have used FAKE plants in my designs and have nothing against them.

Here I have a real plant on my kitchen table (but that has since been moved into my spare bedroom)

And here is one behind my reading corner in my Family room.

I LOVE real plants in a room because of the life and energy they add to a room. There is something very livening about having a real plant in a room.

I'm not completely gung ho about Feng Shui, but there are a few things that I do follow and real plants is one of them. They say that the oxygen that real plants let off add some positive energy and agree with it. I personally just feel better with real plants versus fake plants.

BUT.... Not everyone has a green thumb! Some people are really intimidated by real plants and that is fine. If you are one of those people, by all means use the fake plants... but I do have a tip for you to follow.

Notice in this picture above that it is in a pot!

Now this plant is also fake but is in a basket.

Which one screams FAKE to you?

Obviously you wouldn't have a real plant in a basket, so always try and get your fake plants in a pot so they can at least give people something to wonder about for a few seconds instead of knowing it is fake right off the bat.

I LOVE plants in the home, they are great corner fillers. I would have a real plant in every room if I didn't have an 18 month old daughter who likes to eat dirt! Plants have to be strategically placed in my house!

If you do have fake plants, make sure to clean them regularly, silk plants tend to get really dusty & give a fake look.

So let me know, What do you prefer?

* If you are looking to sell your house, real plants are a much better idea to have on display vs. fake ones. Because fake ones do tend to collect dust, they are a distraction for the eye & you definitely don't want that when selling.

Tip of the Week - FlyLady

I was on my cousin's wife's blog the other day and she had posted about this FlyLady. She had some links on there and I decided to check it out.

This lady has a whole website teaching people how to create routines to keep their house clean and be productive through out the day.

I had more time today to really sit and read what she has posted on her website and she has some GREAT tips on there. Some of these tips I already do, but she has some stuff on there that will definitely help me out even further in my life. Now that I have another little baby in the house and a husband that works from home now, it definitely doesn't stay as clean as I would like. I am going to start taking some of these tips and applying them to my life and my daily routine to help me create a more clean, calm space for myself and I thought that maybe there are some people out there that read this blog that could use this in their lives also.

After all, if your house isn't clean and is in constant CHAOS, what good are my design tips going to be! If your house is in order and clean, then the fun design stuff comes into play..... and when the fun design stuff is going on, you want to keep your house clean! :)

Check out her website http://www.flylady.net/

This next link is the part of the website that I think is brilliant. I have always had it in my head of creating a weekly plan like this but haven't really done it, now I have something to follow and am more likely to get it done..... now my goal is to get my husband on board with me and keeping up on the routine..... I can't work on this routine and have him not be a part of it and making things dirty...... just wish my girls were old enough to jump on board with me, they seem to dirty EVERYTHING up around the house! But you gotta love them :)

http://www.flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_Routines.asp

Cupboard Organizing

A while ago, I decided that I had had it with my baking cupboard.

This is what it looked like...

It was such a mess and I couldn't take it anymore.

I was at the dollar store and found these containers & decided to organize my cupboards.

of course I got my pet, the label maker out.

And then I had to do my pasta & rice cupboard.

Do you have a cupboard that could use some an overhaul? Once again, the Dollar Store is a great place to find containers for really cheap to help with that organizing problem.