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!

Living Room Drapes Hung!!!

I am in LOVE!!!!!

I am so excited to finally have my living room drapes hung up! These are what really make the room since I designed everything around these and you couldn't really tell where I was going without these.

I have to give a disclaimer..... My camera does not take good pictures when there is sunlight in a room, it creates this weird glow so of course these pictures don't do it justice! But it gives you an idea... I will post better pictures if I can get them as I progress in this room.

Here they are!

You can't tell real great that there is red in them... love the red!

We live on a corner lot and get a ton of sunlight in this room so it really is hard to get a good picture when the sun is shining in here pretty much all day.

This is a terrible picture I know (window on each side) but I wan't to show the pillow that I made on the chair with the drapes.

These drapes were purchased at Target and were about $22 a piece. The thing that makes these look so great and more high end is the fact that I didn't sheer them onto the rod, I purchased rod rings for them. I have said it before and I will say it again, rod rings add length as well as a more high end look as opposed to sheered on their.

My husband picked out the rod hardware all by himself and I think he did a fabulous job! Once again, notice the rod is a thicker rod which is more substantial looking and makes it look more expensive and higher end.

My funny little $10 ksl chair is starting to make more sense in the space isn't it? I just want to get the wood stained to a darker color and I will be happy with it.

I still have to get some stuff on the walls, pillows on the chair and sofa and some tables or build an ottoman or something..... I am still trying to figure out the best way to layout this room since the furniture isn't centered with each other.

But.... I am loving going into this room now with those drapes up and I LOVE how they completely warmed up the space and made it very inviting!

Making Of - Living Room Throw Pillow

Last week I decided to make this throw pillow for my living room chair.

I am very happy with the way that it turned & it didn't cost me a thing!

This pillow in all reality would have cost anywhere from $50-$100 with how expensive this stuff is individually, but I have my ways :)

Here is the stuff that I started with: I had a pillow insert that I had purchased years ago for another project and never used. This pillow is a down filled pillow and is a great pillow. The gold fabric was a sample fabric from my old work at Bassett that I had in my fabric stash and would have been probably $20-$30 a yard if purchased. The peachy, gold fabric was a fabric memo that I purchased back when I was in design school. I had a project that I wanted some nice fabrics for, I went to a local designer fabric place and purchased this memo (a fabric sample about 3'x3') for $10. I hate to admit this but that was probably 7 years ago. This fabric is probably anywhere between $50-$100+ a yard!!!! It is such high end silk and is a Beacon Hill brand which is one of the most expensive! Anyway, I got it for the $10 and just had to use a small corner of it for my project so I had a large section of it left over. The red trim was left over from some pillows that I sewed for my family cabin and I believe that it was around $20 a yard.

Here is how I made the pillow:

I took some printer paper and created my own pattern to cut from.

I cut the 2 sides in the peach fabric and then I sewed them to the gold fabric.

I wanted a pleated center so I needed to make the gold fabric larger than what the measurement was.

*I found the center of the gold fabric on the back side and marked it with a pin.

*I measured 2" from each side and ironed it over with wrong sides facing each other.

*Then I measured 3/4" from the ironed edge and ironed it with right sides facing each other.

*From that last ironed edge, I measured 1 1/4" and ironed wrong sides facing together.

You can see a pattern here. Basically you are making an accordion fold but making them overlap a bit so that you can see each individual fold.

Here is what it looks like all finished on both sides pinned down.

After the front was all pleated and pinned, I pinned the front to the back which was 2 pieces overlapping each other to create a pocket.

In each corner, I cut a tassel from the red trim I had and pinned it in each corner.

Now I hope I am not the only one who does this!.... but I pinned the wrong side of the fabric to the back and when I turned it right side out, the wrong side was facing forward!.... So I had to unstitch the whole thing a resew it!

Here is the back side. You can see that I didn't make my flap big enough but I honestly don't care when it is the back!

And here is the close up of the tassel and the pleating.

I love that I was able to create this with stuff that I already had and it didn't cost me a dime (recently). When I get other things done in my living room, I will show a picture of it on the chair with the full affect of everything else. (whenever that happens). Until then, I will enjoy my one pillow in that room :)

The Nesting Table Snatch....

So I mentioned in my very first post that I had a serious addiction to KSL classifieds. I was on there earlier this week and found some nesting tables for $10! They were a light color but I was going to get them and refinish them to look more like this picture.

I text the lady and had it all arranged that I would come and pick them up after my Dr. appointment on Wednesday. While I was in the Dr. appointment, I got a text from her saying that a family member had come over to her house while she was gone and took them, not knowing that she had already pre-sold them to me! I think that nesting tables would be the perfect table to go in between my 2 living room chairs. Now I am really bummed that they are gone and that I lost these great little tables at that price. So now I am on the look out once again for some nesting tables to go in my living room. BUMMER!

Living Room Update

I have been busy working on my living room and I wanted to update you with what I have done so far. I knew in this room that I wanted an accent wall so I needed to start there. I didn't really have anything to go off of for colors so I decided to find the drapes that I liked and go from there. I don't recommend doing this, but I went straight to Target and found the drapes that I wanted (I just bought one for color matching at this point) and drove straight over to Home Depot and picked out my accent color in the store. I got lucky and it worked, but it is definitely better to pick your colors in the room to make sure that the lighting doesn't change the color on you.

Here is the drapery panel and the accent color that I chose to paint. Of course I wasn't just going to stop there! I painted this wall on a Thursday night, let it dry for 2 days, then I glazed (stained) the entire room!

Here is the wall before I glazed......

Here it is after I glazed!

You can see that it isn't a huge difference in color, but the drapes are what tie everything together.

This picture shows how great the wall color looks with the drapes and my Christ picture.

Here is the glaze just over my walls like I have done in the rest of my main level.

So I have to talk about this chair.... I call this my "funny" chair. I found this chair on KSL for $10... yes that is right, $10! I sent my husband to go pick it up and he was a little unsure about it. Anyone who knows me, knows that my style tends to lean more on the clean line side... I consider my style to be Clean Line Traditional, some may consider it Transitional. Anyway, this chair is not what people are used to seeing me pick out. I saw this and thought that I just had to get my hands on it. The fabric is in REALLY great condition considering how old this chair has to be. I think I will keep the fabric on it because it surprisingly goes quite well with the drapes, but the wood color is bothering me. I have decided that I am going to sand the wood down and stain it a dark color. I will put a throw pillow on it and I will have the best, cheapest chair I could have asked for in this spot.

Here is the real color of the fabric, the other pictures had a flash and it made it really shiny looking when it isn't like that in person. Some people may have a hard time having 2 different chairs like I have in this room, that is ok, but it is also ok to mix chairs in a room. I wanted something a little bit different than my usual in this room and I wanted it to be a bit more formal. As you can see, I still have a lot to do in this room, but I am really excited about the direction it is going and I am even more excited about how inexpensive it has been.