Our living room makeover

We do exist. We have not fallen off the face of the earth, though I know it seems we have. We've just been really busy and our Internet always seems to be having one problem or another. But anyway, now that everyone has probably stopped checking our blog, I am back with just a small update on our lives.

We continue to love our house. It's so nice (and so much easier!) to have options and flexibility in terms of storage and decorating and use. So one of my fun projects in February was getting our living room set up a little more nicely. It was hard to make myself stick to predominantly one style and color palette because I love so many different looks, but I think I did and I'm pretty happy with the result.

First, I have to say that even though it's not a fancy living room that people would still be very surprised to know how little we spent on everything in there. About 80% of everything in there (as well as in the rest of our house) was either given to us or purchased at a garage sale. (We have a very generous and thoughtful family and circle of friends.) And among those things, there are a number of items we refurbished to make them look nicer and like they were supposed to go together. And then there's a small number of things we just bought (read: IKEA and Walmart--what would I do without those two stores?!).

My favorite item (and the most unique) is the humongous world map on the far wall. That was my big purchase item. I loved that map when I first saw it on the IKEA website a year ago, and for me it's a good sign when I still like something after a few months because I normally change my mind all over the place. It's a beautiful canvas maps with great colors--colored like a map but in nice shades of blue, brown and green so it didn't look straight out of a geography book. I love it because it's big enough to allow you to read everything on it, and it's interesting to look at so you actually learn something everytime you look at it. And it's a great conversation piece. Everyone who comes to our house (even the repairman) stops to look at it, and it spurs a lot of interesting conversations. And down the road (a ways down the road) it can go in our library that we hope to one day have. So I feel like it was worth the investment to get the one thing I really loved and that we would use for a long time, although again, IKEA, so it wasn't really expensive enough to call it an investment!

Finally, I made the blue pillow the day I wanted to have the room all done, when my friends came over for book club at my house (my first time being able to host the book club after being in it for four years!) Anyway, I was proud of my cool design and that I remembered enough about sewing to put a zipper in it.

So there you have it. Now you can all feel like you've visited us here and...been in the front room. :)