A New Rug

I am just a leeeetle bit excited today!!  This morning my husband showed me a tall rounded package leaning up against the sidelight on our door (basically covering it).  Not only was I glad that the UPS man arrived and left without getting stuck in our driveway (we have a good sheet of ice and snow on our sloping driveway!) but also because that package was our NEW RUG!!!!!
(Just indulge me for a moment.  I have never bought a big huge new rug before!!)

I got it in one of the Black Friday sales that was happening around the internet.  It is from RugsUSA and though I am a little leery of them due to some sketchy pricing practices (Sheena alerted me to this and yep, it is true!!  I checked and rechecked for a few months on the prices for this very rug just to see!) it was the best deal I could find on a rug like this.  I looked in brick and mortar stores and around the web and it was definitely a good deal.  Most of the rugs were way out of our budget or too small for the space I want to put it in.  It came with no problems at all and I reeeaaaallly really like it so we’ll see how it holds up to three little kids!! 
This little guy was only too happy to try the rug out…

It is BIG.  At least to me…it is 8’X10.5’ I think.  The natural jute is gorgeous and it is actually soft!  I was pretty worried that it would be rough and scratchy but it isn’t at all.  I anticipate some shedding both on clothes and on the floor but to me it is no biggie.  I’m excited to add this to our living room!

(Speaking of which, I’d better get cleaning in there so I can put the rug down!)  : )

TV Corner Gallery Wall

I (finally) took pictures of the gallery wall I just finished in our living room.  This is how it originally looked in its boring past:

And here is how it looks now. 

Certainly still no bombshell with the pale purplish wall color, old TV, and orange-ish trim--but an improvement, no? 
I ditched the aquarium stand that the TV was originally standing on in favor of a white cabinet I had down in the basement that was serving no particular purpose.  My thrifted (but brand new) Ikea storage boxes fit perfectly in the bottom which I took as a sign that this was meant to be.  :)  Don’t you think the outlets/light switch/thermostat blend in so much better now??  I do!
I’d still like to hide the tv in a cabinet or something, but until I find one that is petite (a huge one would dwarf this space) this will have to do. 
The gallery wall is mostly a mixture of free printable art and family photos.  I found soooo many wonderful sites with free art!  (If you’d like me to share where, let me know!)
Here is a local antique map (found free on the internet!)—I just love the colors!  (Why aren’t maps so pretty anymore??)

And I just love this painting of a little girl in winter:

A little mushroom art is always appropriate…  (I can’t really read French but I think it says they are edible mushrooms)

And this free printable from the Pleated Poppy is just lovely…and great for November (or a good reminder for anytime of the year)! 

It is just so hard to get a good representation of the wall color.  This is the color that the living room was painted when we moved into our home a few months ago so most likely I will be painting it another color.  I don’t hate it, but it’s just a bit…purple or pink or something for me. 

Yes.  Definitely a bit too something.  :)
Here you can see the layout of the room a bit more, looking on the right into the entry and music room and on the left into the dining room/kitchen:

And this is one of the other sides of the room (with my DIY stenciled curtains)

I don’t have the other side of the room arranged in a way I like yet, but here’s a sneak peek:

So, there you have it folks!  Our corner gallery wall (TV included!)

Linking up to That DIY Party (DIY Showoff), Remodelaholic’s Anonymous Party, Show Me What Ya Got Party (Not Just a Housewife)

Stalled

I’ve been working slowly on the living room corner gallery wall.  SLOWLY!  Like maybe one picture every week  :)  It has been fun though to find a variety of things to incorporate, both personally meaningful and inexpensive.  There are still a few spots I need to fill and a couple frames that need photos or artwork, but I’m getting there.  Oh, and it has gotten quite cold here so I’m waiting for one last warmer day to spray paint a few frames! 
Here’s a very little sneak peek…the mirror may be changing though—I like it but maybe not in this space. 

I have found an amazing amount of nice free artwork from the internet.  So fun!  Still, this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.  :)  I should know by now to think of a reasonable time frame and then multiply that by 10 for the real time it will take me. 
I also found a couple of pieces of artwork at Goodwill today that will go well in this room (hopefully!  It is still in the bag so I’ll have to try it and see later…)
In other news…I have been working like crazy on our Christmas photo card, so fun!  Hopefully I will get it done early this year and not at the last minute like other years. 

My $4 Stenciled Curtain Panels (from tablecloths)

I started this project about 2 years ago…for a different living room. 
Now, I finally finished it for our “new” living room.  Cause these curtains just weren’t cutting it for me:

(You can see more of our lovely curtains here.)

It is no secret that I like to be thrifty.  So when (in our old house) I wanted to get new curtains for our living room windows, I looked everywhere for curtains or fabric, hoping to score a deal.  I checked Ikea too and came up with nothing.  The trouble was, I really like purple and at the time fabrics (and curtains) that had purple in them were hard to find.  Any that I liked were really expensive, much more than I wanted to pay per panel.  So I put that idea on the back burner for a while, until I was at a event/catering supply sale a couple of falls ago. 
This sale was a liquidation sale of items used by an event rental company--they have them every other year or so.  The sale is mostly tablecloths that they are not using anymore, chargers, draping, candleholders, silverware, cloth napkins, etc.  Some of the tablecloths might be stained or damaged but most are just fine.  At this particular sale I noticed that they had a big table full of “catering cloths”…white or black linens that they use for draping over things, skirting tables, covering tables, etc.  A miscellaneous type of cloth.  I looked at the dimensions of the cloths and realized that they would be perfect for curtains. 

Now, they were nothing fancy…a poly/cotton blend I’m sure, not light blocking or anything special.  I dug through the table and found six that appeared to have no stains or damage.  The best part…they were $2 each!!  Score!!  Since the tablecloths were $2 each, I’m just guessing that I spent around $8 total in extra supplies specifically for the curtains.  Paint, folders for stencil, fabric medium, etc. 
I bought them and then they sat for a few months while I thought of how to make them into curtains.  I knew you could buy stencils but the ones I liked were pretty pricey…around $50 for one stencil.  Then I saw this tutorial over at All Things Thrifty for making your own stencils so I found an image on the internet (from here) to use for a template (tracing it first as you can see below) and cut the stencil out of clear plastic folders (as Brooke recommends) with an Xacto knife to make a stencil.  It was a bit time consuming but I found it rather cathartic while I was watching a movie (I’m kind of a detail person so I enjoy these types of things.  :)


I then bought a bunch of craft paint in varying shades of purple.  Some more violet than others.  Looking back, I think I should have just gone to Lowes or somewhere and bought a couple sample pots of regular paint tinted to the exact shade that I wanted, but oh well!  (It would have saved me the time mixing them together and getting all the paint out of those little containers!)  I also bought Martha Stewart fabric medium to add to the paints to make them softer and washable. 
 
I mostly followed this tutorial for stenciling curtains except I didn’t use quite as many products as they did.  I ended up using a fine foam roller to paint the curtains and it worked out great. 

(the first curtain panel on our old living room floor)

The first curtain panel (that I painted almost 2 years ago) took for-ev-er to paint…I believe around 3-4 hours!  I think that was primarily why it took me so long to do the rest of them.  At that time I would have had to do 6 panels as we had three windows in our old living room.  It was definitely not a motivating thought!  A lot of that time was just spent in finding something to cover the carpet in our living room so that I had a hard and protected space to paint in.  The three panels that I painted last weekend took about that much time for all of them (we now have only two windows in our living room and laminate floors…so much easier!).  The painting is not perfect…there are a few smudges here and there but you would never notice unless you spread the curtains out and really scrutinized them. 
When I finished painting the curtains/tablecloths I draped them over the rods that I had installed to see where I needed to sew the pocket.  The beauty of using tablecloths is that they are already hemmed (see below) so I decided to take advantage of that and not hem them again. 

I know it is a small hem but these are lighthearted curtains (not drapes) and I wanted something fast and easy.  :)
I marked the spot on the curtains where the pocket needed to go, took them off the rod, and laid them on the floor to pin across them so I would know where to sew and the curtain would be even. 


I decided I wanted the pockets to be 2” down from the top so I pinned several inches apart across the width of the curtain and sewed it to make the ruffle. 

I then measured another three inches down and cut across the extra fabric on the back of the curtain (as you can see in the zoomed out photo above, I had quite a bit of extra fabric after I folded the panel over for the pocket…so I just cut away the extra in this step).  While I slowly sewed another line across, this time just eye-balling a 2” distance from the first line, I folded the extra 3/4 of an inch of extra fabric under to make a finished edge.  It really is very simple…I just made it sound super complicated.  :)

Then…time for ironing to make sure the paint is permanent!  (This was recommended on the fabric medium label…I almost skipped it as I had already hung the curtains to admire, but I guilted myself into this step even though it meant taking the curtains down again temporarily.  It was tough!)

And finally hung them again…cue triumphant trumpet blasts!!

I know not everyone’s thing is purple…and not even sure if trellis is still considered cool (?) but two years later, I’m really loving my new, easy, and super cheap curtains! 


Linking up to these parties:  Not Just a Housewife, Made by you Monday (Skip to My Lou), Metamorphosis Monday (Between Naps on the Front Porch), That DIY Party (DIY Showoff),

Boooorrring Photo of My Living Room; or, how to spice up a corner?

I’m kind of all over the place when it comes to decorating our house.  I start one project, get thinking about another one, find something amazing thrifting or garage sale-ing which sets my creative gears in motion for yet something else, have a few pieces of furniture in the garage/shed waiting for the right spot to open up in the house---just like everyone else, right??  I’m sure there are many that have much more decorating multi-tasking going on than me (many!!!).  But still, my husband probably thinks I’m rather crazy…in a completely endearing way…of course.  :)  I am  still planning the big girl bedroom, although very slowly.  I also have a project involving stain going on in the garage. 
Which leads me to this picture of our living room in its current state this morning.  I pushed a basked of (clean) laundry out of the picture before I took it.  You’re welcome!


I’m sure there are many questions that could be asked now:
Weren’t you just talking about planning a big girl bedroom…are you easily distracted or something?
Why do you have a TV from the Dark Ages?
Why is the wall purpl-ish?
Do you ever clean your TV screen?
Is that an aquarium stand that the TV is sitting on?  (yes, yes it is)
All good questions I am sure.  But for today, I’m asking this question:
How does one decorate an awkward corner such as this?
This has been the burning question at the back of my mind this morning.  See all the outlets, switch, AC controls?  I’m trying to figure out how to camouflage them somehow, or at least make them look more intentional.  I realize our TV stand has much to be desired.  I was trying to give it away  before we moved but no one would come and take it off our hands for free.  We figured we can always burn it if we can’t get rid of it any other way (in that big fire pit we now have in the backyard!).  I would like to get a cabinet that will hide our TV completely (for reasons I’m sure you can completely understand!). 
I’m a very visual person, so off I went to find some pictures of corners that aren’t so embarrassingly boring.  It proved rather difficult to find corners that both looked nice and had a TV in them.  I’m sure for many having the TV out front and center would be no biggie, but we don’t really watch it that much and I personally hate how it looks so it seems like a good idea to hide it somehow.  Most of the pictures I found looked something like this:

(source)

Admittedly better than what we have now but not quite what I was going for.  I’m looking for something a little more along these lines, but with a (hidden)TV in there somewhere:

(source)

(Just a Girl Blog)

These corners are pretty and planned and less like the black holes of the room (or in our case, purple holes).  I love the collected look of these gallery corners too.  I’m kind of a sentimentalist so I’m always keeping little things that mean something to us.  This comes in handy when you’re trying to put together an arrangement with meaning in it!

I guess I’ll have to keep my eyes open on Craigslist and while thrifting to see if I can find a cabinet or other type of storage unit that our bulky TV will fit in (and that already is or has the ability to become pretty!).  Hmm, add that to the list!  I don’t need an excuse to go thrifting but I’ll always take one.  :)

Meanwhile, I know you’re wanting to pin my *gorgeous* living room corner so I’ll leave you to it!