Home Tour: The Living Room!

I know it's taken me forever to get around to posting pictures of our home, but we want each room to be near completion before we start broadcasting them. With that being said, we think we've got our living room DONE and ready to reveal. With the exception of a few things here & there we'd like to find it is pretty much done and we're pretty much obsessed with it! Obviously the living room is sort of the central point of the house and where we spend most of time, with or without guests, so we had to make sure we love the end result. And we DO! We've been sitting on the couch at night lately just breathing it all in and looking at all the pieces talking about their stories and how we've made or found everything together. And I am not exaggerating when I say everything, 100% of this room was thrifted, craigslisted, found, or made! This is something that is super important to me when decorating a space, I think I'm making it a new goal of mine to at least aim for 75% of every room we decorate to be like this (thrifted, craigslisted, found, or made). I posted about this before here for clothing and I totally have the same mind set when it comes to decorating a room/house. I'll do my best to walk you through the space and explain where everything comes from & how it ended up as is!

- We found our couch on Craigslist back in October and still absolutely LOVE it. It is so big & comfy, the perfect color, and so durable.

-Our table & chairs we got waaaaayyy back in January from a thrift store, January 2011 that is. We knew this would be the perfect size and style for us and we are loving enjoying our little meals for 2 or sometimes 4 seated around it. We also added the leaf in the other day and that gives us a lot more table space without cutting into our living room space at all. Still can't believe we found this at a little ole thrift shop.

-Our throw pillows are a combination of Target, Crate & Barrel, and of all places Dillards! All were purchased with gift cards, by the way : )

-The lamp stand was also a Target gift card purchase and the shade I had made for my junior year apartment used cheap fabric and a .99 cent Goodwill lamp shade.

-The grey ottoman you see the top of is known as Joel's "pouf". It was the ONE thing he HAD TO HAVE at Target (??) but we were in need of an ottoman so I let him use quite a substantial amount of a gift card to buy it. I have to admit I'm not mad about it and actually really enjoy his random taste, sometimes.

-The grey "end table" is an industrial storage cabinet that Joel found at a thrift store for $12. We like.

-This chair was found at Savers for... prepare yourselves... SIX BONES!! The fabric was in perfect condition and we didn't even want to touch that. We actually loved the original wood color it was but decided white would go much better with the space so we painted it.

-And then there's Duke... Oh Duke, the deer head. He's our bud. HE originally looked like this until we got our hands on him and, I know you're not gonna believe this, painted him white. Believe it or not this white deer head actually inspired a lot of this room for me.

-Now THIS chair was also a thrift store find but it originally was a creamy off-white with blue fabric. I had this thick upholstery black & white stripe fabric from a thrift store that was $1 for FOUR YARDS... problem solved. We had a guy I know recover it because I was too scared to attempt. But ta-da! Looks better than new.

-The end table WAS my $5 Goodwill table from college. We'd been looking for a table to go there and one night Joel looked over at my old blue nightstand and said "babe, why don't we just paint that black?" I fell in love with him all over again.


-The LOVE sign is a knock-off Pottery Barn sign I made. But my FAVORITE piece of art in our house (besides our "Live Well" sign) is the feather to the left of the LOVE sign. We found that in an ugly frame at Goodwill that someone drew with white ink on black board and signed their name with "keep drawing". We re-framed it with another Goodwill frame and wa-la, instant trendy-but-inspiring wall art!

- The coffee table was also re-painted from my college apartment, used to be red, and it's working out great! The rug is another one of my favorite things in the space and that was off our registry at Crate & Barrel! We love the shape & size of it.

- Of course our "Live Well Together" sign fits perfectly above our table and adds such a great visual impact to the room. The black candlesticks in the middle of the table were just random ones from my collection (yes, I have a candle stick collection and think everyone should) that I painted black.

- Last but not least we are using the short TV dresser again. This has now taken on a new meaning for us as it's what we used to light the unity candle on at our wedding : )

And I think that's all for now, folks. We're excited to keep adding to and changing the space and we've got plenty of room to do so but for now we are SO happy with it and love spending time in here. What do you think? If you've got questions or comments on anything I'd love to hear it! Like I said I'm a big believer in re-using, painting, finding and making and I hope little posts about how WE are doing this will inspire some of you!