Living Room Shuffle

So the folks in my home are a bit under the weather. My nose is getting a bit tender from wiping and I'm getting sick of hearing myself sniffle. I can't imagine how everyone around me must feel about it. But none of us are just flat out sick...yet. I fear I may be down and out this weekend. Maybe it will just improve from here. Here's hoping.

On Wednesday I had the carpets cleaned. The guy was scheduled to come at 9:00 am, so as soon as the kids left for school I started moving furniture out of the way. I emptied the living room of everything but the piano, moved all the toys in the boys' room onto their beds, and cleared the family room as best I could. Then I quickly vacuumed through each room. I made sure the bathroom was tidied up in case he got a glimpse in there, and then I proceeded to clean up breakfast and tidy the kitchen. By this time I had worked up quite a sweat. It was after 9 at this point, so I finished up what I was working on and decided to take a break and check Facebook. When it was almost 10 and he still wasn't here, I decided to give them a call. Turns out, in the process of switching over from the 2011 appointment book to the new 2012 one, my appointment did not get transferred. I really did not want to put all the furniture back and do it all over again another day, so I reluctantly took a time slot later in the day for about an hour before my kids were due home from school. Not ideal. Five kids, wet carpet. None of this is really relevant to this post, except to tell you that they were so sweet and apologetic. They gave me a big discount on the cleaning and even let me use the big fans for drying the carpet overnight. What IS relevant, is that having all the furniture moved out of the room meant that it was very easy to put everything back in a different place. I think that's really the key with rearranging furniture: take everything out and start with a clean slate.

A week ago my living room looked like this:



Today it looks like this:


We are loving the new furniture arrangement. I pulled in the lamp from the guest room, put the curtains back up, pulled the throw pillows back out, and shuffled shuffled shuffled.

A few months ago I painted the room in the two tones of gray and painted the trim white. Now I'm agonizing over what color to paint the stairway and the hallway. (And the dining room too, for that matter.)



The living room, kitchen, dining room area used to all be a neutral tan-ish color. There was so much beige/wood tones/tan going on in this house it made me crazy: carpet, cabinets, walls, piano, furniture, trim. So I don't want to turn around and just paint everything gray now. Suggestions? I have a whole palette of neutral, lighter colors picked out. I think any of them would work, actually. But I'm finding it hard to commit. I actually think it's easier to work with stronger colors, but I'm loving how the lighter colors brighten the place up.

Linking up to Feathered Nest Friday

Living Room Tree

How do people keep up with blogging during the holiday season? I missed the Christmas tree party over at Thrifty Decor Chick, but still wanted to share my tree. So here goes.

We had an absolutely gorgeous day for tree-getting. Seriously, we couldn't have asked for more perfect weather. It was warm, with a light snow falling and sunshine weakly shining through, just enough to create a warm glow.

We traipsed out to the back portion of the tree farm and searched carefully for the perfect tree, shaking showers of snow from evergreen boughs.



We finally settled on a full, medium height tree for the family room, and a small, narrow but full tree for the living room.




We were able to catch a ride back to the barn on the hay wagon.


We enjoyed (free!) hot chocolate in the barn while the workers sent our trees through the shaker and binder. Lincoln and I secured them to the top of our car and we merrily toted them home.

The family room tree is the one we decorate together. This one gets colored lights, (we bought new LED lights for it this year and we LOVE them), and all the ornaments collected over the years. There are ornaments that I made as a kid, ornaments my kids have made, ornaments I purchased at the Dollar Store before I was married, and colorful, rustic ornaments we've collected as a family.

The living room tree is mine to decorate. I start with all white lights. This tree gets regular small lights, a couple strings of C9 white lights, and a couple strings of candle lights that I found at Goodwill several years ago. On this tree I put some antique ornaments I purchased at an antique store this year on our anniversary trip. ( I tried to stick with colors that were similar, but I couldn't resist the train one, knowing Jesse would love it.)








I also put our glitzier ornaments here that fall into the gold, crystal, shiny, category.

I placed the Symbols of Christmas ornaments on this tree, too.



I like to juxtapose glittery ornaments with rustic, which is how these wooden bead candy canes we made this year ended up on this tree.



Plus, they look great with our set of wooden ornaments that Lincoln's step-father has made for us. For a while he was making a new one for us every year.



The whole look gets set off with some red, glittery snowflakes I bought at Walmart last year. I just can't resist throwing in some red. Plus, it helps tie in the train ornament. The base gets wrapped in red burlap.

The cat finds it cozy.

And in the same room, the piano "mantle".


*Disclaimer: Will I ever gain the patience to hide my lights cords better? This is obviously not my forte.

***Looks like I'm not too late. This is the last day!
I can't get the button to work, but here's the link to the Christmas Tree Party!