Heya!! I hope you’re having a great week. This week I received some cool news:  Coupon Network’s Smart Living Blog loved my laundry room feature on The Organized Mom. Their feature of my feature was a complete surprise and had me on Cloud 9 for quite awhile , so THANKS Amori and Smart Living Blog! Check it out and show them some love, K?

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And now on to the Family Room….

So remember how eleventy billion several months ago we moved from Florida to Texas? Well, it’s almost been a year (wow…already?!), and I am still getting things settled how I like them. I can be a pretty “All or Nothing” kind of person, so I haven’t really shown a lot of how I’ve decorated the new digs. I thought that I had to have everything pretty and perfect and decorated and magazine worthy before I blogged about each room.

Well, let’s be honest…that’s not going to really happen since decorating a home costs moolah (which you sometimes have to save up for), and it takes awhile for me to get the look I’m after (once I’ve decided what that is). There is a constant evolution of object placement. Not everything goes the way it did in a previous house. And nothing stands still in my house for long because, when it comes to decorating, everything is fair game around here.

So if I waited until things were just right, I’d never take pictures or blog because I am always tweaking, always redoing. Instead, I’ve abandoned that way of thinking. I’m going to show you how things look, whether they are my Pinterest perfect picture or not.

Lucky you.  ;)

A month or two prior to our move, I redid our living room for under $40. This is how things looked right before we packed up:

And now….

Welcome to our Texas Family Room

We spend the majority of our time in this room…watching TV, playing Wii, hanging out as a family, reading on the couch. There is ALWAYS something going on in here. (As well as an incessant amount of putting away toys and straightening up that resembles the feeling of brushing your teeth while eating Oreos…)

Earlier this week I shared an update on the TV dresser/media console. If you missed this post, please check it out here.

There are a few minor tweaks I need to make to it, including repainting the whole $&@^# thing for the third time. And now that I’ve been looking at it through the blogs’ eyes, I’m about 99.9% sure I want to take back the 8 smaller glass knobs and exchange them for…..what? I have no idea. So, my love/hate relationship with this piece of furniture is in full swing. Let’s see if things can be resolved peacefully. (Cuz I really want love my blue dresser! Smooches!)

Moving on…

Our sofa and white Ikea slipcovers we bought last year have held up great. I LOVE that I can wash them (all the freakin’ time) when cute people get marker and juice and muddy footprints on the cushions. The choice to buy white was a little iffy, but I really love it. So much so, that every time I envision other sofas for other rooms in the house, they are also white. We’ll see….

The couch may be working out, but the ottoman is on the list of ”Things to do…Eventually.” I’m pretty much over the fabric, and some stuffing is coming out from somewhere underneath. So it’s time. I’ll definitely reupholster it, but I’m debating if I’ll keep it in here. The boys love jumping on it, and I like the extra seating. Plus then I wouldn’t have to buy a new coffee table. But, then again, I could get a new coffee table. Hmm. Again, we’ll see…

The sofa pillows are doing well, thanks for asking. My no-sew placemat pillows are my favorite to use while I’m chillin’ on the couch cuz they’re squishy, but I’m starting to think I’d like to look around for some newer, updated pillows and use these in another room. (Maybe that’s because I keep seeing such faaa-reeeeking cute pillows around blogland, Target, Etsy….pretty much everywhere I look.) Add pillows to the every growing list of things that may or may not get changed in this house.

This area of the room looks pretty much like how things were in our previous home.

To learn more about the “D” pillow, go here.

The only GLARINGLY OBVIOUS difference is the empty wall space above the chair. It has taken me literally the whole time I’ve lived here to figure out what I should put up here. That’s partly because I keep hoping we can swap the TV to this side of the room and mount it to the wall. But after lots of trial and error, (for now) it seems like things will stay this way. So even though it only bugs me a little that The Hubs won this debate, I think I found the solution to the blank wall after reading Sarah at Thrifty Decor Chick’s post about a small gallery wall in her living room.

Thanks, Sarah, for always always inspiring me.

(I say this cuz someday…SOMEDAY she’ll read Free Stylin’. I can feel it.)

So far the only family picture we have up in this family room is this oh so cute pic of my boys’ feet that my mother-in-law took and had framed for us. (The top picture is of Pickle’s tennis shoes on the last day of school. I think it’s a cool way to capture how BUSY this boy is…his shoes had been through so much! And I can’t get over how little J’s feet used to be. My sweet babies are growing up so fast!!)

Maybe we should put up a few more pictures of the family in the family room? How weird would that be…too weird?  I have a bunch of different styles of gallery walls pinned on my Pinterest Frame This and Office pinboards, so feel free to check them out if you’ve got a minute. I think a gallery wall above the chair is perfect for the space, and it brings a little family into the family room.

Once you’ve gotten past the blindingly blank wall, did you notice anything else super ridiculous about my family room? Like maybe the fact that I have fabric samples on the blinds but no drapes? Yeah. These samples have been here for months. MONTHS. I am seriously in no hurry to accomplish anything. Ever.

The fabric I’ve chosen is called Covington – Wilmington.

Source

I originally saw this pattern on Emily Clark’s windows in her office. They are so pretty!

Emily A. Clark

Then my sister made kitchen curtains out of the fabric, and, after seeing it in person I knew this print would work well in our family room. My sis gave me her leftover fabric scraps, and there they’ve hung…on my blinds…until the end of time. Better run over to the fabric store before they quit making it. Or before Pickle goes off to college. Whichever comes first.

Here’s exhibit…what…F? G? Z??! of why I didn’t want to blog about my family room until things were picture perfect. My mantle is boring. Don’t fall asleep looking at it. I put up our framed print of Monet’s Nympheas (that has made an appearance in just about every home we’ve lived in) and added my trophy vase. I think the mantle’s only redeeming quality is a beautiful turquoise vase my aunt gave us as a house warming gift (which is, by the way, quickly climbing the ranks to becoming my favorite decorative accessory in my home).

It’s all a good start, but I’m still trying to figure out what else to put up here. I can totally see the name of my next pinboard…Mantles.  ;)

Again, don’t fall asleep looking at it.

The only other part of this room I haven’t mentioned much about is our new rug. I found this large rug at Garden Ridge over the summer for $80. Although I’d like to get a rug pad to go underneath, I have been really happy with it. I absolutely love the color and pattern, and it goes perfectly with the TV dresser and drapery fabric. The rug warms up the tile floor and is easy to clean, too.

So overall the family room has had a few minor changes, but it’s shaping up nicely here in Texas. I love the amount of windows and light we have now, which is also perfect for watching the boys in the backyard. I still have my hands full with some minor projects in here, so be on the lookout for some future family room posts.

Again, lucky you.

By the way, don’t forget to enter the Q-tips $25 American Express card Giveaway here.

This Giveaway closes tomorrow at noon CST. 

Have a great weekend!