Occasional Genius: Our New Digs: The Living Room

I've been wanting to share pictures of our new house for awhile now, but wanted to wait until we were finished decorating. Then I realized that's going to be years, so I might as well show everything while it's in progress. :)

Here's the living room the day we closed on the house:

Yes, you're going to see a toddler in every single picture. I actually do try to get pictures without her, but it's kind of a waste of breath.

Here's a month after we moved in. Pictures on the wall, and all the basic furniture in place:

Another view. Most everything is the same from our apartment. The curtains are new, and we bought a second curtain rod since we only had one window in the apartment. The end table was brought out from our bedroom & the lamp on it is new. Josh hates the lamp, but it's just temporary anyway. I plan for it to go in the office.

This week we made a few small changes that yielded big results:

We mounted the TV on the wall (how funny-- seriously, who would have ever thought we'd hang our TV's on the wall?), brought the 2nd end table out from the bedroom, bought 2 lamps, a rug, and a bunch of pillows.

Don't worry, we repositioned the rug after these photos were taken. My friend Sherry is a designer & gives me advice. And I follow through about as well as Amelia Bedelia. It's still at an angle, just the opposite angle, like any sane human would have done from the beginning. :) Sherry has to keep me straight on these things.

Fun story about these pillows. I bought 9 pillows at Ross. I knew it was way too many, but I figured Josh & I could narrow it down once we saw them in the room. But once I laid them all out on the couch, I fell in love! So far I've got the total number down to 8. Not sure how I'm going to knock any more out.

The couch really needed this pop of color & excitement. It's getting kind of old, so these pillows do a great job of distracting the eye!

And these lamps... I'm in love! They're burlap covered lampshades with that pretty pattern cut out. They are from Ross as well. I need to find a solution for all these cords, though. Pretty unsightly with the simple end tables we have.