Living Room for Christmas

I finally got around to photographing our living room for the holidays. 
I mentioned in my last post that we are using decor from previous years, and because of that, the living room decor was kept simple. I really think that's how we like things during this time of year. Things can get pretty busy during the holidays, and when you don't have all that much time to put into decorating (like us) it helps us feel like we aren't overdoing things!

The tree was nicely decorated by our girls and their Mema this year. We love that our Christmas tree has many years of memories on it- including some hand-made things I made when I was about the same age as my daughters. :) It's fun to see the kids ask about a few of those ornaments on the tree.

The turkey was made by my oldest and the Christmas tree I made when I was in kindergarten.

I also added this green rug to the couch. It's a pretty thin rug and after moving it around to a few spots in the house, it's finally settled back into the living room (where it was originally). Except this time, I placed it on the couch, because, why not?! ;)

Below is a view of our banister decorated with some garland I have used in the past and some pine cones my girls and I found around our neighborhood.

Both of our girls made a star ornament (one at church and the other at school) and I love how they added it to the top of our tree. It makes it more personal and it's something I hope we have for many years to come!

I still have a few other spots to photograph (like the girls room and our bedroom), so once those are done, I will post them as well. I really like this time of year- our house feels so cozy and warm with all the Christmas decor and the lights!

Do you enjoy decorating your space for the season?

Changing Up the Gallery Wall

There are so many ways that you can show case your family memories throughout your home. 
I've said it before and I will say it again- one of my favorite ways to do so is by creating at least one gallery wall in your home. And you can pretty much put one up anywhere. Our living room was one of the first places we put a gallery wall up and recently I decided to change it up a bit.

We started with a blank slate after we moved in: 

After going back and forth about what to put up on the upper part of that wall you see pictured, I decided the easiest thing to do was paint the walls a khaki/beige/green color I mixed together. Then I decided this would make a perfect spot for a gallery wall so I added a few photos we already had (I really didn't want to buy more frames either, so we worked with what we had).
But I always thought the pictures looked a little too small for the space because that wall is so long. So I had kept it in the back of my mind that it would probably be changing at some point so we could add more photos to the mix.

 

And then my parents visited a few weeks ago.
And guess what?!

They brought with them a large plastic tub filled with older photos that were placed in these nice wooden frames....and a light bulb went off!
I thought, "these will be perfect to use for our new gallery wall!"

So I laid out how I wanted the pictures to look by placing the frames on the floor. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I went ahead and nailed each frame up on the wall...and this time, I decided to go with the "Go big or go home" approach by adding a lot more photos. 
Boy am I happy I did!

I think it turned out much better than I imagined and we like it much more now that we can see more personal photos of our family. I also feel that by adding more pictures, the wall space was better utilized. Plus, this will allow me to switch out pictures easily as the kids get older and we have more photos to add.
I also wanted to note that I mixed the colors of my frames up a bit- going with brown, white, and black. It keeps things from looking too matchy-matchy (something I'm not always a fan of in decorating).

How do you hang pictures in your home? Are you a fan of the bigger gallery walls like I am?

Living Room- Green Walls

Green.

It is one of my favorite colors. 

Oddly enough, I have never had a green room in our home (if you don't count the one time I painted the girls bathroom green and then quickly repainted it a different color because it didn't look right).
I don't know why, but for me, green is a tough color to pick out. There are so many shades of green and it can be hard to narrow it down to just one right color.

 Our daughter admiring the tree :)

To come up with the color for this room, I knew we needed something that would work with the wood trim because we didn't want to paint over it. I also wanted a color that would work with the rest of our downstairs which is mostly light gray.

I started by buying two samples of Benjamin Moore colors (mixed at Lowe's) to test on the walls. One was Gray Mirage (a really beautiful color!) and the other was Vale Mist. I didn't like Vale Mist right off the bat and Gray Mirage was the color I loved at first swipe. 
But, I wasn't 100% sold on buying a new gallon of paint....so I looked through my stash of leftover paint/samples and mixed 5 different colors together in a left over gallon I had and came up with the color you see pictured here. 
No joke, the color is actually really, really close to Gray Mirage (the one I loved but didn't want to buy a gallon of). I couldn't believe it! I even asked my husband to look at the two colors up on the wall next to each other and see if he could spot the difference between the two. He couldn't even tell there was a difference! :)
It was then that I decided to just go for it and use that color for this space.

Now our living room walls are this nice shade of green. It almost has a greige undertone to it and in some lights looks like a greige but in direct sunlight it is pretty obvious that it has a green base.

The photo above is blurry but you can see how the green pairs well with the hallway color (which is BM's Gray Owl). 

I'm pretty smitten with the new color and am very happy it turned out like I pictured. 

And sorry for the quality of some of the photos...I took these pictures while holding our youngest which was quite the balancing act!

It's December!!!

It's December! Can you believe it?! 
The days and months are sure flying by to me and I am really trying to take it all in one day at a time and enjoy every second of it. 

With Christmas not too far away, we started decorating around the house. We added a few touches here and there....the plan was to keep things simple but still Christmassy (if that's even a word).  :)

I added a garland to our stairs with some stockings and ornaments to adorn it. We put up our tree and went with silver and gold as the theme this year. I can't wait for our girls to see their presents under the tree. Now that they are a bit older (but still very young) they will remember this Christmas more than the last, and that is extra special to me. 

We have also been reading from Scripture every night and plan to keep that up on a regular basis, not just for the holidays. They get excited about it now because after we are done reading about Jesus, they get a little treat at the end. I think most importantly, we want them to know that God loves them NO MATTER WHAT. We want our kids to know that God has loved them ever since the beginning and will always.


You may or may not have noticed a new wall color in the living room. (see picture above).
I haven't painted the whole room yet...but the plan is to go with a beautiful color by Benjamin Moore called Gray Mirage. It is lovely!! Right when I put the sample up, I knew it was the one. We plan on keeping the wood trim the same and not painting over it, so I wanted something that not only went with the rest of the house, but something that would compliment the wood tones we have in there. It is also one of Candace Olsen's favorite color, so that was a plus! It is a nice rich gray with strong green undertones that compliment the wood trim we have. I'm looking forward to that room being finished soon.

Here are some examples of how Gray Mirage looks in other rooms if you are curious:



 

 

 

It's a muddy color with great undertones...hard to go wrong with it I think. And it looks great with wood trim as you can see. 

I hope everyone has a great week and a fun time decorating for the season!

On My Mind

To continue a little bit of my last post, I have decided to keep the wood trim in the living room AND keep the front door painted in a pretty dark gray called Ashwood Moss. As of now, the two don't go that well together. However, before I even think about painting over the original wood trim in the living room, I want to try one last thing: painting the walls in that room. I definitely don't want to make a decision I regret (especially when it comes to painting over nice wood trim) so because I love both the trim and the door color, I'm going to keep both for now.
Also, thank you to those who commented and messaged me about the change. I appreciate all of your input and thought about each comment. So thank you!!

Before we moved into our home a year ago, the original owners painted the upper part of the walls a light cream color and the bottom was a medium-toned brown. While I have nothing against those colors, it doesn't mesh with the rest of our home, so we will be painting over them. Plus, the painters they hired actually missed a few spots that are very noticeable and we have had folks comment about it because it is kind of obvious...so it is next on the list to take care of. 

I love Benjamin Moore's Horizon, Gray Wisp, and Sea Haze. Those are on the list as testers for the new wall color, but we might not get to painting that room until the new year (which will be here before we know it!)

In other news, we have a few packages coming in the mail soon. They are on their way and one of them is something I have been wanting to purchase for a long time.I know our kiddos will simply LOVE it.
Here is a "hint" as to what it might be! ;)



I'm hoping it arrives this week, and when it does I will be sure to blog about it!!

Still Much to Do, but Here Is Progress in our Living Room

 **Note: This room is by no means finished, but this is the progress we have made so far after living in this home for 11 months.

What we love about this room is the original moulding on the windows and the walls. I painted quite a few pieces of woodwork in this house but really want to keep the moulding in here original without painting it. I know that to some people, that may mean that it doesn't necessarily flow well with the rest of the house, but there is something about the way this room looks with the wood trim that I love and I don't want to mess with that. It feels warm and cozy and I want our living room to feel that way.

In the picture below, I want to add some window artwork to that empty big wall...I'm thinking something along the lines of these ideas. 

Originally, this room started out as my husband's office. It worked for a little while, but overall wasn't that great of an idea because whenever he would have work to do at home, our girls would just keep coming in here and playing and that would make work for him a little hard to complete. So we moved his office (someday I will have that done and ready to show) to another, much smaller, room in the house with a door and that has worked out really well for him.

Plus, I like the fact that I can decorate this room now and we actually do use it quite a bit as a nice sitting room to read and relax.

Oh, and you will see pictures of this sweet one popping up here and there on this post because she just HAD to get in the pictures. Of course I didn't mind. :)

Eventually, I would love to switch out the pillows on the couch for something a little more substantial, like what we have in our family room, but for now these will stay.
I would also like to add a decorative mirror between the 2 windows where the couch sits. I have yet to find the right one.

This little girl and her poses. She loves the camera! I don't even have to tell her to smile...she just hams it up for the picture on her own.

And this is what the room looked like a few months ago when we began rearranging things around. That recliner got moved to the family room and the desk was moved to the other side of the living room. Those lights hanging also came down...they were from the original owners but were a little outdated for me, so we threw them out. Plus, one of them was cracked and missing glass and they never worked. So much for functional hanging lights!

All in all we are pretty happy with the progress made so far in here. It's always fun to see how a room changes over time. 
It will probably take me another year to fully complete, but that's how life goes when you have 3 little ones. :)

Thanks for stopping by!