I Have Designs For Those Rooms

I'm exhausted and dying to go to sleep, but I wanted to cheer myself up a bit by talking about My Brilliant Plan for our family room. (I hope this is coherent, because I'm so very tired.)

There are two things that you would realize about me if you walked into my house these days. The first is that I love to decorate. However, we moved into this house when I was in my second trimester, and my pregnancy exhaustion and then that whole having an infant tihng kept me from having the energy to buy decor, hang paintings and curtains, paint walls and furniture and do all those other things I love. I didn't even have the energy to buy proper family room furniture instead of the uncomfortable and awkwardly placed hand-me-down furniture we currently have in there. We don't even have a coffee table! All of the beautiful decorating I've done for this house has been in my head, usually during those late night wakings when I nursed the baby in the dark with nothing to do but think.

The second thing is that I hate hate hate clutter. It drives me nuts. I will try to let things go, but if it stays cluttered for too long, I just can't take it and a blow up about how I can't stand the house and have to do something. The problem in this house has been two things: our kitchen and family room don't have enough places to put things (no pantry in the kitchen?!?!), and the baby has a lot of stuff and I've not bought things to put them in. So it overflows in the kitchen and in the family room.

And I've had it. I cannot take the current furniture or the clutter. And now that it's spring, I have a bit of energy to do the shopping I have needed to do. I finally got Londo on board with the couch I have coveted for 3 years, and I ordered it last week! It won't be in for 8-10 weeks, but then we will have the perfect couch! We have found a great leather chair (I think it was that one) for Londo that we need to order. I've been working on a coffee table, an accent chair and shelves for storage.

Speaking of storage, I'm dying for some place to store the toys (and cookbooks and magazines and whatever else). We don't have an overload of toys, although we do have plenty. We just have no where to put it all where it would be organized and accessible. I was ready to break down and just buy some cheesy plastic bucket-shelf thingy which looks like something for a kid's playroom with its primary colors and cheapness, which would definitely not match the nice decor I had in mind for the room. But I need to put those toys SOMEWHERE!

Then I read this post by Jen of Amazing Trips. I was inspired! I was not going to settle for some piece of crap in my family room! I was going to search for the vision I had in my head and make it happen! So that afternoon, after checking online, I went to Pottery Barn Kids. They have this fantastic modular shelving system that is EXACTLY what I have in mind. I'm going to get three of four pieces and put them on top of each other in the perfect spot in the family room. I think I'm going to get the honey color, because I got the couch in oatmeal and we'll get a brown leather chair, so I think the honey will keep with the relaxed, casual feel of the room.

I've also suggested that we get this activity table (although I will probably get these storage bins) to use as our coffee table. With the storage bins underneath, it can hold a lot of the Pumpkin's toys, as well as blankets and other items we have kicking around the room. Once the Pumpkin is older, we can either take the bins out from under and keep it as our coffee table or let her (and any future kids) have it as a play table. I asked Londo what he thought about the activity table as a coffee table. He was fine with it. When pressed, he said he just wants a coffee table. Any coffee table. Just somewhere to put his cup of coffee. I could pick whatever I wanted. So, I've picked.

Londo wants to do some final measuring to make sure what I want will truly fit where I want it to. After that, I will go to the store and buy the shelves and table! The best part about those is that the store has the honey-colored shelves and table in stock, so I will be able to bring it home immediately!

Next on my list is ordering the leather chair and finding a proper table for the kitchen. I'm thinking this one (in mahogany) might be perfect or maybe this (although not those chairs) for our smallish kitchen, but I have to measure the space, look at them in person and think about what would be just right. I also want to look at other stores and see if I can't find an even better table at a better price. After that, I will work on finding an accent chair, a media stand for the TV, and a console table for behind the couch. Fortunately, I don't feel the rush to do this all right away, as Londo and I have agreed to buy them piece by piece, making sure each item fits in the room correctly and works for us and then evaluating what we really need next.

I'm so excited about finally decorating the two rooms we use the most in the house! I do have a limited budget (which we've had set aside since the sale of our last house), but I'm looking into sales and prioritizing what we need most.

Alright, now it's way later than I intended to go to bed, but I am in a really good mood thinking about all this. We're also going to go through our boxes of pictures and knick knacks that we haven't unpacked since we moved to find just the right decor to match the room. And then, maybe then, I'll feel like I live in a house that I've made my own, like I've got rooms in which I've put my creative ideas into reality. If I can do this and be happy with it, I hope to continue my momentum and finish up some of the other rooms--maybe even all of them!

And then, I'm sure we'll move again.