Decorating for Two: Living Room Edition

When I was describing the house offer situation earlier this week, I left out a couple details.  I would like to think that I did not get emotionally attached to the house, but the truth is, I didn’t even try to stay away from letting my emotions cling to the house.

You see, I’m very good at rationalizing things to myself and my hubby.  Before we even saw the house, I was dreaming of how we would decorate the house if we got it.  Surely, by making a few moodboards (that took a few hours to create), I would not get emotionally attached to the house.

Yeah, right.  I promise I’m not as dumb as I seem!  I’m just a passionate dreamer!  I rationalized the mood boards by telling myself that we could easily use the moodboards for a different home – I was simply trying to determine our style before we got to a house.  It’s a very important house hunting step to determine your style first, right?  Hmmm….not really.

Instead of letting the mood boards go to waste until we find a house (if we even use them when that day comes), I thought I would share with you what our combined decorating style is, since our apartment is definitely not the best reflection of it (read: no time or money to make our apartment pretty at the moment and we were waiting to get a house before we went all out on décor).

My decorating style could be described as feminine, colorful, bright, cottagey, and quirky.  Mr. Converse Sneaker’s decorating style is more masculine, with more neutral colors, darker tones, and less bright.  After living together for a while now and sharing our likes and dislikes, we have started to be drawn to similar rooms.

Here are some rooms we both like (neither of us are in love with any of the rooms, but we both like most of each one).  Click on any of the images to be taken to the pin on my Pinterest.











We both like:

• A large amount of neutrals (usually white, light gray, or deep mocha brown) with lighter pops of color
• Light-colored sofas (I prefer an English roll arm sofa and Mr. CS likes anything that looks comfy)
• Nothing that is overly matchy
• Fun, quirky details
• Vintage/retro details

When I saw our dream house, I knew the entry way living room would make a perfect place to create a multifuctional room that works as an entry way, living room, office, and library.  This is the mood board I came up with:



Click here or on the image to head to the original mood board on Polyvore (where I created it) to get get more details about each item.  I wasn’t going for a specific source list we would use, since we would probably find most items by thrifting, researching like crazy, or making them ourselves.  This was to serve as a jumping off point for the room.

I started with the entry way area, which is on the left side with a console table that would hold papers, keys, gloves, and boots.  Above it would be some really awesome abstract art that would serve as the piece that determines the room’s color scheme.  I saw some cute hooks with the letter “s” on them since both our names and our last name start with “s” that we could hang our keys on or even dog leashes once we get a dog.  I really had it all planned out!

We would get a cute owl umbrella holder (Mr. CS loved that detail) and hang a wooden wall pocket system by the closet door to sort our mail.

The living room portion of the room is found in the middle of the image.  Of course, it would have an English rolled arm sofa (my absolutely favorite) with some fun pillows.  The curtains would be layered to make the room a little fancier and would pull in the blue.  The rug would add a graphic trellis pattern and more blue.  Instead of having all white furniture since we like to mix and match different finishes, the coffee table and media console would be richly stained wood.  I had plans of including a whole wall of art and photos since I’m a gallery wall fanatic.

Then, along the back wall of the room that would also act as a hall and the first thing people would see when they walked in, would be two white bookshelves flanking a secretary desk.  The book shelves would be beautifully styled (of course) to bring in more color and personality.  The secretary desk would serve as our command center where we would pay bills, write letters, meal plan, etc.

As much as this mood board was catered to a very specific room in mind, we could easily take many of the ideas and plan them to a different room, perhaps even in an apartment.  I was sad when I found out we would not be getting the house because I was really excited for this room, but at least now we have a point of reference that we both love (yes, my hubby is fully on board with the design scheme, I can barely believe it) that we can turn to when making decorating decisions.

What do you think of our combined style?  Have you ever planned an entire room, only to learn that it would never work or the room you planned it for would never be yours?

Linking up with Five Days . . . 5 Ways

Turquoise Tree-Inspired Living Room Mood Board

Do you ever wonder, “What if I had the money to completely transform my _____ room?”  I love dreaming of how I would decorate a room differently because it helps me to better determine my design style (which I have yet to figure out because I like so many things).  Every Christmas I find myself wondering how a tree can be decorated to match a certain room I see on a blog or in a magazine.  Christmas is such a fun time to play up décor and try something new.  To mix my want of designing a tree to match a room and completely scheming up a brand new room, I have made a mood board.

I picked a Christmas tree from the Christmas tree inspiration post I shared earlier this week:



I am as madly in love with this tree as someone could be with a tree, but am not too fond of the room.  I’m not a huge fan of super-traditional spaces and overly matchy rooms.  I love the turquoise, but it’s a bit too much in this room.  I loved the dog, however, so he/she stayed.  She looks like a Norma to me.  Anyway, I have wondered what this tree would look like in a different room, so I designed a whole room to fit the tree, not to match it completely but a room that the tree would naturally fit in.

Here’s what I came up with (say hi to Norma):



I admit, my eyes get a bit of sensory overload when they look at that image, but after staring at it for a few seconds, little hearts appear in my pupils because I love it oh so very much!  I really love rooms that have some daring splashes of color but balance neutrals as well.  Keep reading to see why I chose every piece and find the links to each item.

1. I couldn’t help but pull in this Michelle Armas painting.  Even Mr. Converse Sneakers likes it and that’s saying a lot since we rarely agree on anything design-related.  He gave this room an “8” by the way.  Not bad!  We both love the abstract splotches of bright colors that make us happy when we look at the painting.  Over time, the room could pull in many other colors since the painting offers so many.  Also, it could act as a conversation piece – just tell guests that the painting is called “Zombie Jeeves” and they’ll be staring quizically at it all night while you steel extra helpings of stuffing.

2. There’s not much to say about this media console.  It’s cute, it’s white, it has beadboard, and it’s quaint.  When I was originally dreaming up this room, I imagined the tree being in a coastal cottage room, but I strayed from that.  The console definitely still gives off that vibe but fits in the room.

3. Oh, the rug.  Oh, how I love this rug.  I’ve discovered over the years that gray is one of my favorite neutral colors (along with white).  If I had to pick a favorite shade of gray, the gray of this rug would be the winner.  I love the kind of bohemian pattern that is a play on both traditional and contemporary geometric patterns.  It’s a winner in my can’t-decide-if-I’m-a-modern-or-traditional-decorator heart.

4. I couldn’t help but imagine what Mr. CS would want in this room, and since he is a huge fan of orange, I thought, “What the heck,” and threw the ottoman in the mix.  I love the sherbet tone of orange and of course am totally won over by the tufting and it’s mini footprint.  I also like how it compliments without matching completely with the yellow ikat pillow.

5. When I use a neutral color to ground a room, I like to layer different shades of it around the room to add interest and keep the neutrals from becoming boring.  When I spotted this chair, I knew it would blend in nicely with the room because of its darker gray color and the straight lines that would balance out the curves of the other upholstered pieces.

6. I just love little round side tables!  I don’t know what it is about them, but they always look so nice next to a chair.  I like how it looks next to the straight-lined chair and isn’t begging for clutter to be placed on its small top.

7. I had a hard time picking a lamp.  Should it be crystal, colorful, nickel , oil-rubbed bronze, etc.?  So many choices!  So, I just picked a small, simple one that would blend in since there are already enough colors and patterns in the room.

8. I chose this coffee table because of its deep wood tone and its many drawers.  I like chunky wood pieces of furniture and thought this would help balance the otherwise light-and-bright room.  Plus, it would add some storage!

9. This sofa made and appearance on my wishlist yesterday and is back once more (just like the painting).  I picked the sofa first before anything else because I knew it would look great with the tree.  It’s a little bit traditional, a little bit modern.  It’s both masculine and feminine.  And, get this, it can be both formal and casual.  It’s the perfect sofa, if you ask me.  Love, love, LOVE!

10. I picked the turquoise and yellow ikat pillows to bring in some more color and to help the tree fit in a little more.  I wasn’t a huge fan of ikat when it first made its appearance, but I have been drooling over the almost polka-dot ikat since I saw it.  I had to add the yellow version because I love how it looks with the turquoise, gray, and dark pink.  Funny, all of those colors were in our wedding!

11. I initially picked out neutral tan curtains because I imagined the walls being painted a light blue, but since this is a mood board and not a real room, there are no walls, so I brought in more blue with these fun trellis curtains.  I’m a little scared when it comes to layering patterns, but I think I did an okay job this time!

Too bad this isn’t a real room, because I love it!  I may have found my style.  What would you call this style?  I may have to come up with my own name.

If your Christmas tree sprouted a brand new room to match, what would it look like?

Dreaming of a Blue Christmas

Nobody in Minnesota has to dream of a white Christmas.  Most years we don’t have to dream about a white Thanksgiving, and some years dreaming of a white Halloween would be pointless because there is already a dusting of snow.  So, I’m dreaming of a blue Christmas.  I don’t like that blue is equated sadness because to me it the most beautiful, happy color.  I grew up with beautiful burgundy, gold, and forest green Christmas décor, which is beautiful, but I like bright, cool colors.

I had a blog that I stopped for a year before I started this one, and during Christmas time 2009 I blogged about blue Christmas decorations.  I’m guessing it’s not a color I’m going to grow out of.  At that time, I had no tree or money for decorations.  This year, however, I took the little money we had and I worked it.  I’ll be revealing our Christmas décor sometime before Christmas (I have so many posts planned this month I’m not sure where it will fit in), but for now, I’m going to show you the photos that inspired my blue Christmas obsession.  Okay, I love colorful vintage ornaments, too, so you’ll see some photos of those mixed in.  Click on any photo to be taken to its Pinterest source page.

We’ll start with my all-time favorite Christmas tree.  I’ve loved it since I first saw it two years ago:











I'm not normally a huge fan of pink, but pink vintage ornaments make my heart sing really loud Christmas carols.  Not sure what it is about them . . .














I posted a lot of photos of flocked trees.  One day, my dream is to have a flocked tree, but since we live in an apartment and it’s already snowy outside, I didn’t want to risk getting the flocking spray everywhere and somehow probably blowing up our apartment.  We’ll slowly build our Christmas collection.  Either way, I’m just thrilled to be able to decorate a little and start traditions with the man I’ll be celebrating every Christmas with for eternity.  It’s pretty exciting!

What colors inspired your Christmas decorating?

Favorite Thanksgiving Tables

I don’t know about you, buy boy am I excited for Thanksgiving this year!  I think I have been highly anticipating every holiday because each of them marks a first in our marriage.  First Labor Day, first Halloween, first Thanksgiving – don’t even get me started on first Christmas (just wait until next week when this blog becomes almost entirely devoted to all things Christmas- first birthdays, etc.  We are celebrating with my family on Friday, since Mr. Converse Sneakers works Thanksgiving Day (one drawback to his profession).  We hope to meet up with his family at some point as well, but we aren’t sure when.

Since we won’t be hosting a Thanksgiving dinner this year, I have been collecting inspiration photos for whenever the time comes for us to prepare the meal and decorate for the occasion.

Here are some of my newest additions (click on any photo to be taken to the source on Pinterest):





















Ahhhh- so pretty!  I think I will help my mom decorate the table if she doesn’t have plans for it already.  What will your Thanksgiving table look like?  Any photos from year’s past – I’d love to see them!

Making Room for the Crafter in Me

Between graduate school, working 25 hours a week, starting a photography business, teaching at my final field experience, adapting to married life, and driving my husband crazy, I have little extra time.   Some days I leave for work at 8am and get home from class at 10:30pm.  The little time that I do have left, I blog, spend time with my friends (which does not happen enough), and spend time with my adorable husband.  However, none of the things I do are solely “me” activities.  Sometimes I need a little me time, to clear my head, to feel good about myself, and to re-inspire myself for the next week or two.

Usually, me time includes crafting because it can be done cheaply, it is incredibly inspirational, and it helps us have pretty things without having to spend lots of money.  However, all of my crafty supplies are in our laundry/storage room which we have to go through our bathroom to get to.  It is not convenient at all, so we usually don’t do things that involve dragging boxes out of the storage room because that adds tons of extra time.



For example, when I made our “S” pillow, I spent nearly half an hour lugging all the materials I needed (sewing machine, scissors, sewing kit, sewing supplies, paper, etc.) from the storage room to our kitchen table upstairs.  When I am already limited on time to myself, I hate spending part of it just getting ready to do something fun and inspirational.

The problem we face with this whole scenario is that we don’t have another room to make into a craft room, which I would love, but it’s just not practical or even possible right now.  We barely have any extra space in our bedroom or living room.  As much as we want to live in a beautiful home with a room for every want and need, we would rather have spaces that fit our needs, regardless of whether they are completely pleasant to the eye (although that is always a bonus).  So, we decided (okay, it was more of a solo decision made by me – my hubby is great enough to let me do my own thing from time to time) to add an itty-bitty craft area.  But where would we put it?

Well, we brought down the bookcase I made with my dad so we could have our books closer, so that meant even less space in the living room.



It’s not shown in this photo, but it sat to the right of our entertainment stand.  That left the area next to our bedroom door, to the left of the access panel sticking out of the far wall in the photo above.  However, a craft area requires some kind of table surface, and that space has no room since we need a walkway to get into our bedroom.

So, we did a little rearranging and this is what we came up with:



We moved the bookcase to the empty spot on the far wall (I’m still working on how to arrange the books – bookcases can sometimes be a little chaotic with all the different book colors, but I’m not about to cover them all).  This arrangement gave us a tiny area next to the entertainment stand for a craft area.

When my parents came to visit us a couple weeks ago, they brought up a vintage sewing table they thought would be perfect.  Here it is in the space (it will be painted once I decide on a color):





Luckily, me sewing machine just barely fits in the drop down area so I can keep it close by without having it sitting out.  the top of the table has hinges so it opens up to twice the size, and it’s on casters so I can move it to the couch or somewhere else in the room if I don’t want to be cramped in the corner, keeping the bathroom door from opening.  It is not the ideal arrangement, but it’s the only one that makes sense.

This is just the first step for this little craft nook.  I have small dreams of what I want it to become over the next couple months (since this is not our main priority right now).  I did some searching around for what other people have done with small spaces to make little craft nooks:



















I would love to go all girl-crazy on the space, but because I share this room with my macho husband (if macho men secretly love Anne of Green Gables and are obsessed with babies), I’m going to keep his wants in mind as well.  I would love to teach Mr. Converse Sneakers to sew (once I officially learn how), so if I keep the area a little more gender-neutral, maybe he will get his craft on as well!  I’ve never really been one to crush on macho men, anyway.  I love seeing my man in an apron or covered in paint.

I’ll keep you posted as we make over our little crafty corner and I’ll definitely let you know what I create in that little space.  Stay tuned this week to read about my first test run in the new craft nook.  It does involve my sewing machine, but I wouldn’t call it a craft.

Where do you get your craft on?

Inspiration for an Inspiring Space

Ever since we finally got around to hanging our desk skirt, I have been dreaming of a functional and inspirational workspace.  Since I am a grad student, I will log countless hours at this desk and want something that is functional and not what it is now, which is basically a junk holder.  Everything moves from our living room and bedroom and on to the desk since it is large and can hold a lot.  This means I rarely use said desk because I can’t fit my laptop on it and I can’t think in a cluttered room.  I literally would have to spend half an hour organizing just so I could sit down and have a productive study session.

But, not working at the desk means I sit in front of the TV while Mr. Converse Sneakers is playing one of his zombie video games (or something – I’m not up on these things) or watching Dexter which means I am still getting nothing done.  We need to fix that!

Right now, we have big dreams, I mean BIG dreams, for our office portion of our bedroom.  They may or may not include even more clothing storage since our two tiny closets are bursting out the doors almost every day until laundry day and then the cycle starts all over.  Since we have little floor space lefts, we are looking to our walls for vertical storage that will not only add functionality and inspiration, but will hopefully look great.  While we save up, I have been drooling over these photos to serve as inspiration for our inspiring space (all photos are linked to my pinterest if you are interested in the source):

Although we have yet to decide on the other colors we will be bringing in, since right now our bedroom is tan, brown, and aqua blue which needs some more colors to make it bright and happy like we want, we know exactly what we plan on doing to add more vertical storage to our apartment.  Thankfully we are able to put holes in our walls (unlike every dorm room I had the past four years – thank goodness for Command products!), so shelves may or may not be on our shopping list.  But there’s a lot more in the works, so stay tuned!

What we like about all of these rooms is that they all use the walls and/or bookcases of some kind to keep the office clutter tucked away.  I also love that they all are colorful and fun, but could be recreated affordably, which is exactly what we plan on doing.  We can’t wait to get to work on this and share all the progress with you!

Do you have an office space in your home?  How do you keep it from getting cluttered?