mish mash mom

One of my biggest problem areas at my house is my living room.  It has a funky {not in a good way} layout and really, the couch can only go in one place.  Sad, I know.  So after 5 years of the same arrangement, it was looking pretty stale.  I was in a rut.

So I begged  respectfully pleaded with my cousin, Wendy, who is a very talented interior decorator to come and give me some ideas on how to tweak my house so that it looked and functioned better.

I know that I had before pictures somewhere, but now I can't find them, so these will have to do.

Look past all the beautiful people to that sad, sad living room.  The couch usually doesn't go there, but I was trying it there to see if it would work.  It didn't.

In this one, you can see that the chairs are sort of back where they usually are, but kind of just sit over there, all lifeless and blah.

So you can see, I really needed some expert advice.

Wendy came and we just moved a few things around. 

Then we moved them back. 

Then we moved them out and brought things from other parts of the house in.

And this is what we ended up with:

Now I know some of you are saying "That really doesn't look much different than it did before."

This is true. 

The furniture is placed in pretty much the same location, but notice we swapped out the black chairs {that I never really loved} for these two other chairs that I already had in different rooms. 

 It feels so different.

We took the plant off of the table and added a lamp, some photos and the frog.

{This is my favorite part} we hung fancy-framed artwork in the faux fireplace.

We brought in some of my favorite things to the mantle

We brought this great comfy chair from downstairs and placed the cheetah ottoman in front of it.

{more favorite things}

It may not look completely different, but the room feels different because new life was breathed into it.

Thank you, thank you Wendy!

I'm thinking maybe I'll make some slipcovers for the chairs to lighten things up for spring/summer.  What do you think?

If your rooms are feeling stale, don't be afraid to rearrange, replace, remove, and add the things you love that are hiding in other parts of the house. 

Be fearless!

My cousins decorating business is called Good Egg Interiors.  Her rates are reasonable and she is great to work with.  If you would like her information, send me a note and I will get you hooked up.