House Tour: Our Living Room

Now that we’re coming up on the ONE YEAR anniversary of buying our house (I know! Seems like yesterday!), I’ve finally decided to do an official house tour for you all. Every Saturday, I’ll go room by room and take pictures of a different one of our spaces.

For me, decorating is essential, almost akin to getting dressed in the morning. Living in a decorated space gives me peace and helps calm me throughout the day. The role of a decor website in turning my place into a paradise was so significant that it taught me how living in a space that I love is therapy, in a way!

But we don’t have a lot of money. Everything we buy is from Ikea, Overstock or Craigslist. Jesse actually tells me that I’m frequently “Craigslist Drunk”, especially when we’ve just moved into a new space. It’s probably true, but where else can you get good furniture for cheap?

When our foster boys moved in, we had to dismantle the playroom downstairs and turn it into an actual bedroom. This is why you’ll see all of our toys out here now. It works quite well, actually, because that’s where Gregory always wanted to play anyways. Now it’s just official 🙂

And, yes, you’ll see lots of imperfections in these photos because I was in a hurry to get to my piano lessons. So please ignore my orange weights underneath the couch or the yellow computer cord!

I made this pillow with burlap and a sharpie marker 2 years ago! The teal pillow I got from a thrift store 🙂

You may wonder to yourself, are these ALL their toys? Yeah right. You just cleaned up for the picture.

Nope. Believe it. These are ALL the toys we keep out for all 4 of our boys. I discovered within 30 seconds that anything more than this would be a disaster on a constant basis. For my sanity, over 75% of our toys are in storage in the garage. The garage, like every other garage, was originally for the car, but that now takes refuge under the huge oak. This meant that I had to get myself to the Garage Door Repair Website and try to give the garage a makeover. Gregory and AJ have one or two trucks upstairs in their room, and our foster boys have a few toys from Christmas (bionics, legos) on their desk in their room, but that’s it.

And you know what? It works like a charm! They actually PLAY with the toys when there’s so few of them! I keep some, like the Duplos, in a basket for easy clean up, but the rest we leave out in the open on the shelves, Montessori-style, so they can actually see what there is to play with.

This is our little reading corner. My next move is to get an indestructible bin for all their books. Suggestions?

Remember these vintage ABC banners from their Montessori Playroom? I moved them out here.

These are our bookshelves from Ikea. I love love love having the doors to cover the lower shelves! Keeps the kids from tearing out all the books, and we can hide our messy papers in there.

My sister and I found this at a garage sale. Next to it is a snow globe that one of our foster kids made for us!

I got these little spice jars from Anthropologie for $2/each a few years back. I still LOVE them.

This desk used to house my sewing machine, but when our foster boys arrived, we moved a desktop computer here for them to easily access close within our supervision. Someday, perhaps, it’ll be cleared off again.

I made this sign back when we lived in our apartment. Would you believe that it’s freehanded onto a $5 board from Home Depot?

Looking from the dining room back into the living room, you can see our piano. This is actually the piano I used as a child! Now I teach piano lessons on it!

This is Gregory’s little art table to the right of the piano. We painted the top with chalkboard paint so that he could draw on it freely.

 This is our gigantic sectional couch that we found on Craigslist for $200. It’s SOO comfy and seats 6 people! It’s leather, so it wipes off easily (a MUST).

 

This little corner was one of our favorite parts about the house when we bought it. An icon corner? What the what?? I’m also a huge fan of beadboard. This little window looks right out to our front yard so the boys can wave to Jesse when he comes home.

Now for a sneak peek into our dining area, where I do most of my blogging while the boys are eating their breakfast or snack!

One more sneak peek: this is the view from our front door. It’s basically what sold us on this particular house.

Last but not least, a picture of our living room in action as we read a book 🙂

 

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