living room switch up

Hi everyone! I do hope everyone is staying warm with all this winter weather we've been getting. The east coast has really been getting hammered this winter. With the latest snow/ice storm coming through on Monday night, John and I were both iced in on Tuesday. We played with Maggie for a while in the yard, but the ice was so slick she kept falling and slipping every-which-a-way. Poor dear. After a few minutes of trying to learn to ice-skate to her frisbee she'd decided enough was enough and just laid down. I can't say I blame her.

So without being able to actually play outside, John and I decided to play inside and re-arrange a few things. Now, let me disclose this post by saying I'm a horrible blogger. I completely forgot to take pictures of the before or the during, so you'll just have to bear with me and our after shots (I was in one of my gotta-get-it-done-now. I have to see what it looks like. John come help me push the desk this way moments). Hopefully you won't find our older pictures of the living room to be too unbearable. :)

After I *finally* put away the stocking stuffers that have been laying on our mantle since, oh, Christmas day, vacuumed up the rest of the tree needles (oh my gosh, I think the house is actually making them!), and found a home for the rest of the mini Reese Cups the cats have apparently found and have been enjoying knocking around the floor and under furniture, I was able to see what we were working with. Boy it feels good to see the furniture again.

I haven't been 100% happy with our living room colors or arrangement. Sure it's fine, John certainly thinks so. But I want a room I'm excited to be in. It doesn't call to me. I feel like it's just a bunch of brown colors smooshed in there and I'm left trying to find a way to make them all work together.  And we spend so much time in our living room I really want to make it feel like us. I've had decorators block with this particular room for a while now. I even tried to do a makeover last Spring, remember? Which I really liked, until Fall came and the blues/ creams had to go for the season.

So yesterday, since we had some time on our hands, we moved some things around. Here's where you get to play "where's Waldo" with the pictures to find everything I changed ;) Just kidding. I'll give you the run down below the picture.

• I replaced the valance with a red one (I did this around Christmas to be more, well Christmas-y and for right now I like it. It may change again once Spring gets here, but for Winter it's fine)
•  We removed the tall black lamp in the right corner. It really belonged in the bedroom, but we needed another lamp and it happened to find it's way there last year and hadn't moved.
• We moved the desk that was by the front door over by the fireplace. I wanted to create some balance in that corner and I'm really liking the way it looks.
• To replace where the desk was, we pulled out a side table we had stored upstairs.

I'd like to find a pair of lamps to flank each side of the mantle. The lamp on the right is from Goodwill and the lamp on the left is a hodge podge of Target base/ Walmart shade. I'd like to find a pair that's chunky, metallic and modern. I have some searching to do because we all know lamps aren't cheap.


And as a little crafty project, I changed up our coffee table tray. I was getting a little tired of the pictures, so I took them out and replaced them with some left over fabric from a past project.

before:

after:

Here's where all the bloggy magic happens:

It's my little comfy corner.