A Touch of Color

I'm almost finished with the living room, finally. For the last 8 years that I've lived here this living room has been pretty much the same. It wasn't bad, but it was really, ummm...neutral. Everything in it is cream, brown, sage green, and a touch of black. I decided it was time to add some color. Not in the repainting the whole room sense, just in adding some accessories. I love color. I swoon over bright colors in magazines and pictures. I'm just always so conservative when it comes to actually using it my own house. I really need to get over that. In my last post I showed you the new curtains I made which have some turquoise, blue, green, and brown in them. I decided I really liked the turquoise so I took an old, rickety, drawn on and carved on little desk from our garage and turned it into this:

I love the color! I think I am going to find some cute baskets to put on the shelves.

Then I decided to recover our couch pillows and now they look like this:



P.S. I made all of these from old sheets we don't use anymore so they were totally free. Preston lovingly told me that the pleated pillows (which by the way, aren't perfect but I'm pretty proud of them considering sewing is still so new to me) look like something he would find in his grandma's house. I'm sure he meant it as a compliment. :) Don't worry, he followed it up with "well, it's cool that YOU made them..." Hahaha. Boys. I only share this because I thought it was funny. He has actually been very complimentary about everything I have done around the house lately.

Anyhoo, I decided I needed some new wall decor for above the loveseat. I googled diy wall decor and found this:

http://www.thenester.com/2011/01/how-to-make-a-sunburst-mirror.html

Would you believe this was made out of posterboard? Yeah, posterboard. You can get that for 2/$1 at the dollar store. So, needless to say, I decided I needed to make one. I had an old mirror sitting around in the basement that I thought would be perfect so I got some posterboard and went for it. It doesn't look as good as the one she did (I like the shape of hers better) but I still like the way it turned out. And so far I have gotten a lot of compliments so the $2 that I spent on it was worth it. Here she is:



So basically, that wall of my living room went from looking like this:



To this:

Maybe it doesn't even look that great to other people but when you've had a room look exactly the same for so many years, any change seems to make it look better to me. Now I need to do some more pillows for the big couch (probably not more pleated ones because apparently that will make it a "grandma" living room), and next I get to tackle the basement kitchen/laundry room.

P.S. I know this stuff is probably really boring to most of you, (if any of you actually even still read my blog) so thanks for putting up with my craft reports and room makeovers. :)