Home Decorating

I’m looking forward to taking down the Christmas decorations this weekend and getting to the business of setting up our house. I mean, it’s clearly live-able, but it’s not really put together, you know? Sure we’ve got the furniture arranged, and a few pictures hung, but I have a mile long list of things we still “need”. Like a living room area rug. A filing cabinet. My loveseat back from Shawna’s office. To set up the office, at all. To make sure the guest room bed is in the right place. I need a bigger nightstand for my water glass collection and books.

We did hit milestones this week. The blinds were installed on Tuesday so no more flashing the Christian kids! I’m relieved to say that they do everything I wanted them to do. Top-down/ Bottom-up. Insulating. Cordless. The only catch is that I can’t reach the top of them in the living room. Good thing Grandma Joyce got me a stepstool for Christmas!

Levalor double cell blinds in "Sand". Yes, a very boring color that pretty much matches the wall color. We're such squares.

Of note: the stepstool in the bottom right corner. Our Christmas Tree.

The electrician also came today and installed dimmer switches in the living room and master bedroom, hung the pendant above the sink, and installed a floor plate. No more dark living room!

Restoration Hardware schoolhouse pendant.

Dimmer lights in the living room.

We received a Pottery Barn magazine in the mail last weed and while browsing through it I started to get excited about putting the house together. I also looked at a couple of items, thought “ooh, I like that, but it’s probably too expensive” and then looked at the price and went, “oh, that’s not too bad”. Friends, apparently I have arrived. I can glance at a Pottery Barn catalog and not drop my jaw at the prices.

And I almost ordered these Pottery Barn window treatments for the dining room.

Pottery Barn Dupioni Silk Drapes in "Wheat", for the Dining Room.

Source

Almost. They were 35% off. But even at that, they’re still $99 apiece. Times two windows. Plus a rod and brackets and loops to hang them on. Despite having arrived, I still don’t have $350 I’m willing to part with to cover a window that faces only the neighbor’s garage.

But, perusing the catalog did get me thinking about the overall decorating scheme for the house. DJ and I are both relative minimalists. I don’t do kitchy decorative figurines sitting around. We leave plenty of clutter all over the house by ourselves. We like neutrals, with a pop of color as needed. Organization is good. Have I mentioned that we’re cheap too? And I like old shit; like antiques? So yeah… we’ve got a lot of “likes” and “wants” and “needs” to fit into our “what can we afford”.

So over the course of the next few weeks I’m going to do a post dedicated to the décor inspiration for each room. Starting with the office, tomorrow. Because we’ve got random office crap all over our house. And it’s the one room in our house that is totally disorganized right now. And darn it, we need to file our paperwork somewhere other than a pile in the kitchen!