When we moved into our house a few months ago we did some decorating and I enjoyed getting it set up how I wanted, but I knew it would be an ongoing process. I didn't hang very much in the dining room or living room. Since they are such prominent parts of our house I was scared to do anything with them that I might end up not liking. It also was an easy time because I put out my Fall decorations and then moved on to Christmas so that filled the spaces temporarily.
But this weekend I decided it was time to pack up the last our of Christmas/Winter stuff--we put away all of the Christmas stuff before New Years, but several of my decorations are snowmen so I usually leave those out through part of January.
I had received a couple of decor items for my birthday and Christmas so I was excited to put those out. I got the sign from my best friend Erin as a birthday gift and the cross from my Secret Santa at work. And they became the inspiration for changing up some of the decor in our Living Room.
While we watched a movie at home on Friday night I mentioned to David that I thought I might want to get curtains for our windows in the living room. When we moved in, there were no window coverings. We bought blinds for all of the windows in the front of the house and put up curtains in our bedroom, but since the windows in the living room are so big they would need custom blinds. And we love all of the natural light that comes in and how much it brightens up the room, so we weren't quick to cover them. But we've also noticed that the living room is also the most extreme room temperature-wise. It was really hot in the mornings when we first moved in (and we even missed summer this year) since the windows face East. And now it is the coldest room in the house. So we decided adding some curtains might help with that and might add some decoration to the room.
Once I have an idea like that in my head I usually want to act on it pretty quickly, so I woke up Saturday and headed to Home Goods to find some curtains. I sent David pictures of a few and he helped me decide on which ones were best--and since I found some I liked there we didn't have to spend a ton to cover the windows which is a definite plus. Then I made a few other stops for some craft supplies and curtain rods and headed home.
My wonderful husband helping to hang the curtains for me!
Our new curtains!
Here's a picture from when we first moved in. I feel like the curtains add a lot to that wall!
I was also on the hunt to find something to go above our love seat on the other side of the living room since right now that is a big blank wall. I looked at Home Goods and Hobby Lobby and found a few things I liked okay, but I decided to try my hand at making my own decor. I got a Silhouette Cameo for Christmas from my mom so I've been having fun trying it out. I've cut some paper for a few things, but decided to try my hand at cutting vinyl. I bought some canvases, vinyl, transfer paper and paint from Hobby Lobby and got to work.
Step 1 is to make sure you have a dog around so she can sign her name on the canvas too :) Unfortunately Lily stepped on it during the first coat of paint so her signature was covered up with coat number 2. While the canvases dried I worked on figuring out how to cut vinyl with the machine. I roughly followed these tutorials (Cutting Vinyl and Cutting longer than 12x12 and Cutting Vinyl with Silhouette 101). I worked with it a few times following these directions, but I could never get mine to work well without using the Silhouette cutting mat, so I ended up just using the mat and cutting my design down. It saved me a lot of frustration to do it that way although I'm sure at some point I'll want to figure out how to cut without the mat so I can make longer designs!
Then I got with my hubby to try to figure out what we wanted on these canvases. We decided pretty quickly that we liked having the lyrics of In Christ Alone on one and the verse from Psalm 34:3 on another. So then we went through a lot of options before deciding on another song lyric for the 3rd canvas. I spent this afternoon cutting out the vinyl and transferring it to the canvases (I followed some advice from this tutorial, but I didn't use spray adhesive first because mine does dry sticky so I didn't want that). They aren't perfect, but I'm pleased with how they turned out. And considering I spent less than $30 for all of the supplies (and some of them can be used again later) I think it's a pretty good fit for our living room for now.
We hung them up this afternoon and got them in place on the wall.
I added a few Valentine's printables in some frames that I got on sale.
And I picked up this "D" on sale yesterday to add to our walls.
And here are the 2 pieces that inspired it all!
Our completed living room:
I love how everything turned out. I feel like our living room is much more put together now!
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