House Tour 2012: Family Room

Here we are! Moving down to the lower level of the house.

The family room.

I never really told you guys when we bought the couch down here, did I? I can't remember exactly when we did... but it was before Christmas 2011. I want to say maybe November?

You may have picked up bits and pieces of this room in the background of other photos. We've made some purchases... the sofa, a *large* television (ahem. much bigger than I thought he was going to buy!), and a table necessary to hold the bohemoth. I have a pretty clear vision for where this room is headed, but it's not there, yet. It's rather neglected right now. All the love it gets from me is in the form of ideas... and cleaning. Except, I've been playing around with bold color on the mantle. I always get sad when the Christmas decorations come down, so this was my way of combatting that this year. It's very random and very BRIGHT! I don't need that much happy happy happy now that Spring is here (yay!), so it'll probably get changed soon to something equally as random but less visually stimulating. I'm not spending any money on it at this point, though. Other rooms have their hands on the dough!

This house tour from Apartment Therapy is one of my biggest inspirations for this room's plan...

Along with a little Swedish influence. Heavy on IKEA... because we don't want to spend a mint on a room that gets used as a rough and tumble play space.

Anyway... why am I all blabby? I think just because these thoughts were all bouncing around my head as I downloaded the photos just now. Here's the family room!



The white furniture and curtains made this whole room immediately feel different. I also made sure I took these photos when the room is the brightest - between 3 and 5pm. The only "first layer" things we've done in here are the carpet and window treatments. And the windows themselves, too. That reminds me... did I ever tell you guys that when we first moved in here there were shutters on the windows?

This is a bad picture. The room was dark, but not that dark. Daddy took the shutters off for me and cleaned all the nasty old junk out of the aluminum window casing. He and Mom were such help.





So, this is a good room to see where the second layer... the major furnishings... can get you.





It's a pretty big impact, really. Personally, I think the curtains have a lot to do with it :)



We're painting a game cabinet right now. By "we" I actually really mean SweetP is painting it. She's getting pretty good at painting! The cabinet is in SpareOom and the games are here for the time being.



I stacked them all nicely, just for these photos.

You're welcome.



It's only this tidy and clean about once a week. Generally, for a few hours on Thursday afternoon (during rest time on my cleaning day). The rest of the time it looks like this...



But, actually, right now I'm sitting on the sofa in this room and it still looks like this...



Because I cleaned it this afternoon and it's my Mama Night and Sam took the kids to Chik-fil-A :) So, it's also very, very quiet. All I can hear right now is the hum of my laptop, some birdies, and a neighbor's lawnmower in the distance.

It's lovely!

This is the HOVAS sofa from IKEA. It's big! All of us can fit in a row on this puppy. And, although IKEA furniture feels stiff at first, it breaks in surprisingly well. We've had a lot of "breaking in", you know. If you'd like, I can send my kids over to jump all over your IKEA furniture to get it just right. The slipcovers have been awesome, if you're wondering. I'll talk more about how the white furniture has worked out for us so far in an upcoming post.



These pillows are just leftovers. They look kind of fun together, though, I think.



Lots of toys down here. Lots by my book, anyway. We don't really keep oodles and oodles of toys. You know I love some good therapeutic decluttering. We always give toys away before Christmas each year. There are families that need them far more than we do! And, when stuff exceeds storage space, that amounts to STRESS for me. I have some ideas of what to do with all these castles and blocks and whatnot, but it will have to wait for now.

Thanks for reading! I'm hoping to wrap it all up tomorrow!

Y'all have a good night.