Room Refresher: From underused office to fab family room
We have a strange layout to our home, and somehow we have two bonus rooms. We currently have one of them set up as a playroom and one was set up as our office.
Our former office
It was a beautiful office but we never used it. Entire weeks would pass without us even setting foot in the room. We decided the office would better serve us as a family room.
We eventually plan to put new furniture in this room, but after buying new furniture for our living room, we need to wait a bit before buying more. In the meantime, we need to save some money and decide what we want to purchase. We just moved our old furniture to the family room.
Our new family room
It’s not perfect. There are things out of place and there is a mess in the corner. But it’s a room where we can hang out and be comfortable. It’s a room we can relax in and not worry about messing it up.
Our eventual plan is to add new furniture, a new light fixture, new flooring and an entire wall of built in bookshelves on the back wall.
We have used this room a thousand times more since it became a family room than we ever did when it was an office.
What changes have you made to add function to your home?
It’s that time again…Thanksgiving came late this year and Christmas is coming early…or so it seems. I feel like I have scrambled to get our home decorated for Christmas this year, and as a result, there are some things I did rather quickly and not as well as I’d like.
This is our home from the outside- we typically do candles in the windows and wreaths on the outside of the windows. We did that again this year. I’ll show you our Christmas porches later this week.
This lovely vignette is on our entry table, right inside the front door.
The faux fireplace is new to our home this year, as my husband and I built it last fall. I was so excited to be able to decorate it for Christmas. I absolutely love how the decor turned out. We’ve got a lantern, tiny zinc houses with LED lights in them, red berry stems and bottle brush trees.
I’m in love with this mantle. I just stare at it sometimes. Those needlepoint stockings are from LL Bean and we’ve had them for years. See those poinsettia pillows in the chairs? I made them from placemats.
Our main tree, which is decked out in red and gold, also lives in the living room.
We also have these super cute Christmas pillows.
On our sewing table, there are more red berry stems, more bottle brush trees, and the yo-yo Christmas tree picture my grandmother made for me.
In our dining room, we have the music tree. This tree features music themed ornaments, and some of them were used by my parents on our childhood Christmas tree. It has sentimental value and I love it.
Our table features a simple red plaid table cloth and a long wood box with candles and Christmas balls. The serving window features a candelabra with Christmas tapers. See if you can spot Santa in the middle.
A matching candelabra can be found on our side hutch. A Christmas tree tea light holder, a Christmas sleigh photo and a bowl of ornaments are also present.
The family room was an office up until a few weeks ago. We never used it, so we decided to make it a space we can all enjoy. Our family Christmas tree is in here- it has personal ornaments and souvenir ornaments from our family vacations on it.
Also, on our piano, you will find the manger my grandfather built for me and the nativity set my grandmother gave me. We also display an LED house and a Lenox serving plate here as well.
We decorated the tv stand with more candles and these empty chair ornaments. I ordered the empty chairs in honor of my dad and grandpa from a good friend of mine.
Our pipe shelves in our hall bath got a little holiday treatment as well.
As did the pipe shelves in our master bath.
And you can’t forget the snowmen in our kitchen.
While I was in the kitchen, I spotted our daughters’ elves on the shelf having a coffee date. Those silly elves!
We have this cute little tabletop tree in our master bedroom.
Our youngest daughter has her own little pink and white themed tree.
My oldest daughter has her own tree as well.
Aaaaaand that’s a wrap! Until next year, here’s my beautiful mantle signing off.
I kid, I kid. But, in all seriousness. I hope you have enjoyed our Christmas home tour. Tune in later this week for a Christmas craft and a look at our Christmas table scape. Have a wonderful week.
What a long, strange winter! Not surprisingly, I’ve decided to re-decorate the inside of the house to reflect the “almost-here” spring. I’m really loving our simplified, paired down spring decor. It’s bright, airy, and I feel like my house can breathe!
Our entry table boasts a simple wicker charger with a large jar, some florals, a faux birds’ nest and some colorful speckled eggs.
I absolutely love these colors together and I can’t help but smile every time I walk past this table.
There are touches of greenery everywhere and natural woods- things that remind me of spring without being too overpowering.
On our coffee table, we have a little vignette with a tray, a candle, and some greenery. I love how simple and how farmhouse-ish this is.
We also repurposed our wood trough box on our dining room table for spring. We used this thing to decorate for Christmas and winter, and it works nicely for spring too.
I can’t wait to fill in the spaces with some grapevine spheres or some greenery.
Lastly, I decorated this ledge in our dining room. I call it our “mantle” because we don’t have a real mantle. I love how realistic these faux branches are…and how cute are those little eggs in the nest?
This is definitely a low-key spring home tour. Way less elaborate than what I’ve done in the past, but I like it!
Have a great week. Join us on Friday for a roundup of farmhouse mudrooms.
I realized recently that I typically show you all my summer home tour in early June, and here it is mid-July and I’ve yet to share it. What? How did that happen?
It’s either because of our super busy schedule this summer, or the searing heat we’ve had to endure lately. In all honesty, it’s just because I got busy and it wasn’t on my mind.
So, without further adieu, here is our 2018 summer home tour. It’s a much less scaled down summer home tour, but our home is able to breathe and I’m loving it.
This cute little vignette rests in the middle of our dining table. I love the green apples, and how they match perfectly with the green hydrangeas.
Also in our dining room: The fake “mantle” I decorate each year. Stay tuned…we are getting a real mantle soon.
But I love how simple and pretty the purple blooms are with the milk glass and candles. And you know I had to put some lanterns up there, too.
Here is the other side of our dining room. Just a little summer greenery here.
And in the living room, this lovely vignette greets you from our sofa table.
Our summer decor is pretty simple- a few floral blooms for color, some natural elements like moss balls, twigs, or grass, and plenty of lanterns and candles. Tune in next week for a look at our summer porch.
Happy First Day of Spring to you! While today is the Spring Equinox, it’s neither warm nor sunny in my neck of the woods. In fact, they’re calling for snow! However, we can pretend, right? I am just going to sit in my “freshly decorated for spring” home and watch the snow fall.
On our front stoop, we have this simple wreath, which I recently made.
On our table in our entry way, we have this lovely spring vignette. I just love how realistic these charming little flowering branches are. I’ve had this plastic apothecary jar for ages and I love filling it with seasonal items.
Our coffee table holds this sweet little tray vignette.
Our faux mantle in our dining room is a little more simple than it usually is.
Here is a closer look at each object on the “faux mantle.”
I just love that sweet little bird in the terrarium.
Lastly, our dining room table boasts a centerpiece that is very similar to the winter vignette.
You will notice the pinecones have been replaced by bird’s eggs and a nest, and the winter pine branches have been replaced by hydrangeas.
Even if it’s winter outside, it is definitely spring inside our home.
Happy first day of spring to you, no matter how unspringlike the weather may be.
