Small Changes

Hmmm... happy Saturday!  I slept in this morning, my house smells like chocolate chip muffins and I have a WVU game to go to later.  It's a good day :)

I mentioned in my post here, that I was gonna start making some changes to my family room.  I love the family room with it's big furniture, pool table, big tv... but it's still unfinished.  So I've been slowly making a few changes/ additions to make it more cozy.  I haven't done anything major... Chris still won't let me paint all the trim white.  (I've painted the office and the pantry trim white, so white trim is slowly taking over our house without him realizing it.) Insert evil laugh here.  One of these days I'll have white trim and white cabinets... and then I can take over the world! (Pinky and the Brain reference, if you're from my generation, you know what I'm talking about.)

Anyways, back to the family room.  So here's a picture of the family room before.

Now here's the new picture.  Wanna play Where's Waldo?  Can you spot three differences in this room?

If you said a lamp, throw pillows and the coffee table centerpiece, you got it!

In my adventures with this house, I've realized that nothing adds the cozy factor quite like a lamp does.  Lamps cast soft shadows and add a warmth to your room.  I was looking through our basement and realized that we actually had a side table that matched our coffee table.  Chris' parents gave him the tables when he first moved out on his own.  Later, we took the coffee table and re-finished it, but never got around to the side table.  Eventually we will refinish it to match the coffee table, but for now, I went ahead and set it out as-is.

I'm still in love with the Fairmont brick I found :)

The next change, throw pillows.  Okay, I'm not satisfied with the trow pillows that are on the couch right now... too many solid colors, we need some pattern in this joint!  But, I wanted cozy, and I'm still looking for the right fabric for pillows, so these will do for now.  Actually, since I'm having trouble finding fabric I like, I'm thinking about painting some pillows.  Might be my next project.

Before-

After-

As for the coffee table, I brought out my beloved mason jars.  Here is a picture of the old table decor.

I like this candle holder, but I've had it on my coffee table for 5 years... it was time for a change.  And you know how I love mason jars!  So here's what I came up with.

I just put some white candles in the bottoms of different size mason jars, and put a piece of scrapbook paper underneath.  Simple.  Cute.

One more change I made was to my bookcase.  Since the bookcase is dark, the dark picture frames on it weren't doing it for me.  So I painted a frame antique white and added a family photo.

Before-

After-

On top are all of our tv components.  Chris ran the wires through the wall, so you can't see them.  (I love being married to an electrician.)  The next shelf has a little basket and the family photo.  And the bottom shelf has some photo albums, maracas from our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic and a candle.  

Small changes can sometimes have a big impact.  These small changes have really amped up the cozy factor in our family room.  More changes to come!

Brooke