cozying up the walls and a giveaway

We finally hung stuff up above our couch. Yay! I've had some place fillers there for a while, but I finally assembled enough meaningful things to fill the wall.

The massive saw on top belonged to my Pappap who passed away this summer. He collected lots of old tools, and the inside of his garage was covered with them.

This is one of my parents' peasant paintings that they got while we lived in China. It's a furniture store! Jaina loves it, and she likes it when we look at it together and I tell her about all of the mommies and daddies buying fancy beds.

My homie, Brahms, and Zach's masks from Kenya.

Pretty prints by my sister, Beka. On the left is a Mucha cover, and on the right are the Sneetches she made for Jaina's birthday.

This is an old Parcheesi board I found in my grandma's basement. I love that it says "Home" in the middle.

 It's crazy how much cozier a room is once there's artwork on the walls.

So, in addition to the horribly lit photos of our living room, I wanted to share a giveaway that my real life and blog friend, Holly of Curious Sprinkles, is hosting. She just started a very sweet Etsy shop with all of her  headbands. They're very cute and make awesome gifts. She's giving away one free headband of your choice to a lucky winner!

This is my favorite!

There are four of us co-hosting with her, and the more of us you follow, the more chances you have to win.

AND, Holly is giving any of my readers 20% off at her shop through the end of the month. So click on over to the Curious Sprinkles Etsy shop and do some stocking stuffer shopping! The coupon code is SPRiNKLES1013, and it's good through October 31st.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Co-hosts

  1. Mandi @ All My Happy Endings
2. Melanie @ Now a Queen
3. Darlene @ Tales of a Young Mamma
4. Kara @ Kara's Domestic Life

grown-up furniture and my foray into shelf styling

Finally, the results of Zach's game of Ikea Tetris. Alright, here's what we were dealing with before our new purchase.

yippy skippy

It's been this way since Christmas. Before that, we had the tree in the corner.

Aw, look at the little baby with the MASSIVE bald spot. 
Teehee. Her hair's coming in nicely now.

And before that, the TV was diagonal in the corner which was ergonomically pleasing from a TV watching perspective, but it wasted a ton of space.

I've been scouting out these VITTSJÖ shelves from Ikea.

Can you believe they're only $70?

And gleaning inspiration from the "Pin"osphere. 

Drexel Heritage's Pinacle Etagere, formerly sold by Higdon Furniture

via Ikea

via Centsational Girl

I knew how I wanted to arrange the pair of shelves we purchased, but I didn't want to just throw items up there. The art of shelf styling takes time, thought, a collection of objects from multiple time periods, and, honestly, taste. I study everything that Emily Henderson and Jenny Komenda do.  

 Here's a post that Jenny, of Little Green Notebook wrote on arranging books by both color and genre. 

Those of you who've taken the time to style your books know that this took her a LOT of time and thought. 

The results are really pleasing to my eye.

 I've searched all evening, but I can't find Emily's post where she describes her shelf styling secrets. 

(This image is from her portfolio.)

So, without further stalling, here's what I came up with.

 We're gonna call this "during" since we still need some artwork in the center.

It was fun to come up with all of the vignettes. I tried to be mindful of color, texture and height. There will definitely be some tweaking along the way (some has already happened since this picture), but I'm loving the look so far. Here are some close-ups.

  

Those hatboxes are from Rittenhouse Square in Philly! Pretty cool. 

 All of those little boxes were gifts my Dad brought back from his travels.

Pen and ink by my talented sis, Rebekah. (Check out her prints on Etsy!)

Couldn't resist the succulent under glass. It's terribly impractical, 

since I have to take it out to the kitchen every couple of days to get some sun, but so far I don't mind.

I'm loving this old toolbox for CDs. The other things on that shelf will have to go soon, though. 

Baby girl is getting curious.

Here's the before and after, one more time.

Ah, so much better. and it makes the living room look a lot bigger. Now I get to sit back, watch some Rachel Zoe, and figure out what to put on the wall above the TV. 

Featured on Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday and Decor and the Dog's link party.

family shopping day and my husband: the ikea champ

Whew! Back after nearly two weeks. Zach's schedule gave him a lot of daytime hours at home last week, and we were enjoying some great family time. We also went to our favorite store, Ikea!

 

We're becoming pros at the Ikea cafeteria. I used a tiered tray cart for hands-free food selection, we got Zach free coffee with our Ikea Family Pass, and we snagged our free jar of baby food. I saw on the way out that there were paper bibs that said Ikea on them. Next time.

This girl loves her daddy so much.

Ikea Swedish Meatballs

Whatever, haters. They're delicious.

Ikea shopping is fun cause Zach genuinely likes it. Ladies, you know how it is to shop with a guy who is not enjoying himself, even if he's trying really hard. We had so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures. I need to get better at that. You can't be a blogger and not take pictures during shopping trips. ; )

I sat right down in the outdoor furniture and fed Jaina while Zach went to hunt and gather our loot. 

After checking out and sharing a frozen yoghurt, Zach went out to get the van. He came back with a really serious face, and I freaked out cause I thought he locked in the keys.

"We brought the car."

"Yeah?.... I don't get it."

"We brought.... the car."

We brought our our little Pontiac to pick up two six-foot-high shelving units. (My former retail coworkers are rolling their eyes at me, I'm sure.) But my MacGyver husband came through for us, and within a few minutes we were loaded up and on our way.

Impressive, no?

Thanks hubby, for driving us, fitting everything in, for putting the furniture together, and for being on board with what I wanted to do in the living room. Baby, you're the greatest.

Update on our shopping finds soon. I'm so stoked about all of it!