Those that read my blog often will know that I have a thing for home decor. I've always been a bit of a perfectionist (I blame the Virgo in me) and I am a very homely sort of person. These two characteristics of mine mean that I can be quite particular when it comes to keeping my home clean, tidy and finding a proper 'place' for everything. I'm far more relaxed these days though, much more than I used to be - having a toddler sort of does that to you.
Toddlers are like tornadoes that move rather quickly through the house, causing chaos and destruction along their paths as they go. If I'm honest though, where that should bother the perfectionist in me, it really doesn't. I actually love a bit of 'family' mess - some of the time at least. I love seeing Ethan with all of his toys out and having a great time. I'm happy to get paint and play dough out and to spread ourselves across the house. There's something not quite right in my mind about a perfect looking house all of the time especially when children live there. I do however, like to keep things clean, it's dirt that bothers me the most and we do always tidy up as we go, especially so in the evening - when Adam and I sit down to relax and have adult time we like to do so in a somewhat semi tidy house.
I've just had a look back through my previous home decor posts and I've noticed that although we've lived in our house now for over a year, I've only ever shared a room tour of Ethans room, but that's because our house is so far off of being finished. We have lots that's we're planning on doing to it, including converting our attic into a room and en-suite, now that Logans here. There's a couple of rooms we're pretty happy with though and that we won't be changing much and one of those rooms is our living room and so I thought with that in mind I thought that I'd share some photos..
*Oh and I did do a good tidy up before taking these photographs! It usually looks far more.. erm - upside down on a daily sort of basis!! ;)
Before we got our new television, our old television used to sit on top of this unit. I so much prefer having the TV in the middle of the room above the fireplace now though.
These baskets house just literally just a few of Ethans toys - he has so many, we have them scattered all over the house.
Our wood burner. I love that it's a main feature in this room, but it's such a pain in the winter. It looks gorgeous when lit and makes the room feel really snug and cosy, but I much prefer being able to switch the heating on, it's a lot faster than getting this thing lit! I think we shall be investing in a oil heater this winter.
We brought a brand new sofa when we moved into this house. Previously we had a corner sofa that just wouldn't have worked for the layout of this living room and we also felt like it was the right time to properly invest in a much nicer, made to last, family sort of sofa. We spend so much time as a family on our sofa, relaxing, watching movies together whilst snuggled under a blanket, chatting, eating lunch occasionally, reading books and just generally being quite silly. We think of the sofa as a place that we come together as a family and also somewhere memories get made from - it really was totally worth investing in. It's always worth shopping around for the right sofa for your family, but places like Furniture Village have a particularly good range to choose from.
I love the cushions that I recently brought for our sofa and our armchair. As you can probably tell, I like to keep everything pretty neutral and light, but the hint of yellow on these cushions just adds a subtle bit of color to the room and I think that they compliment the color of our sofa/armchair fabric pretty well.
It took us so long to find the right curtains for our living room, we really did look everywhere, finally finding these in Laura Ashley. They are absolutely lovely, they're really thick and suit the room perfectly, but they cost us a lot of money and just thinking about how much they were makes my eyes water a little, but oh well, it's not like we'll be replacing them - ever!
Our under stairs cupboard is full of more of Ethans toys and also houses our hoover (as well as Ethans mini hoover!).
Some of you may know that My Husband is just a little bit of a Lego addict, he creates and sells custom Lego mini figures for his business, including popular characters from TV series's such as Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and many more. But he also has his own large personal collection of Lego which he proudly displays in our living room (and I actually don't mind it). His cabinet is absolutely full to the brim, however that doesn't stop him still buying more. He's actually recently sneakily started displaying it in our bedroom..!
I really like how much light we get in to our living room thanks to the large windows and doors. I love having both doors to the back garden open in the summer, it really helps to open the room up and I love being able to sit and watch Ethan play outside from the comfort of the sofa or armchair.
And that is it - a quick look around our living room! I can't wait to share more of our house next year once we've (hopefully) started and completed the work that we'd really like to do to it.
*This post contains a collaboration with Furniture Village.
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