Who's Looking For Another Living Room Update? Time For Curtains, Art & Organization!

The living room wasn't supposed to get as much attention as it did before new baby came but new baby decided to be late. As I write this, he is 6 days overdue and not giving us much of a sign that he is coming. My sister came down the weekend before he was due to visit, help out, and hopefully get to meet him. He didn't show so I got lots of time to relax and get things done while Cora was very happy to be entertained by her aunt. A few days after she left my mom came down in hopes of helping out with the new baby. Instead, she also got lots and lots of time with a sweet little girl but no new baby. Cora has been as happy as can be with all of the visitors and our house is really making some progress.

Here are links to past living room progress:
#1: Introducing The Living Room
#2: Media Center & Rug
#3: Unusual Shelving

And, did I hear you ask for a to-do list? You've got it!

• paint
• curtains
• hang artwork
• hang something above and around the TV
• get a rug
• new entertainment center
• change out the black side table
• move desk (temporary entertainment center) to the left of the couch and paint it turquoise
• get rid of the random chair
• change a couple of accessories
• try to figure out a way to hide Scott'e subwoofer
• maybe put some sort of book ledge above the couch and below the 3 high windows
• add wood around the entertainment center
• possibly change out the remote/coaster holder for something that matches better

My mother-in-law is a curtain-making extraordinaire and she offered to make some curtains for our new house. Wooo Hooo!!! I took her up on it in a heartbeat! Our ceilings are really tall and our windows are very wide which makes the pre-made curtain choices very limited. On top of that, I am a huge fan of picking my own fabric instead of being limited to the fabric that pre-made curtains have chosen for me.

I looked all over the place for the right curtain fabric for the living room and reached my final decision in... I bet you can guess it... Ikea! I went with Ikea's yellow Stockholm fabric.

Here they are!

I also decided to stop leaning art against the wall and go ahead and hang it up. 

I tried this painting first:

but I ended up liking these 2 better:

I put the other 2 blue paintings that I had like the ones above on top of Cora's cubby hole. 

My mom and I spent some time trying different ways to accessorize the big metal bookshelf and came up with this:

I am sorry to say that a lot of the books that are displayed are displayed because I liked the way they look not because I am wild about the books. Sad sad, I know. All of the books that I need to access frequently are in my bookcase downstairs, in my bedside table or in Cora's bookcase. The rest are hidden in boxes under our couch.

Some books that I obviously need constant access to are my "I Love Lucy" book and a bound copy of my Granddad's dissertation about Quantum Physics.

Check out this awesome painting that our friend and Realtor gave us of our old house. We love it! In fact, we love it so much that it got to be surrounded by old dinosaur pinatas!

We also addressed a much-help-needed speaker situation. Scott bought a big subwoofer a few years ago. As you may imagine, it did not make me all that happy. I'm into pretty decoration, not big ugly black boxes. I have been trying to come up with a way to hide it and still be able to use it. This is the best I have so far. It is a thousand times better but still not great.

Speaker Situation BEFORE:

Do you see that big mess of cords and blackness? That's the speaker situation.

Speaker Situation AFTER: 

It is hiding between the wall and the media center.

Has anyone ever wondered about the random black pillow? I feel like giving it a little mention today. This was a Scott purchase. I think it was before I hit the scene but it wasn't long before. The pillow cracks me up. There are pictures of random things. The names of the objects are written at the bottom of the picture and then translated into Spanish. I think "The Musician. El Musico" is my favorite!

Here are some more photos of the finished product:

Yay! I am really happy about how it is all coming together!