A little more progress, ideas and thoughts on decorating for Christmas

I thought I'd share my very minimal progress with the reading room/guest room.  We rarely have people stay overnight so rather than having a spare bedroom, I turned this room into a reading room with a sofa bed.  It gets used much more often this way and works for us.  But I've struggled with decorating this room.  It has a few issues.  The room is long and narrow making it difficult to decorate - and photograph.  (The ceiling light fixture is actually in the centre of the room even though it looks off in the photo.)

This is what it looked like when I first started decorating it back in 2010.  Yup, it's been 3 1/2 years and not much has changed.  

I've replaced the lamps with the orange flowers.  The couch has been moved to the opposite wall.  In the photo above, the wall where the sofa used to be has an indentation in it (barely visible in the photo but if you look closely, you'll see a line down the centre of the wall) that made it nearly impossible to hang artwork above the sofa.  It makes a perfect spot for the bookshelves though.

 One of the bookshelves was moved to my craft room a few weeks ago so I moved the other two to this wall.  With the indentation, I'm thinking built-ins would be perfect here.  I'm not that handy with a saw.  Unfortunately, neither is my husband so we'll see what we come up with.  At the very least, I need bigger bookshelves.  Even though I'm slowly eliminating books from my library and read most books on my iPad these days, there are still a lot of books that I can't part with.

I added this little desk.  I've had it for ages and love it but it's got that orange-y colour that I detest so it's on the list to get a little make-over down the road.  The blanket box is one the same list.

My husband gave me these lamps for Christmas a couple of years ago.  I really like the oil rubbed bronze finish and the style of them.  Better than the orange flowered ones.  And I love the sofa.  It's comfy and a cosy spot to curl up with a book in.  The pillows need to be replaced with ones with some colour.  So does the throw.

I moved the wicker rocker out of this photo.  So much better!   I've definitely decided to sell the wicker set.

Really all I've done so far is move the sofa and bookshelves to opposite walls and added a desk.  It needs so much more!  Colour mostly.  And some personality.  It looks absolutely bland right now but I see it as a blank canvas.  My mind is swimming with ideas!  I'll be sharing my progress as I go along.  I know I've said it before, but I'm really enjoying spending time on my home. 

The pantry is finished and I'm loving the extra storage space!  We had a few issues with it - who knew the builders would decide not to put drywall in the corners but just use tape instead?  When we tried to attached the brackets for the shelves, we discovered there was about a 2" gap with no drywall.  Thankfully, my husband was able to figure out a way to attach the brackets.  (He might not be a great carpenter but he sure knows how to come up with a solution to problems!)  Will I be sharing photos?  Probably not.  It's functional, not pretty.  :)  And the new dishwasher arrived and has been installed.  It's surprising how you get used to having one!  After a week of hand washing dishes, I was very grateful to have a dishwasher again.

And I've started decorating for Christmas.  It's going to be simple again this year but I have to confess I was beginning to feel a little discouraged looking at some of the photos on blogs and Pinterest!  All those rooms in the house decorated!  How long does it take to put everything up?  And where in the world is it all stored after Christmas?  Other than fresh greens and poinsettias, I'm not buying a single decoration, no matter how tempted I am.  We've got more than enough ornaments and decorations.  And while in previous years I've decorated our tree so that it coordinates with my colour scheme du jour, this year it's a free for all.  Anything and everything is going on that tree!  Well, maybe not everything.  But I'm not sticking to a colour scheme.

That's more than enough for one blog post ... I'll save the rest for later!

xo,
Lynda