Our Living Room

Today I am linking up with Kelly's Korner 'show us your life' series. Today's topic is living rooms. I wanted to participate because I LOVE looking at the way other people live and I also thought it was time to start sharing our home with all of you that have been asking about it the past few months.

I will do some all over views, then point out some of my favorite things about this room.

So here we go...

When you first walk into our front door, this is your view:

The little white bench to the left is one of my Canton finds, along with the ceiling tile mirror hanging above it. It sits in front of an under-stairs storage door that we rarely need to get into.

This is just a little to the right of the last picture. Our entire bottom floor is tile, but I have a rug in the living room area so that if someone wants to lay in the floor, then they will be more comfortable.

But our dog is really the only one that regularly lays on the floor.

But I bet if she could tell me 'thank you for the rug', she totally would.

Working around to the right of the room is the main wall in the living room. When we were building, we had them build a place for a TV into the stone, and I'm really glad we did that. I was worried about the fire getting the TV too hot and messing it up, but we had several fires in it after we moved in and it didn't affect our TV at all. We chose to not have a mantel since that would've put the TV being up too high, and, although I do enjoy hanging Christmas stockings on a mantel, I'd rather not break my neck trying to watch TV.

If you've ever sat on the front row at a movie theater, you know what I mean. It's really not even worth it.

Continuing to the right is our front windows, a couch, recliner, and coffee table. You can see a little bit of our front door in this pic, so I've just about made a complete circle now.

The bookcases on each side of the fireplace were a MUST HAVE for me. I've completed around 25 scrapbooks during our almost 15 years of marriage, and I've never really had a good place to keep them all. There is enough room on these shelves to actually spread them out a bit so they aren't just crammed in there. Every once in a while my boys will just pick one up and look through it, and it makes me happy just watching them re-live some of their life events.

There is an archway leading to french doors that open to our game room, and just to the left of that is the bottom of the open stairway. I am a fan of arches. They are everywhere I could find a place to put them.

Our ceiling in our living room and kitchen area goes from about 9 feet to about 18 feet because of the open staircase. I decided at the last minute while we were building that I wanted it to be a wooden ceiling, and it was a good decision (if I do say so myself). It took a lot of wood, a lot of men to put the wood up, and a lot of time for the painters to stand on scaffolding to stain it. But SO worth it in my opinion.

This is the view of the living room from the top of the stairs.

This is standing at the front door and looking up to the right.

This is the front doors.

And this is looking up from the door. I'm so glad we left the staircase open. It adds design without even trying.

This is a painted wooden pallet at the half-way point of the stairs. Austin told me he wanted me to put BE Nice on there, so he got what he wanted. I cut the lettering out with my cricut, outlined them with a Sharpie, and then just filled them in with the Sharpie. These letters were too small to try to paint.

Another view of that pallet in relation to the living room.

A close-up of my big wooden pallet art. I had to freehand the letters on this one because the lettering was too big, and I did it with white paint and a small paintbrush. Austin and I just did this together this week. It's a fun and fairly easy project to do with your kids!

This is a stained glass piece I found in Canton. It had one piece of glass broken out of it, which helped me get a great deal on the price, but then I was left with the dilemma of what to fill that hole with. For now I have a "B" in calligraphy on card stock. I want to do something different with that at some point, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

This fireplace cover is special to Robbie and I because it was made for us by his late grandmother just after we got married. I can remember her asking what all I wanted to have on there and she did exactly what I asked for. It is 5 pieces of wood hinged together. The first one is a church, the second a post office, the third a bed and breakfast, the fourth a Little Italy restaurant, and the last is a general store. She was so talented and I'm thankful that we have been able to use this all of these years.

This is another Canton find that I just had to have. It is just 4 old tin ceiling tiles put together, but I love it and it fits perfectly in the space.

I put this Fleur-de-lis up because I lived in Italy for a few months in college, and our villa was just outside of Florence, and this is the symbol for Florence, so I have loved this symbol ever since.

I do feel like I should tell a little bit about what Canton is since I have about 3,000 things in my house from there. Canton is a town just outside of Dallas and they have their trade days once a month. It is huge and you will walk until your feet scream at you to stop, but OH,THE ONE OF A KIND FINDS!! I recommend going if you're anywhere close when they are having it.

So this is my living room! Come back next Friday and I'll show y'all my kitchen!