In the Mood for...

While large projects (like the gutted bathroom) are at a pausing point we try to allocate some of our attention towards decorating rooms that have already had the hard work completed. When we moved in a little over a year ago, we took the time to wash all the floors, walls, and ceilings on the first floor. Then we primed and painted every. single. one. (Maybe we'll dig up some of those before and afters in another post). We did this mainly because we knew we would be downstairs most of the time, and we also wanted to make the house feel clean and welcoming.

Once we were done doing that it was time to move in our stuff which consisted of hand-me-downs (i.e. rugs/tables/furniture our parents didn’t want anymore) and old college decorations. Needless to say, the house was comfortable, but it was not necessarily our style (or matching for that matter).

Enter: The  Mood Board. We discovered this little gem through Young House Love (a great blog that we find ourselves relating to a lot. Check it out!). We thought we would give one a road test with the living room to see if it really could help us find what we liked and what worked together. So keeping in mind that we would need to work around some of the key hand me downs we received (we do have a budget), we scoured the web for pieces we liked and worked well with what we already had. We are happy to say that it was an immense help. The room is no where near done, but as far as helping us pick out a few big pieces that work together, it was great!

You might be wondering how far along we are to making this board into a real room? Well, we found a rug we loved from Home Depot and decided it was a great start on the road to "more us / less college dorm room eclectic". We picked out fabric for some updated throw pillows to liven up the hand me down couch, and swapped out a plushy rocking/swivel chair for a more modern Barcelona chair. We also found some great little additions from Ikea, like a new bookshelf, a (hacked) expedit for the tv and records, and Beaker, our new Dragon Tree.

Can't wait to finish the Ikea bookshelf and entertainment center and show those set up! We will share some more mood boards as we finish them so you can see our inspiration and ideas for other areas of the house. If you want to try your own we would recommend MyDeco. They have a handy tool for "clipping" pics off line to add to your mood boards. Enjoy!