All for the Kleenex

Hello hello! Hope you are having a GREAT week! Today I’m sharing a little change I made to the family room that I’m just silly excited about. And it was all born out of a very simple need…a place to put the Kleenex. :)

I’m so not kidding either. We’ve reworked our family room so that the layout is  SO MUCH better than it used to be. But it was lacking something…and that something was a side table.

I have discovered over time that I NEED a place to put my drinks, my snacks, my magazines. My tissues. :) Why yes, I am 95 years old.

We have the little candlestick table next to the chair:

But it is teeny. And I wanted something next to the sofa. We do have a coffee table and a sofa table and now that I’m talking about all these tables it sounds like we would have plenty but (breathe)…no. There’s something about a spot right next to where you’re sitting, right?

I wasn’t sure I could make it work though, so I didn’t actively look for anything. And then one day a couple weeks ago, when I was moving some furniture around upstairs, I realized I no longer had a spot for one of my VERY favorite pieces in the house.

Years ago this table sat in the living room, and until recently it was up in the loft:

I found it years ago at Goodwill, and it was an awful, horrible, no good green color. Some of the trim around the top was coming off too. I bought it hoping to restore it, but it was an overwhelming task. Then my Dad offered to refinish it for me and he did a beautiful job!

It is just gorgeous and as I said, one of my favorite pieces in our house. And it just wasn’t right that it was upstairs and not being used. So I brought it downstairs and tried it next to the family room sectional.

I thought it may be too big, but it worked perfectly!:

I did it late at night and it’s just silly how giddy I was as I shopped the house to find a lamp to put on it. I turned it on and loved how cozy that spot felt! I’ve always had a Goodwill floor lamp there, but this felt so much warmer to me.

Isn’t it funny how moving one little thing around can make a room feel so different? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I love when that happens! When I walk in there now, my eye goes right to it. It’s just perfect.

And of course, an extra little spot to accessorize doesn’t hurt. :) I grabbed a vase and cut some of branches off of our ash tree. They are just gorgeous in the fall:

 

The candle was from Bath and Body Works last year (it’s not about to catch the leaves on fire, it just looks like it), and a cute little velvet pumpkin I found at HomeGoods a few weeks ago. (Five bucks! I loved it so much I grabbed two!)

I adore how warm and cozy this space is now. And of course, I found a spot for the tissues. And of course, they had to be cute:

I’m a total and complete sucker this time of year. Any item that comes out with a fall or Halloween theme…I am so. there. Same with Christmas. I’m helpless, I can’t fight it.

Instead of trying to accessorize the shelves just so, I decided they would be the perfect spot for some of the Bub’s favorite games. He’s SO into games all the sudden, just over the past couple of months. I love having them accessible where we spend so much time.

The games stacked up aren’t necessarily magazine-worthy, but they are what makes it feel like our home. :)

But really, the Kleenex. Easy access may be the most important thing:

;)

I think the best part may be that all of it was FREE. I used what I had around the house and I love that. It just goes to show it never hurts to try moving things around – I never would have thought the table would work in that spot!

Does one little change make a space feel brand new to you too? Do you move furniture around often? We don’t just because of the way our house is set up – the way it is is the way it stays, for the most part. So this was especially fun for me. :)