Thursday, October 4, 2012

All for the Kleenex

ash tree cuttings

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:

DIY pottery barn wood art

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!:

accessorizing end table

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:

tree cuttings in the housevelvet pumpkin 

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:

accessorizing end table

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:

antique wood end table

;)

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. :)

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