{p,h,f,r} The House is Clean Edition

In honor of John Michael's baptism, and the fact that we hosted the reception at our house afterward, our house was reasonably clean this weekend......and by house I mean of course that I was able to keep this one area tidy for long enough to take pictures before the children attacked.

If you aren't terribly interested in my living room you'll just have to forgive me because I keep this blog mostly for the amusement of my family and I'm pretty sure they are interested so I'm just going to go ahead and overshare/bore you anyway :)

{pretty}

Mmmmmmm.....a lovely clean room with vacuumed floors and everything.

We generally don't have party bunting hanging in the windows, but we do generally have entirely too many things crammed into our living room...........and crooked frames in the hodpodged gallery wall....it's how we roll.......

{happy}

Don't judge me too harshly, but all of my happys are recent purchases :)

Our couch is super sad and stained and discolored from various incidents and an unfortunate placement near a very sunshiny window.  Chris and I have decided that leather is definitely the solution for a houseful of boys--distressed leather that is--but alas a new leather sofa is not exactly in our budget so we went with this slipcover instead.  It's pretty nice as far as slipcovers go, and a disheveled,shlumpy couch is better than a dirty looking couch right?  We're saving up to purchase the couch of our dreams after our next move, so until then......

Then there's this beauty....I found this super cute high chair on Craigslist and it just had to be mine.  I was thinking that I wanted to paint it a fun color but it's actually in perfect shape and I kind of like the wood....we'll see.  I'm pretty sure Chris votes for not painting :)

{funny}

The night before the baptism, when I could have been taking care of any number of more pressing things, I felt compelled to sew some throw pillows.....out of some napkins my mother-in-law gifted me.  The tufting looks much nicer in person and the button isn't nearly as off center as it appears.....but I must have been a funny sight manically sewing pillows into the night......

{real}

Yes, we really have this much train paraphernalia.....don't have a heart attack, pretty much all of this was gifted to us or acquired second hand......but I'd say we are at max capacity as far as train tracks go.........

And another living room reality is this--our sad fireplace.  

To my credit, when we moved in, the housing office informed me that we aren't allowed to actually use the fireplace because then they would have to hire someone to come and clean them annually and make sure they were safe which apparently (to them) is totally ridiculous.  This alone wouldn't have convinced me to cover up the unusable fireplace but coupled with the fact that it is hideous and doesn't even have a mantle led me to this solution--a pretty dresser with drawers for storage and the tv on top.

I've found that when you're married to the military you do a lot more problem solving, trying to rearrange what you've got and squeeze everything in, than actual decorating per se, but I think I like the way this turned out.

PS I went with the blue drapes :)

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