Big Kid Furniture.

***Over the last few years, this post has received a lot of traffic through Google image searches and I've received a lot of emails inquiring about the chair in the blog post below. I'm sorry to say that I never did buy that oversized brown chair you are all so interested to purchase. It's no longer sold by the Chicago store I first snapped that picture, but there are really great chair-and-a-half options to help further your search. Good luck to you!

---

Recently we've invested in some furniture. For many reasons, we felt it necessary to begin purchasing some items for our home. We're having a baby in the next 5 months and we know there will be a few more visitors in our home. This room is our formal living room which used to only have a worn out, slipcovered loveseat and those two chairs. Now, we feel comfortable unveiling the *almost* complete room.

The loveseat made it into our family room to be reunited once again with our slipcovered couch. Those will eventually make their way down into the basement once that is finally resolved, cleaned thoroughly, patched up, fixed, etc. Once that happens, we'll consider buying new couches for the family room as well. The photos of my dream family room couches are below.

We purchased two identical couches for this room in chocolate brown. We are sort of brown-obsessed. It's so neutral and we can't help but select something that matches everything! The two corner chairs are the Avington collection from Target. We got an incredible deal on those, but not without an incredible amount of effort and driving on our part. The plant is currently dying (sigh). The pot is gorgeous and has lots of beaded detailing on it. We scored that at Home Depot. I just wish we knew how to keep that plant alive! Here's what it looked like when it was new and thriving (and a closeup of the pot). The bookcase was just moved from the family room-- I purchased that at Pier One Imports about 5 years ago. The ceiling fan is difficult to see but it will soon be gone. Once we decide to paint the room (the same color as the adjoining dining room), we'll also take out the dated, pink and white (eek!) ceiling fan. That will promptly make its way to freecycle because it's a nice name brand one that I'm sure was classy in the early 90's.

But... our most proud item in this room isn't the new furniture... but the rug! We drove about 20 miles away last weekend to check out a Bassett furniture showroom that would've been cooler if we hadn't slept in that was really nice, but nearly everything was sold! They were having insane markdowns on so many items and we left with this rug. It was a floor model (um, people will be walking on it in our house, too... so no big deal there), in just about perfect condition, and marked down to $73 (including tax) from an original price of $600! It's huge, quite formal, and looks great in the space. We had no intentions of purchasing a rug at the sale and didn't know our room size calculations. But for that price, we knew it would get some use no matter what!

Here's the view from the opposite side. I'm taking the photos from our dining room. Once we ordered the couches, I went online and scored the two teak end-tables for $65 each. They match the bookshelf, all the dining room furniture, and the molding quite well.

What we have left to finish in this room: window treatments, 2 lamps for the end tables, revive the plant (haha), replace the ceiling fan or patch the hole, paint the walls, and hang our Chicago black and white print of the Wrigley building.

A closeup of those new teak end tables. Anyone know of an affordable place to purchase lamps? Or... do you have any lamp design ideas? Which style of table lamps, color of lampshades, color of lamp base? I'm clueless.

Here's the love affair we're having with this other set of couches (told you about our obsession with brown, right?). These are at a local department store and are super expensive not priced competitively. This is actually the same store we purchased our dining room chairs. Our first priority is to start saving better. Since we've bought a home, a lot of our money has gone to expenses and furniture. Now that we feel our home is liveable (aka enough beds and furniture), we need to calm down. But, I can dream for the future and sending our current pieces of Bauhaus down to the basement and replacing them with these lovelies:

We're all about depth. I want a couch that can fit two people laying next to one another. And, it is required to be comfortable enough for afternoon naps. Every family room couch should be that comfortable. This is a deep, wide, and long couch with an incredible feeling of softness to it. While we currently have a loveseat on the opposing wall next to our fireplace, we won't be replacing it with another loveseat. We really like these oversized chairs. I think they call them 1/2's or something of that nature.

Now, for a dilemma. I already asked what kind of lamp would look best (feel free to give me links!) on those teak end tables in our sitting room... but now I need help with window treatments. This is the situation on our lower and upper level. We have gorgeous floor to ceiling windows in just about every room of our home. The problem is that the window on the right is so incredibly close the the corner and they are not evenly spaced along the wall. This presents a problem in treating the windows-- hanging drapes are pretty much out.

I am assuming we'll have to fit them with roman blinds or a valance. I will likely never use the blinds for their purpose of withholding light--because we like light and the beauty of having long windows, but we do need something. They seem too bare.

Here are some options I came up with... but by no means are these comprehensive. This is a boxcut valance in a natural tone. Since both rooms will have dark couches and dark wood accents, would light curtains even be good? What about the style in a darker shade? I like the simple valance.

Here's one without a valance. It has its own mini drape over the top which appears to act as a valance. It's a darker shade but I'm sure I could go lighter.

Finally, texture. What about those cool woven ones? Since we already have a lot of patterns in our formal sitting room, I don't know that these would work. I like texture but too much can seem overbearing. Final question... since you can see into the family room from the formal sitting room (and vice versa), should I choose the same window treatments so they are somewhat unified? After all, they both do have brown couches-- or will.

Random, but appropriate. I have found a new favorite thing. These yogurts are awesome! I've only tried the triple berry, but I can tell you it tastes a bit like strawberry ice cream. It's amazing. I've heard great things about this lemon flavor, too, but haven't tried it just yet.

Phew. That was a lot for just one post... but I can assure you that the next post will be even more exciting... though maybe not as long! We're finding out the gender of Baby W tonight (we hope)!