Family Room decorated for the Holidays

So this year I wanted a well decorated home for the holidays.. christmas-ey but not cluttered.. I love decor .. clearly! But even I can see that my home can easily change from clean to chaotic in mere minutes.. I have a lot of STUFF as my mom and aunt like to remind me ;) .. So when my house is clean I think it looks very together and amazing But if its even a little bit messy.. mostly thanks to my little monkeys it can look chaotic and yes cluttered sadly,, so back to my point lol.. so this year I really had to focus in on decor that I was really 'IN LOVE' with.. ONLY!

So whites, polka dots, silver touches.. pretty ! ;)

..Check out some of my holiday decorating below...

Nautical Theme Basement Decor Plan

Here's a little sneak peek on some of our Basement Decor Plans...  In the next few weeks I will be sharing some of our Basement progress.. so stay tuned for lots of Room REVEALS!!

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Adding Woven Jute Ribbon to Our Christmas Tree

Today is just a small post on my latest Homesense Holiday find.. A woven roll of 3 inch burlap jute trim on this great rustic wooden spool.. for only $5.99.. I honestly thought I was seeing things.. Plus it was 10yrds for under $6.. that's almost unheard of!!! When I first bought it I wasn't quite sure where it was going to go.. I just knew I NEEDED IT!! 

Drywall Media Built-Ins & Styling

Here is a more in depth look at the drywall built-in Media Niche.. Our Family room under went quite the makeover. We painted the dated built-in media unit BM Cloud White.. I know white sounds like it would stand out more.. But it actually looks wayyy better painted white! To make the mantel more of a focal point I added this white mantel above the fireplace. It was just that missing little detail! Once we installed it I couldn't wait to decorate it for the holidays.  Originally I thought we were going to have to paint the walls as they seemed to a little dark for my taste... BUT once we painted the wall unit, removed all the wood blinds and added our striped area rug with our white sectional.. Everything changed.. Finally our room seemed brighter, fresher and more 'US'!

We also painted out the gold metal on the fireplace with High Heat Matte Black Fireplace/BBQ Paint.

The right side of the unit used to be one large plain mirror.. Pretty but pointless?? So we added shelving to make it functional!! Now it can hold all my lovely eye candy.

Leaned against the shelving is my vintage ladder

 

The shelves kind of have a subtle nautical theme going on.. its a mix of Vintage books, wooden accents, and shells. I picked up this cool vintage wooden drawer at an antique market a few years ago.. It adds some vintage character to our new shelves.

We added Beadboard wallpaper as the back drop to each of the drywall cut-outs to lend to our French country vibe. See how our Kitchen Built-ins turned out HERE.

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This is our Spring/ Summer Mantel Display.. I kept it simple with greenery in small galvanized tin pots which tied into the chrome studding around the mirror.

A Sailboat, Coral and Rope.. It can't get any more Nautical than that! Well maybe an anchor ;)

 I found these fabulous woven baskets that fit the boxes perfectly!!! They hold our daughters puzzles and her DVDs..

 

 We styled the upper part of the Media unit.. it was open to above.. so of course I had to decorate it! It's all neutral decor so that way it doesn't need to be changed up seasonally.. It's too hard, climbing and lugging items up a ladder!! Or at least thats what my hubby told me.. You should of seen my fabulous hubby displaying stuff for me, I'd pass things up to him, he would be struggling on the ladder, I would take steps back then say 'more to the left, a little more, ok back a touch to the right.' He was pretty good about it, but by the end of it I think he hated me! 

We used our antique window frame from our wedding table chart, wooden boxes that I painted in BM Alexandria Beige, Shutter from Homesense (that was red but only $19 so I decided the price was right I would just paint it!) With a really cool clock that was a house warming gift from my in-laws. 

Didn't he do a great job???  :)

If you missed our FULL FAMILY ROOM REVEAL Click HERE

Shared with:

Thoughts from Alice - Sundays at Home

Coastal Charm - Show & Tell No.238

Thrifty Decor Chick - December Before & After

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Family room reveal

This is our Family room reveal..I thought i'd break up all the holiday reveals for a moment and share the most used room in our house!! Our family room is a very bright and open space, its open to the kitchen eating area, so it naturally becomes the space where everyone gathers when we have people over. I decided to include a mix of pictures from our Summer and Fall decorating.. The next few days will be all about our Family Room including our BIG Christmas Reveal.. So stay tuned... 

The previous owners had a lot of warm tones throughout.. So for me It was about making the house more neutral, softer and lighter... Think Pottery Barn-ish.. We kept the wall colour in here.. Mostly because of the cost to get a room with this kind of ceiling height painted is through the roof!! We removed all the wooden blinds.. which lightened the room automatically!! BUT IT GETS HOT NOW!! Don't get me wrong I love the way the windows look OPEN.. BUT for practicality as its a very bright room.. maybe we needed them?? Either way I couldn't live with colour of the wood blinds.. So instead we installed simple white curtains across the bottom windows and the Juliet Balcony Doors. It's a much softer look now.

Painting the Built in drywall Media unit made the biggest change. It completely brightened up the space. In a perfect world I wouldn't have kept this unit as I feel its dated and the unevenness at the top made me uneasy ;) Not really my style. But due to budget restraints.. we kept it. It has honestly grown on me... And I think when you see the changes we made to it, it will grow on you too!

 I will be sharing those in a separate post tomorrow as there is too many changes to list now.

Our house has a subtle french country nautical theme going on throughout. I've always been drawn to nautical decor, and with having a pool, I really played into the whole beachy coastal theme. The SWIM sign was a great find at Elizabeth Interiors years ago.. Even before we had a pool lol.. I know I am a geek.. But look I finally have a great place to display it.. pointing right at our pool ;)

This is our Family room in the fall.. I really should have changed out the Swim sign :(.. 

I will be making new seasonal wood signs for that spot from now on :)

The french door leads to my husbands separate office.. Which was a huge selling feature as our previous home didn't have one. Above the door we hung a vintage boat oar that I painted 'white' on these great boat cleats from this Etsy Shop... I can't say how much I love Etsy enough!!

You can really see our hardwood here. Under the open stair banister I have 2 accent chairs. It's great when we get a large crowd over.  The chairs were from Kijiji, I recovered them for the second time in this linen material, so that I could have more pillow material choices ;) 

This large Vintage 'Antiques' sign is my latest fabulous antique find.. It wasn't particularly a good deal in price, but it is unique in the sense of the letters being cut out! I loved that it was already distressed from age and the colouring was perfect.. white.. so I was sold!

Gosh I love wood signs.. Can you tell??

Another big change was the curtains!! We added these Ikea RITVA drapes.. They have some weight.. Plus they look like Linen but have a great price tag! They come in different lengths which worked out great for us, as we needed super long!!. I wanted white for a fresh look and so I could change up pillows etc whatever the theme/ season. We hung the curtains on a super long extension rod from Ikea as well.. It worked out great for this huge window..11ft of rod!! ;)

The white sectional is from our previous Living room, It's the classic Ikea Ektorp slipcovered sectional, The brown velvet tufted ottoman is from our previous family room. It was originally bought from Ethan Allen years ago. I made some money when we sold our first house and wanted to treat myself! 

  The extra large wicker and rope storage basket acts as a side table and provides all the storage to hide our daughters toys.. If we aren't having guest over.. Its pretty much OPEN all day long!!

 In the corner behind the sofa.. I have a Vintage telescope, weathered map sketch and our sofa table.

The only real purchase that we made for this room is this Dash and Albert striped indoor/outdoor rug.

This was a splurge item for us from Muskoka living Interiors. I absolutely LOVE this store!! For the most part its entirely out of our price range but it's fun to go there and dream.

If you liked this room you may like our FULL Living room Reveal here

See Our Christmas Decor in our Family Room HERE

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House of Hipsters - Found & Foraged Linky Party

Finding Silver Pennies - Sundays Link Party - FEATURED!!

Thoughts from Alice - Sundays at Home -FEATURED!!

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Linen and Chrome Pendant Light

I just love this light so much so I just have to show it off. It was such a great bargain at Home Depot(this is NOT a sponsored post).. I know.. $160 Crazy right! You can see it here. It is almost 24inch in diameter so its quite impactful. It's made of a white linen shade and chrome candelabra chandelier base. It looks amazing walking under it or looking up at it. It would also look really good with a rimming of a thin ribbon for some detail on the top and bottom of the shade (I always meant to do that, but never got around to it). 

 I also used it in my previous townhouse in the dining room. And most recently my Aunt bought one for her dining room too! (Good taste runs in the family!) Here is the pendant fixture in my old Dining rm (Sorry for the picture quality. I had to scan them for you all to see.)

Built-in Bookshelves to flank fireplace

I have always wanted bookshelves to display all my goodies . So when we purchased this house I knew I was definitely getting my gas fireplace and bookshelves!! We decided to go with Ikea Billy Bookshelves for the starting base as they are a great price for what you get. We also Bought the Billy doors. We started by adding thicker trim on either side of bookshelf with L brackets, no more nails and lots of caulking!!! We bought 2 large pieces of wood to create a faux side to bookshelf to make the bookcase look wider and finish the side of unit. For the crown we used left over crown from our kitchen cabinets. Lastly for a finishing touch I added my own hardware and painted it. We took our Ikea shelf to our local Benjamin Moore store where they were able to make the perfect paint match! So all we had to do was go home and paint the trim and crown. See below for pics of our transformation. You can also check out the rest of our Home Tour here.

Before: The room just looked like it was missing something..

This is after we added the faux sides, trim and crown moulding on one side.. Missing crown,  caulking of the trim and Paint! 

 Mission Complete! So happy with the results!! Love our new Bookshelves!! Once painted and caulked you could never tell that they were simple Ikea bookcases. All in all, total cost was under $400 for built-ins! Last pic shows how we painted the back wall a light Khaki green to make bookshelves just pop. Thanks for reading.