Making the Den Pretty, part 2

To continue the list from the previous post, here's the remaining list of things we've done to the den in recent months.

6. I had these pillows made by this fantastic Etsy shop. I highly recommend their work. They are so easy to work with and their work is high quality.

7. Then I took a break on doing anything in the den (or the rest of the house, for that matter). Summer is busy and we went on some fun trips. Beach trip:

and the high school mission trip...where were both leaders. From the square dancing night:

a special western selfie.

8. So back to the den. I've been working on a "Wedding Wall" for a while. I started collecting some wedding family wedding photos (still collecting photos from various family members). For about 2 months, the "wall" was more like a "Wedding floor" in our front room:

Even though I haven't collected all the photos yet, I decided to go ahead and frame the ones I had and hang them. Here's the beginnings of the wall:

9. We FINALLY got a ceiling fan installed. This was so so so so necessary, as the sun sets on this side of the house and it really heats up in the afternoon. 

10. To really help with the sun issues (and make the room feel very real), we installed curtains! I got these curtains from West Elm for only $39/panel during an online special, which was a fantastic deal. I was considering a similar fabric that was $20/yard, so it would have been much more to make them myself. I'm sooooo happy to have curtains on the wall. It really changes the feel of the room. I'm loving it. 

I'm gonna try and take nicer pictures to do a "reveal" like all the fancy bloggers do. We'll see how that goes. I've been doing a lot in the kitchen too, since these rooms share space, it makes the most sense to show them together. I'll get working on that. I'll leave you with this lovely furniture arrangement from the first football games of the season. Phil moved our other TV into the den. It lasted like this for a few days...

Making the Den pretty, part 1

So....some things have happened on the home renovation/decor front, primarily in the den. I've started a list of things I've done since March.

Let me attempt to go in order:

1. We were gifted some chairs from a family member. They are kind of an orangey, muted coral. They swivel and rock and are just small enough to fit in the space. Most armchairs would be too big to fit in the space. So they fit perfectly and were free. FANTASTIC. Also, I had just happened to buy these pillows and they had some orange in them, so they connect the chairs to the rest of the color scheme nicely.

2. I rearranged the den several times trying to find the best configuration with the new chairs. I ended up with pretty much the same layout, but at least I now KNOW the other options wouldn't work. In the first pictures, you can see that I tried to move the table from behind the shorter sofa, but that just didn't work very well.

3. THE SOFAs GOT RECOVERED. After endless posts about this, I think I'll just let the photos do the talking. They look way more intense blue in these photos than in real life. They are more of a navy, but you get the idea.

before:

AND AFTER:

4. Grew my succulent garden

5. I finally got around to painting the back door. I decided to just paint it the same cream color as the rest of the room. Before:

and after (but with all the painters tape still on):

More things have been done in here, but you'll just have to wait for part 2, if I ever get around to writing it (hopefully tomorrow).