Sunday, September 26, 2010

new curtains, and do you use your nice stuff?

So, repeat after me.....I  do NOT need new curtains, I do NOT need new curtains....even though I REALLY WANT THEM.

I am so...meh...over my living room.  I have a stupid purple sofa that I hate, a red leather club chair that is quite nice but seems to dictate the entire design, and a light blue FLOR tile rug that is...eh, ok.  Not quite what I wanted. 


Our old living room decor had very warm tones, with rusty orange drapes and tables, and a purple/red/orange rug from Crate and Barrel that tied it all together.  In our old house, I liked it.  In this house, I didn't.

So I changed it up a bit.  Out went the orange and in came lots of white (repainted all our furniture, added white drapes.) I added in turquoise blue accents, and used a Robert Allan floral fabric in places around the room.  Its definitely a lighter, brighter look....but I just hate the sofa and rug.  Hate them.  Want to burn them. 

Then I added the red vinyl to the dining chairs, and the red to my desk chairs....and now I feel like there's WAY TOO MUCH RED in here. 

I thought, hmm, maybe if I take away that bright Robert Allan fabric and instead go with curtains that are paler blue and red it would tie things in more.

I thought these Pottery Barn Audrey curtains would do the trick:


except they are all sold out.  Waaah.  Plus the Mister's eyebrows shot up at the amount of money they would have cost. 

If I could sew, which I can't, I could get this Covington Wilmington multi fabric and make my own:


But we've already established I can't sew.  

We hope to move next summer anyway, so I should probably just live with what I have. Since obviously when you get a new place you throw away all your old stuff and buy all new stuff! Whee! 

*****************************
Here's a slightly related question: if you have kids, do you use your nice stuff, or are you living with stuff you don't like but you don't care if it gets beat up until they are older?

Up until recently, I've been a proponent of using nice stuff, even though I have kids.  (I'm not talking priceless heirlooms handed down for generations.)  I like pretty things, and I have pretty things, and they are out where the kids can see them and touch them.  I have a gallery wall hung in my dining room, and the bottom row is at eye level with my three year old.  The bookshelves in the dining room have breakable items on the lower levels.  I have pretty pillows on the sofa that weren't cheap.

Recently, however, my three year old has become a destructive force of terror.  My gallery wall is always crooked.  My pretty pillows have chocolate smears on them.   He has single-handedly trashed the upholstery on four dining chairs, all of my throw pillows, the playroom rug, and two sofas.  My bedding is safe so far only because I keep my bedroom door shut during the day so the kids don't play in there.   

We have a very nice dining table, which is currently sitting out in the garage.  We replaced it with a beat up table from Craigslist, which has worked fine until now.  My newly reupholstered dining chairs are too big to go around the table comfortably.  My old table is bigger, but has a high end finish and I had put it in the garage because I was tired of using it only with elasticized oilcloth tablecloths, like your grandma used on her patio table. 

I really want a new sofa, but this purple thing has been through the Great Vomiting Illness of 2009, the potty training of 2008 and 2010 (and projected potty training of 2012), has incurred rips in four different moves, and a few weeks ago I watched my oldest son wipe his runny nose by planting his face on the arm of the sofa and walking from one end to other.  Am I crazy to want a new sofa, knowing what will happen to it? Does my new sofa also need to be a very dark color?

Do you use nice stuff with your young kids, and accept that it might get beat up?  Or has it all been packed away until they are out of the messy phase?  My youngest is almost 15 months....do I have to wait another 5 years before I can bring the pretty stuff back?

5 comments:

  1. remind me not to sit on your sofa next time I come over...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't even talk about when my water broke on that sofa!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, that would have been when I decided to buy a new sofa...

    ReplyDelete
  4. your curtains look very elegant. and your living room is so nice. I am, sarah, fan of all good decorating ideas :) thanks for these

    ReplyDelete

Yay! You're commenting! I love comments!