Guys, I am SO happy to have our main floor (mostly) done. We started this project in January and have finally gotten to the point where it feels homey. We decided to move our furniture around so that we can have a toy storage shelf that is twice the height of what we had before (and still have) and the only wall it could go on was the wall we had our TV on. So we moved the TV and had to get a sectional in order to fit more than seating for 3 people in our living room. I wanted to lighten up the walls because I have noticed over the past few winters that the darkness of our north facing living room really gets to me and brings me down. I like to have LOTS of light and our dark accent wall was not helping. We ordered a small-ish sectional in a darker grey (hides more marks from the kids) and then chose a light grey for our walls. I had NO idea it would be SO light....but that's ok. It doesn't look very grey but it is called "Classic Grey" (Benjamin Moore) and it really brightens up our main floor.
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It was difficult to find a sectional that fits in our space (since we needed both sides to be the same length...typically sectionals have either a chaise or have a sofa side and a loveseat side...like an L shape. Ours is still kind of an L but both parts are the same length...sofa length). Anyway...the couch cost us more than we had budgeted for which meant we had to put off buying a taller toy storage shelf and a new area rug. I didn't like having the wall above the current toy shelf empty so I put up some prints that I won on Instagram. I won 24 prints of my own Instagram photos by Impressed and they came with washi tape. :)
 
Once we had painted our walls I felt like our white door just blended right in to the wall. I went to Benjamin Moore and chose Covington Blue and I feel like it turned out really well!! Because we are in a townhouse we can not paint the outside of our door but it's fun to see this colour on the inside. We have a very tall entrance way and I didn't like having it all so flat in colour. The second picture is just to show the door colour better since it doesn't show well in the first picture due to the light coming in.
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The "before" photos were taken at 2 in the afternoon with the lights on in the room and the "after" photos were taken at 7:30pm with the lights on. Do you notice how dark it looked when the walls were brown and with that dark accent wall? Eeeekkkk!! So happy with how bright it is now! I feel happier just being in this lighter space. (IGNORE the area rug....it will be gone eventually but for now we need a rug for our kids to play on.)
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We painted our fireplace white (the same white as the trim and mantle) with hopes that it would not blend into the wall like it did when it was dark brown just like the main wall...the white and grey are so close in colour that it doesn't "pop" like I had hoped but it's a big improvement from before!!
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The lighting is bad in both of these photos...sorry. The only change here is paint and photos on the right wall. I am dreaming of one day doing a built in bench so we would have more room in the area and of course, a new table!! One day. One day.
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This is the other side of our kitchen. Again..not much of a change other than paint and we brought our bar stools back up from our garage storage room.
The rest of the photos are just little touches around our main floor. As you can see I LOVE photos in my home. People make me happy. I am more of a photo person than an art person. :)
Every January I cut the "merry christmas" part off of the photo christmas cards we receive and then put the photos on these Martha Stewart Cork boards that I bought at Staples a few years ago.
I order Chatbooks regularly. It's an app that connect with my Instagram account and each book has 60 photos in it (with captions) and only costs $6 with shipping!! It's a great deal and I just receive an email every time I have 60 new photos on Instagram and I can go through and choose if I want to keep all of them, some or none. Once I have 60 that I want they automatically print and send the book to me. I used Jacob's little Easter basket to store them and I love it so much!! It won't be long before I will need a different, bigger bin for these books.
These are the Impressed print I talked about earlier. I had attempted to hang them with my own washi tape (grey and white stripes) but they kept falling off the wall. So I started again with the washi tape the Impressed provided and not a single one has fallen. Livia loves looking at them and she tries to say her versions of our names. It's the cutest!
I bought these mirrors at HomeSense. They came 3 in a box for $15. For $30 it fills a decent amount of space. They were gold so I used some of the leftover paint I have from painting our front door and painted these. It took forever but was worth it!
 
Steve wanted a place to store his keys and wallet that wasn't in the kitchen on top of the fridge. I was happy to come up with a solution! These frames hang at the top of the stairs leading up from our garage. I actually find the white too light against the grey walls so I am considering painting the frames...thoughts? I have some darker grey paint from Livia's room, I also have yellow and a mossy green spray paint. I dunno. Not sure yet what I will decide on. Feel free to make suggestions. :) I love the little chalkboard portion of the bottom frame.
Just a different perspective of our living room...photo was taken from beside the fireplace and you can see back to the kitchen table (well...not the table but you can see the chair that Livia's highchair is on at the table).
I am rather obsessed with the art my friend Sarah made. She makes awesome stuff!! Check out her etsy shop or her Facebook page by searching for Home Love Designs. I had the larger frames already and purchased the smaller ones at Dollarama and Dollar Tree. I have way more pics of Jacob up right now. I tend to take photos mainly on my iPhone so the quality isn't good enough to blow up to 8x10. I will need to take some photos of her with our better camera (not that it works well at all) and then swap a picture or two of Jacob for ones of Livia.
That's it folks!! Thanks for reading. :)
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