{Changing the look of your House}

This thought or idea started for me about a year ago when I quit my job to stay home full time with the kiddos.  As I was sitting around thinking, what am I going to do all day?, I started looking at my house which I had neglected while I was working and thought about all the "projects" I wanted to do.  If you know me very well, you know I'm a project girl.  I love having a million projects going at once.

I stumbled upon this website and more specifically this post.  If you haven't ever been introduced to The Nester consider this your lucky day.  I was so intrigued and excited to read this post because it gave me hope that I could change things around my house and I wasn't stuck with the direction I was going.

Let me talk briefly about the direction thing.  I was married about 10 years ago and my husband and I joke that everything in our house was given to us.  I know that sounds like a rough problem to have, but it really didn't lend us to creating our own style and honestly 10 years ago I didn't know what my style was or what that even meant.  I only knew what everyone around me did and so that's what I did too.

Fast forward to about a year ago when I'm now home looking for things to do.  I realized around that time that I wasn't thrilled with the look of my house.  I was craving lighter and brighter.  I wanted to eliminate the dark browns, the reds, the golds and move to the cooler colors.  Here is what my living room looked like as I started to play with this idea.

It's not bad at all, but much darker than what I was wanting and really not at all the color palette I was going for anymore.  The couch was my parents and it was obviously driving all the colors in the room.

Also, the wall color was much too dark and didn't allow light to bounce off the walls causing it to always look so dark in there and we have 6 of those tall windows you see.

Lots of browns and reds, not what I was wanting anymore.

Remember when I told you I quit my job during this time to stay home with the kids? Well, that really didn't lend itself to a huge redecorating budget, so I was challenged to think of what this room could look like on a very, very small budget.


I did some very simple, but dramatic things to instantly lighten up the space.  I first threw a white sheet over the couch and threw in some big blue pillows from my bed.  I also removed the heavy red drapes from the kitchen windows. 

Here is a look at the before one more time.

 It made a big difference and I started to get excited.  As my mom says, I instantly saw the vision.  And once I saw that vision there was no turning back, I had to continue on my journey to lighten up my house and change my style!  I immediately removed EVERY single accessory in my living room and put them all on my dining room table.  I just needed to see it as a blank palette, so I could see what I was working with!  It was so liberating!! 

Tune in tomorrow to see what I did next on my journey!