Home Decor | Our Living Room + #LetItShine Monday Link-Up
I love to decorate. I LOVE home decor. I’m not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but I do really enjoy it. I sometimes struggle with “how” to decorate… in that I often don’t know what to do with “knick knacks,” or I can’t figure out the best arrangement for furniture or pictures on a wall, but over the years I’ve found that decorating is pretty much like anything else – you can’t get “better” at it unless you practice.
Decorating, at least for me, is A LOT of trial and error. It’s putting something in one place only to decide that it’s best in another place. It’s not being “married” to any one particular layout or arrangement or color scheme.
It also is a slow process – unless you’ve got the cabbage to hire someone to come in and do it for you – which I do not. If you’re really trying to decorate a room on a budget, trust me, it is NOT going to happen overnight.
We moved into our house three months ago and it’s just now starting to sort of come together. We’re doing things room by room, a little bit at a time. It’s going to be a few years before I really think the house is looking the way we really want it to. We LOVE this house so much and it’s already so pretty as it is, so it’s not like it looks bad in the meantime while we take our time putting the “finishing touches” on it. If that makes any sense…
I’ve been wanting to share some of our progress. I shared our mini “Deck Makeover” last month. Our latest focus has been on our master bedroom, but there’s still a few things I got to do before I can fully share it.
In the meantime, the only room in the house that is 95% of the way done is the living room! I still need to put up curtains (waiting until next month’s budget for that piece) and I would still like to paint it. The neutral paint color the previous owner’s had is totally fine, but I really want a pop of color in the living room. We also would eventually like to get another loveseat for more seating. But, in the meantime, while we wait to get curtains, paint, and another loveseat, the living room has really come together and feels like us and feels like home!
So, I thought I’d share a little “before and after” of our living room with you guys!
Here’s the “BEFORE” of the living room on the day we closed on the house:
And here’s the “in progress” after!
BEFORE AND AFTER:
BEFORE AND AFTER:
Pretty much everything in this room is recycled from things we had in our previous house. You can totally make a room feel different using things you already have in your home!
Chair on the left is from World Market a few years ago. (This one is similar AND on sale!) Coffee table is a family antique / heirloom and the basket is from The Mighty River Project.
Chair in the back corner is from Century Furniture (it was actually in his parent’s house and they gave it to us). All the side tables are also antique family heirlooms. Mirrors are from Target!
You can read all about where I’ve gotten our canvases here. Lamp is from Target.
The three little quatrefoil mirrors I got for $10 from Big Lots! 
The big canvas over the table is Artsy Couture. The lamp is from Target. The area rug is from Urban Outfitters. It was actually the area rug we had in Lilly’s nursery in our old house and it doesn’t work in the nursery here.
The couch is from some furniture store in Cary, North Carolina but the brand is “Lane Furniture.” The blanket is from Target and the throw pillows are from Crate & Barrel.
This picture is SO special to me – it’s a FIVE generation picture! Lilly with her dad, grandfather, great grandmother, and GREAT GREAT grandmother who is 101 years old! How awesome is that?
So our living room is “open concept” and flows right into the breakfast nook / dining area and kitchen. This is sort of a “transitional” area between the living room and breakfast nook and it ended up being the perfect spot for this cubby bookshelf.
LEFT is before (duh) and the RIGHT is current! I love that it has wedding pictures of our family members, important books and meaningful items to us.
The mirror is from Target, the lampshade I got from Target for $1.56!! HUZZAH!!!!! 
That is our God’s Knot that we tied in our wedding and the Bible is 150+ years old and was used by our ring bearer.
So that’s it! What do you think? Are you decorating lately? What projects are you tackling? I also would LOVE to hear some suggestions on what color we should paint this room! Should we just do an accent wall? What color? I need ideas!
Welcome to Let it Shine! Welcome to the new, revamped Funday Monday! After two years, we decided to rename our link up to something we felt was a better fit. Welcome to Let it Shine! Why the name? Because, we want this link up to be just that…..your chance to let it shine! We will be sharing our favorites each week here, and on social media!
The biggest change? Monthly Inspirations! Each month we will share some fun post ideas, one for each week. Do you HAVE to follow the inspirations to link up? Absolutely not! You can link up anything you’d like. However, if you’d like to be considered for a feature, those will be picked from the inspirations. 
Last week, we talked about sparkle, and man, did we see variety! Jewelry, fireworks, glitter. We loved it! Here are a few of our Sparkle favorites:
/ Proud to Be a Momma / Sparkle + Pasta / Let’s Make Fireworks /
Another place we will be showcasing our favs? The Let It Shine Pinterest Board! We will also be posting ideas for the weekly themes, so be sure you’re following! 
Linking up to Let it Shine? Don’t forget to link back to our blogs or share our button, thanks y’all! 
Oooh I Love that you have a fireplace. I think lots of different individual pieces are much more reflective of the personalities in a home and the adventures they’ve been on. I sometimes look at magazines and the net and see these super polished houses where the whole house coordinates and looks immaculate and I think ooh lovely… then I look at our things and our home and realise that just like your living room a little bit of mixing is much much nicer… after all a home is meant to be a home and not a show piece!
LOVE the room, Molly! I’m amazed at how good it looks after only moving in 3 months ago! I actually like the wall color as is, but I think you could totally pull off a light blue for the walls. Since it’s open concept and it flows into the kitchen that makes it hard to do something different unless you want to do that for the whole room… maybe you could do the fireplace wall and the one to the left of it red (it would have to be the RIGHT red, red is a tricky one), and leave the rest of the walls neutral? Just thinking out loud. Good luck! Keep us updated! 🙂
I LOVE it! love those little mirrors and that generation picture is so so sweet!
forlaurenandlauren.blogspot.com
Love the look! You’ve inspired me to set up our backyard
love the pops of color! and the matted photos are such a perfect touch, especially the one with you and the hubs in front of the antique car, too fab!! I can never have too many photos of my loves! job well done!!
xoxo,
Tara Belle
http://www.NorthernLights-SouthernBelles.com
I love interior design, and it’s so much fun taking a peek into someone’s home. You have such a fun, cheerful space!
Congratulations on beautifully decorating your home! The patterned chair is absolute eye-candy!
– Karen
Join my eShakti $50 Gift Card Giveaway at http://www.MrsLookingGood.com!
Loving the redecoration! 🙂
Your living room is such a fabulous collection of gorgeous and happy colors. I love the knot and the bible… Such personal decorations are priceless….
Love the house! 🙂 I totally agree with you – the collected look is my style too! I meant to write a home decor post for today but never took pictures! Dang it!
When I moved into my current house about 3 years ago, I was obsessed with home decor. I would spend hours and hours perusing interior design websites and magazines. I don’t spend as much time now but I still love home decor. Your living room is so cozy chic. Love that Target lamp! ~Cynthia
I’ve been in my home a little over 6 months, and my living room is still only about 40% done. But I love planning for it! Haha. I’m interested to know how you wired your electronics/surround sound for the above the fireplace TV. I have a corner fireplace and we have our TV in the niche above it, but want a bigger TV. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to pull it off w/o wires showing.
That’s a great question, Crystal! When we bought the house, the previous owner had actually already had the whole living room wired to be basically a home theater, so all the wiring is done for us… the is a tech closet that the TV receiver and stuff lives in. The electrical outlet and plug is coming out from the wall behind the TV which is why you don’t see the cords. I know you’d probably have to have it professionally wired by an electrician, but I don’t actually think it would be AS expensive as you think… it might be worth looking into!!
Love your floors and all the pretty wall art!
Your living room is absolutely beautiful, Molly! I love how you decorated it, and it looks so sunny!
You got serious decorating skills Molly…love it!!!
Rebecca
http://www.redtagchiclosangeles.com
Your living room looks so homey and inviting! Love how it turned out!
Jill
dousedinpink.blogspot.com
Love how your living room turned out, especially your wall decoration. Unfortunately we (for now) live in an old house were drilling holes into the walls is a pain in the rear.
Alex – Funky Jungle
omg your living room is to die for!! Love all the different patterns and pictures! Too cute!
<3 Shannon
upbeatsoles.blogspot.com
Totally love your living room you made a great choice with with fire place being center of attention. We have been living in our apt for 10 yrs now and are still decorating. Its like an ongoing process because you get new inspiration, fresh ideas. Thanks for hosting. Happy to join link up. Sabina @Oceanblue Style
I really enjoyed this post! I love how you mixed patterns to give the room a warm, yet fun, vibe! I love the lamp shade and all of the personal touches! We built our house 8 years ago and I am always revamping. We just painted the hallway and the kitchen and everything is still off of the walls. Maybe you should come over and teach me how to do a photo collage(: Susan
Molly your room looks amazing – we had to gut our house so after three months it looked like a building site… I envy how lovely yours looks after so little time! We’ve been in our house 10 years now and there’s STILL little jobs to do. If only I’d known…!
Have a wonderful week my lovely, thank you for hosting of course 🙂
Catherine x
Molly, I think you’ve done AMAZINGLY in just 3 months!! We’ve been in our place since October last year, and we are slowly, painstakingly getting the interior done. We have a tiny budget, so we pick up things as we see them, whether from the car boot sale, Gumtree etc. Primarily all second-hand. I like this approach – you grow into a house that way, and you’re buying things because you love them, not because you need to fill the space. I think your living room looks ‘designed’ but also really comfortable, liveable, which is a fab achievement. Thanks for hosting the linkup x
LOVE LOVE LOVE your living room! So bright and cozy!