Home sweet home

Sofa and loveseat

Last weekend my sister and I finally decided on living room furniture for our new place. We had made a few scouting expeditions to furniture stores, but we were having a hard time committing to anything. It seemed like such a big decision, especially since neither of us had ever bought new living room furniture before. Then on Saturday we went to Ashley furniture, and as soon as I saw this set, I fell in love. I had liked many different things we saw, but this was probably the first set I got excited about.

The sofa and loveseat are a pale, neutral yellow, and the floral pattern on the pillows and the chair is plum, slate blue, yellow and green with a little accent of chocolate brown. The pillows are solid yellow on the back, so they could be flipped over for a different look.

Accent chair and back of loveseat

A big consideration in our decision was size. Because we're on the upper level of a duplex, I was so afraid that nothing would fit up the stairs, around the corner and then through the door. Logically I knew it had to work because when we came for a tour before we signed the lease the tenants had a couch. And I'm sure all the other people who have lived here have had couches. But that didn't help my nerves too much. I was convinced we'd have to remove the railing in the stairwell or take the door off the hinges.

Already cat approved

Well, I really needn't have worried because the delivery men were in and out in probably about ten minutes. They practically ran up the sidewalk and staircase with the chair. The couch was a little tricky, but thankfully we have high ceilings, so they stood it on end to get it in the room.

I'm glad to finally have a comfy place to watch TV in the evenings. There's really only so long that you want to sit in a director's chair next to a TV tray. (And yes, that looked about as classy as it sounds.)

One of my favorite places at home is my craft room. It's been wonderful just having everything organized and accessible in one space. All of my stamps are in the plastic bins on the shelf on the right side of this photo. Ideally I'd love to have a nicer shelf, something more like a bookshelf, so I could store my stamps directly on the shelves and it would be even easier to get out a certain stamp set. But that can be a future goal.

The trickiest piece of furniture in the craft room was definitely the hutch on top of the cabinet. It was pretty time-consuming to assemble -- there were maybe forty screws to attach the backing to the frame, and I missed with a couple of them and made small cracks in the top -- and then I discovered that my plan of using wood dowels to hold the ribbon was not going to work. We bought the dowels, I cut the first one to the right size and filled it with spools of ribbon. Then I picked it up and discovered that it sagged horribly. Argh. On to Plan B: My dad bought two eight-foot aluminum rods and brought over his hack saw to cut them to the right length. Success! (Thank goodness, because I don't know what else we could have used.)

The down side is that because the spools for some of the ribbon are so large, I can't use all of the rods. (That's also what kept me from arranging the ribbon by color; I wanted to keep all those large spools together.) But it worked out in the end because I decided to put all my most-used ribbon on the small wooden holder so I can easily move the whole thing to the table. I tucked some of my non-spooled ribbon into the cubbies, and I have one plastic bin with some odds and ends of ribbon and other fibers.

The drawers in the cabinet are awesome. They are deep -- about 28" -- and because the top two drawers aren't very tall, they are perfect for punches. In fact the top drawer is filled with all my Stampin' Up!^® punches. It's so nice to open the drawer and be able to see all of them in a glance instead of having to dig through a box or deep drawer.

I still haven't been able to spend as much time in my craft room as I'd like to, but at least I know that it's done. And if I do have to make a quick last-minute card, I don't have to waste a bunch of time getting everything out before I can even start stamping.

Now I might just have to go christen the couch with a little nap. Thanks for stopping by!