a living room update

I promised in my last post that I’d eventually take some pictures of our new sofa once I finished up our new pillows (I’m sure everyone was waiting with bated breath). Before we got married I bought a few navy and light blue pillows. I liked them individually, but they just weren’t working together. There was no similarity in color and the patterns were all geometric. I really wanted something that was a little more organic and had multiple colors.

I discovered Schumacher’s Chiang Mai Dragon fabric a while ago and loved it. But it’s $175/yard and that’s just a little outside our budget. Then I stumbled on Dwell Studios Ming Dragon fabric. Eureka! It’s got a similar feel and it’s $25/yard. I have to admit I still love Chiang Mai Dragon, but for a $150 price difference, I was more than happy to go with Ming Dragon.

I chose the navy fabric and ordered it... and then it sat in my living room for 2 months because I was too scared to actually cut into it and attempt to sew anything by myself. (It was way cheaper than the designer fabric, but I still didn’t want to ruin a yard and a half of fabric). My grandma came up for my cousin’s homecoming and helped me to sew some pillowcases and now I can finally show you the new couch + new pillows. The throw in the middle is originally from Anthropologie. John found it at DownEast and bought it because he’s a good husband and thought it would match the fabric I picked.

The photos above the couch are new (to the blog) too. I went through our 17.2 billion pictures, narrowed it down to 3 I liked, cropped them so they’d look artistic instead of just looking like I’m too cheap to buy wall art, then had them printed at OfficeMax for around $4 each. The first two are from our wedding, and the third is John’s great-grandparents’ house in Idaho. I love that they’re so big. They fill the wall much better than the painting we had there before did.

We have our Christmas decorations up now (you can see a few of them in this picture), so maybe eventually I’ll document that too so we can remember our first married Christmas in our first apartment. No promises.