Living room update, at last!

As you may know, we moved into our current home about 4 months ago, in all it's original 70's glory. At the time we only owned one sofa - a white second-hand piece that served us pretty well in our old living room at the last place, but wasn't really working in our new large living room:

 

We hummed and hah'ed for ages over getting new ones, and eventually decided that it was time to take the plunge and do it - the kind we could keep forever and that would be comfortable for my talll husband. Also, we could NOT WAIT to be able to have guests around and actually provide them with somewhere to sit! Kind of important.

I took these photos this morning, after the couches were given a test-run at the husband's birthday over the weekened. There was a huge turnout of lovely guests, and these large beauties performed perfectly. For the record, they are more ginormous than they appear - the larger one is nearly 3 metres (~9 feet) wide.

It feels like a real grown-up room now, rather than a half-empty student flat... :)

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod 
Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

The rug (Urban Outfitters) featured in our last living room too. I didn't plan to use it here, but it just happened to work and add the right amount of pattern to the space. Suddenly the teal-green carpet doesn't seem so bad, which is lucky, because new carpet is expensive!

We have cream curtains on their way for this room which should streamline the colour palette a bit further, too. I wouldn't mind some cream cushions as well; these chevron ones get a bit dwarfed:

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

  There is such fantastic light in our house (sometimes I have to keep the curtains closed as the sunlight streaming in makes it way too hot. I love it). This corner with the huge ottoman is quickly becoming a favourite reading + hot beverage spot for each of us in the morning.

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

I still have plans for this room (as always) like filling in this blank wall with some frames or mirrors.

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

Maybe a gallery wall something like this mock-up below?  I'm really keen on some New Zealand landscape paintings for this spot. We'll see...

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

Because the room is so large and the couches are on opposite walls, I've pulled this one about 1-2 feet from the wall. It means I can easily walk behind to open curtains, makes the space cosier, and at some point I imagine this would be a good spot to stash toy baskets and things when we have a toddler...

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

The third wall houses the TV unit, which is all going to change at some point with the arrival of a piano so it's staying like this for now.

The double doors lead into the dining room with it's gorgeous brown vinyl floors... ;)

Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

After the party on the weekend, we crashed onto a couch and watched movies and it was BLISS and I actually feel so horribly spoilt and lucky to have big grown-up new couches. I don't know of many people who would say that owning 2 big sofas was a dream come true but.... it was a dream come true.
*designfreak*

Here's a satisfying before and after of the current progress of this room.
I always have more to do to a space, but for now it just feels soo lovely in here that I'm quite content.

 

...and after:

 Living room before and after - Amy MacLeod

 Hope you enjoyed this peek into our home!

Isn't it crazy how much the neutral tones tone down the carpet and general yellow+green vibe that the room was giving off before?







Dining room update - a bit of shabby chic

These days I get pretty excited every time I can make a change - however small - to our house. Doing something that makes it more functional and more pretty gets me so energised!

Here's a little update to our dining room - you can see the room as it looked shortly after we moved in here. Having a dining room is awesome - we just needed somewhere to store things that didn't belong anywhere else and couldn't fit in the kitchen. I managed to score this shabby chic, duck-egg coloured restored dresser second-hand, and it now fills a gap in the corner and is so useful too.

Dining room corner update - duck-egg shabby chic dresser

I didn't really have any colour direction for this room yet, but I've been drawn to this duck-egg colour for a little while now (check out our baby shower plans for example) and the rest of the room is so neutral that it's perfect.

At some point we plan to re-upholster all the cream dining room chairs (they are worn out and old - we bought them with the express intention of upholstering them but haven't got around to it yet).

Dining room corner update - duck-egg shabby chic dresser

Dining room corner update - duck-egg shabby chic dresser

Let's all politely divert our eyes away from the brown 70's fake tile vinyl floor, shall we?

Dining room corner update - duck-egg shabby chic dresser

 Dining room corner update - duck-egg shabby chic dresser

This photo from our wedding happened to go perfectly and echos the beechy colour of our table top. I also thought it was important to have something with clean/modern lines hanging on the wall over this dresser, rather than an ornate or fiddly gilt mirror say. 70's houses tend to have a lot of clean lines and unfussy details, and I didn't want to detract from that with an overly frilly little corner that didn't really fit. So this picture works.

That's it - a little corner of our home that makes me happy (and gives me somewhere to store tablecloths and things!).
How do you feel about the shabby chic style versus a modern look? Love it or hate it?





Baby's room progress

Just in case you're wondering what on earth is going on with baby's room stuff over here, I can assure you that things are finally happening. 
I always thought I'd be the type to have the whole room designed and styled within a month of finding I'm pregnant, but chronic illness kind of put a damper on that! I have to say I wasn't remotely interested in baby clothes or nursery designs until the third trimester when the nausea got under control. Lately tho, I've been all on a baby spree and painted our dingy little spare room. Here's a bit of a progress update....

The befores:

I don't think I have to point out all the things wrong with this room.

After painting the walls, changing the lampshade, and installing new blackout curtains, it's now a blank slate for me to continue working on.
Here's the current progress...




There is still a bit to do (like adding colour, art, more furniture, etc etc) and yes, I certainly do fantastise about violently ripping out the wardrobe doors which are still the same. Thanks for asking! Also, I wouldn't be mad about replacing or disguising the carpet.

We've already got a wee collection of baby items from kind friends, even some sent all the way from the States. It blows you away how people want to help and be involved when there is a baby on the way!

As for the rest of the decor, and the gender of this wee tot.... I guess you'll just have to wait and see.

[P.S Anyone else using Blogger who has found it's changing the contrast and colour in your photos? It's getting frustrating!]





Pregnancy update - 30 weeks

Aside from looking oddly ghostly, and oddly ginga (don't mind the photo), 30 weeks pregnant has been pretty good for me.

Pregnancy update - 30 weeks

I've been able to work on the baby's room and a few other things over the past week. Yay!

I am still throwing up but it is totally controllable with medication now, unlike the first 20+ weeks.

Physically, I am being pummeled in the bladder by this kid's fists, which is only slightly less comfortable than when I had a little foot wedged into my liver for the last month. :) Pretty sure it did some permanent damage...

I can pee 4 times in an hour.
I bet you can't!

I feel faint just from standing up for more than a few minutes sometimes. Or breathless from walking to the next room. And at night the cramps in my legs are killer and don't go away and I am constantly overheated.... so basically, I feel a zillion times better than in the first 2 trimesters of spew, when I would ask my husband "what does it feel like to not be nauseous?" because I actually couldn't remember. *shudder*

Being that ill taught me a lot - about what I can handle, about surviving one hour at a time, about who my true friends are (so cliched, but true. You wouldn't even believe...), and how big the God I serve is.

Mostly, tho, I have learned to appreciate. Each day that I'm not bed-ridden is an amazing day. And a day where I can cook and clean and maybe do some interior design too? Out of this world. Attending some social events and even hosting them? I can't believe it. And being able to laugh with my husband and enjoy our last months 'alone' together in some state other than as a near-dead zombie woman? Freaking incredible!

(P.S if you're waiting for the baby's room update, it's coming next)

(P.P.S I nearly forgot to say - one morning I woke up with an outtie. Literally it was not there the night before, and then it was there…. an outtie. So long smiley-face belly button. Your expressions  may never be the same again :s )





A bedroom update - hanging pictures and a chandelier

I'm really enjoying getting back into this whole blogging-regularly thing! There was a long while there when I was totally AWOL thanks to preggo issues and feeling completely uninspired too. The good news is I'm starting to get my mojo back, and with it a bit of energy to actually start doing stuff to the house we've been living in for several months now.

What I'm saying is, I hung some pictures, yo!
A small step for mankind, but one giant feat for moi.

Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod


Actually tho, let me refresh your memory. Our bedroom was looking like this, as shown in my last post:
 ... and then I got all buzzy and inspired to make this virtual bedroom design (below) happen. You can read about the rationale behind it here, but basically I felt the wooden dressers would add warmth and be so much more practical storage-wise than our current miniscule side tables, and the rest of the design sprang from that:

Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod

Anyway,  after posting that design last week I decided that although I can't make the dressers, headboard or curtains happen yet ($$), I can at least do an interim update to make it feel more homely:

Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod

I hung our cream chandelier to kick things off, because that wierd 70's lightshade was driving me nuts. The husband and I would lie in bed discussing what the pictures on it were of.... I saw a freaky 70's hippie lady, and he saw an elephant man-demon. So... that was positive.

Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod

I then thought I may as well go for it and start hanging some pictures. As you can see, there is plenty of space in our room for wider side-tables/dressers. This picture arrangement will make more sense over a wider, taller dresser with a lamp on it. But until then, I'm just happy to see something in our house that has actually been decorated.

On the other side I hung this quaterfoil mirror from our previous bathroom, and at some point I plan to either hang more pictures, or put nails into the wall to hang coloured necklaces from (as per the virtual design board at the top of the page).

Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod

Don't mind my dying rose....  husband bought me a whole rose bush for valentines and this is the last of the survivors.

The chandelier is kind of pretty. It's finish is pearlescent rather than crystal so it's a bit different, but still very shimmery.
Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod

And lastly, just so you can see it all in one go....

Bedroom update - Amy MacLeod

The camera is a bit deceiving with this room as it's hard to show how wide it is. A headboard would make it look a lot more finished, huh?

There's my little update-for-now of the bedroom.

The next room to show you is the baby's room progress so far... fun!