Is it still a sitting room if no one sits there?

One of my dad's gripes about our old house was that we didn't have a sitting room. You know, a place without a tv where you can read a book quietly. I don't think we have an opportunity to read quietly that much-but it's not because of lack of a space. It's more because of the two munchkins that create a less than tranquil environment...

In any case, we had the living room furniture from our house in Evanston, so we figured we throw a small formal living room in the front of the house, in the same place in the floorplan as it was in Evanston. You walk in the front door and you see the two least used spaces in the house (dining room and living room)-perfect!

When we moved into the house about 2 months ago, I threw the living room furniture in it's place and promptly decided to forget about it. There were more pressing concerns-dining room, family room, kid's rooms. Pretty much anything else.

Then last week I looked at the room and thought, "Wow. This room looks sad." But I realized that with just a little "ditzing" (as my Crate & Barrel design peeps used to say), that it could look so much better.

Here is the room before:





Here's the current state of the space after a little shopping and rearranging:







Here's what I did: I headed to West Elm and picked up a rug on sale for $199, a lamp and some silver figurines from Home Goods (total cost about $80) and hung the starburst mirror from the Evanston house. The mirror had never a found in our old Arlington house and I almost sold it, but am glad I didn't. It may not be in this place forever, but it's definitely a nice addition to the room for the time being. I also played around with the shelving to make it less "officey". I plan on filling them in a bit more, but for now I threw in some vases that I already had-the blue ones are Crate & Barrel and the little white one is a Jonathon Adler.

The room feels much warmer and more finished now and I can leave it be for another 6 months until I have the time to go back to it.

Dining Room

When we were nearing completion of the new house, people kept asking us, "Are you going to have to buy a lot of new furniture?". My response was, "No, not really..." Thing is, we had almost everything we needed for the new house, with the exception of family room furniture. One thing we definitely didn't NEED was new dining room furniture. However, I did really WANT new dining room furniture. Our set felt matchy, matchy and very formal. Not to mention the glass top was a pain in the arse to keep clean all the time.

Luckily, in the new house, the dining room serves a completely different function. In the new house we have a little dining nook in the kitchen where we eat our family meals. It's easy to grab stuff from the fridge or the stove and throw it on the table while we are eating-no lengthy commutes from the kitchen to the dining room. However, when we have guests, we eat in the dining room. The nook only sits 4 and the dining table seats....

And therein laid the rationale for a new dining table. Our table sat 8 people-maybe 10 with kids. There was no extension leaf and no room for flexibility. "What if we have all of our family members for Thanksgiving?" I asked Peter. "We won't be able to seat them all." So the search began for a new, large and extendable dining room table.

I had already fallen in love with a dining chair style a few months earlier (probably precipitating the urge for a new dining set). I didn't want the chairs and table to be too matchy and I wanted the table to have a more rustic, warm feel.

So..here's the grand reveal.

Before in the old house:





And now, the new house:







The details:
-The table is from Random Harvest in Arlington. It has two extension leaves so it can seat up to 14!
-The chairs are from Room & Board. I bought 8 of them. I plan on looking for a bench that can be used for seating in situations where we have more than 8 guests and extend the table. I am sure this will be a frantic search just days before this first meal occurs.
-The rug is from Pottery Barn.

I plan to get a little bit of art up on the wall and perhaps some window treatments, but of course there is the small issue of the husband. His thing is that he likes everything "clean and uncluttered". I am learning that layering makes things more cohesive. These two theories are not really compatible.

But for now, I am very happy with this before and after..Stay tuned!

Backyard...

So it's been a while since we've had an update-we travelled for 2 weeks, so that's part of the excuse...but otherwise I just feel weird about posting half finished rooms..and that's what we have more of anything. I will get better about posting little updates-I swear! I see so many blogs where people do little updates that make drastic decorations or make things and I haven't been doing either.

Our landscapers have been hard at work though. Our patio is basically complete. This is the first time we've ever had a patio and a backyard that has a real design.

This is what the backyard looked like last fall, when the new house was still in place:



And here is what it looks like now:







I love the patio-Maya even asked to eat out there a couple of nights ago. We haven't eaten outside around here in years. We got the yard sprayed for mosquitos which makes it even usable!

Small things make me happy..

Peonies on my beautiful island counter (with Homemade Pizza Co-no mess!)...



Meal for three in our dining nook...




Skipping the above meal to head out to Lyon Hall with the ladies!

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Location:N Lorcom Ln,Arlington,United States

It's done!

Drumroll please... Bam! It's done! I can't believe the day is here. Peter is loading up stuff in his car right now to take over there to make our official move day (Friday) easier. We walked through with Trent, the foreman, yesterday morning and created a punch list of things that still need to be done (things like paint, nicks, etc). Today, I met with Steve, got the keys and all the warranty paperwork (and gave them a check!) and the house is ours.

Here are some pictures I took at the final walk through yesterday. Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating, so they came out pretty dark-I swear, the house is not that dark!

If you enter from the garage, you come into the mud room:



You'd see the guest bathroom in the basement:



Upstairs, there's the living room:



And the dining room:



And then you'd head into the kitchen:





(Disregard the lighting prop-some photographers were taking detailed pictures of the trim)

And you might want to have a meal in our dining nook:



And off the family room, there's the kid's playroom:



At the top of the stairs on the upper floor, there's a built in desk area for the kids down the road:



Zoe's room is at the top of the stairs:



You can head into the bathroom from Zoe's room:



I don't have any pictures of the fabulous tile in the bath area...

From the bathroom you can also go into Maya's room:



If you were really in the house, you could see our master bedroom next, but somehow I didn't take a picture of it..but from the bedroom you get a great view of the bathroom details:



And then you can see our vanities (well, one at a time, but they are the same and neither have mirrors yet):



And the last room upstairs will be the study/overflow guest room:



With it's own en suite bath:



And that concludes our tour for now..don't let the beautiful black painted door hit you on the way out:

A few interior highlights!

The house is basically done. The sod has been laid in the front, and I think they are working on the back today. The front door has been painted. It will have to be repainted because we inadvertently painted it very dark purple instead of black. There are a few punch list items and then I think we'll be good to go! The inspections are happening this week and hopefully we'll have the Certificate of Occupancy sometime next week! SO EXCITING!

We went through the house on Friday and snapped a few pictures...

Dining Room:



Kitchen:



Master Bath:



Living Room Fireplace:

Sod