Show Us Your Life - Living Room

Kelly's blog is one of my very favorites and I'm so excited she is continuing her "Show Us Your Life Fridays" series since I missed out most of the fun the first time around. I just love checking out all of the other blogs and getting decorating ideas! This week of the home tour features the living room.

Welcome to mine!

View from breakfast room

 It's pretty bare these days since we have a 9-month old crawling around getting into EVERYTHING. We gave up on having our coffee table out, and as you can see, the end tables are pretty useless at this point as well. Eventually I think I'd like to get an ottoman when we don't need all of the floor space for playing.



View from back door


When we first bought our house one of the things I disliked the most was the tv alcove. It's grown on me a little bit since then, but eventually I'd like to add built-ins with mouldings to match the fireplace to replace the armoire. I also thought I would really hate having a gas fireplace. Now, my opinion has completely changed. We hardly ever use it since we live in Houston, but when we do it is pretty nice to just hit a button on a remote and not have to worry about firewood or having to clean it! I used to have three really gorgeous wooden candlesticks that my MIL bought us in front of the fireplace, but those had to be put away during the babyproofing efforts.

View from hallway

I would so much rather have hardwoods than carpet due to my dust allergies and the creepy feeling I get when I think about all the stuff that lives in carpet, but since it was brand new and perfectly nice when we moved in, we just couldn't justify ripping it out yet. We figured we'd wait a few years and get some wear and tear out of it first. Well, three years later with 2 dogs, a cat, and a reflux baby who has projectiled like no other, I think we can safely say that the carpet has been officially broken in! Now if only those hardwood floors were free...

One thing I've learned recently is that glass-top tables and children do not go together. They are impossible to keep clean and are constantly covered with fingerprints and mouth smudges. We still have our end tables out, but clearly Harrison is winning the territory battle. The stuff pushed out of his reach won't be out of his reach for much longer.

Which means that table #1 will soon look like table #2. Pretty useless!

I think I need to qualify the above pictures by saying that my living room only looks like that about 10% of the time. Before having a baby, I just knew that I wasn't going to be one of those moms that let my child have tons and tons of toys. Especially the bright, noisy, annoying ones. I mean, come on! My baby was going to be perfectly content with only a few simple wooden toys, just like in all of the Pottery Barn catalogs, of course. Hmmmm. I think I may have been...what's the word? Naive? Yes, yes. Naive. Because here's what my living room looks like the other 90% of the time:

So do you like my makeshift baby corral? That's the downside to having an open-concept floorplan -- there aren't many doorways to utilize baby gates and the baby fences you can buy aren't really in our budget. So for us, two dining chairs, a pack-n-play, and a couple of couch pillows are working for now.

Except, of course, when they don't work:

Ummmm...how did I get in here and how do I get back out??

I'm free! Muhahaha!

Well hello, glass cabinet. We meet again.

And while I'm being honest here, I'll show you a picture that I can in no way blame on the baby. I found these hiding behind our sofa. They are a not-so-friendly reminder of a friend who I have completely lost touch with. Her name is Jillian Michaels and it's been far, far too long since we've seen each other...

30 Day What?