Living room | The Overall[s] Adventure

I consider myself to be artistic but not creative. By that I mean that I have a good eye for design and can usually make things look good but I am not great at coming up with original ideas. This is most evident in my job as a newspaper page designer. Once people give me the pieces or a concept, I will frequently put a page together and then when I am done, I will notice that I accidentally created a striking balance in the elements or will have natural flow for the eye to move its way down the page, etc. But when it comes to projects such as painting or drawing or even gardening, my intentions are nobel but execution somethings struggles — things just don’t look quite right sometimes. My mom is amazing at this kind of thing and I have a ton of art — mushroom toll paintings or embroidery — she did in the ’70s that I love.

Anyway, I needed some new art for my walls, particularly the living room. I nabbed up some cool stuff at an art festival when I was in Phoenix visiting my sister Gretchen and brother Kevin and his family. But I needed a big statement piece for over the couch. Big art can be expensive, and I am poor. To Pinterest I wandered. I found some cool canvasses that looked easy to make — simply lay silk flowers on a white canvas and spray paint. I can do that. WRONG. The paint bled through the silk and the canvasses just ended up being basically one color. Good thing I have all of that white ceiling paint hanging around. I took some and basically ended up painting the flowers in by hand. If you don’t look too closely, they look pretty good. But another classic example of things not turning out “quite right.” oh well.

Testing them out on the back of the couch to see if they will do. Seems fine. Sorry I am a lousy photographer.

Don’t look too closely, but from a distance they look ok.

I slide them all together to make them look like one piece.

I knew that I wanted my new living room to be a robbin’s egg blue ( not sure why I knew that, but once planted in my brain it wouldn’t budge) so that is how it played out. And of course, WHITE CEILINGS! I also did an accent wall along the hall with the same yellow as the kitchen. The whole thing is very cheerful, even in depressing gray winter.

But once the paint was done I needed to arrange the furniture and decorate. Turns out that what I thought would be a room practically designed for my furniture, nothing really fit at all how I hoped. And I was scratching up the floor moving things around all the time, not to mention making my back sad. My biggest problem is that I LOVE my furniture and I wanted anyone who came over to see all of the awesome pieces I have. But not enough space, so what would get booted to the back bedroom? My orange couch, which was my first grown-up furniture purchase? Nope. Where would people sit? The ugly blue chair or ugly green chair that I inherited from my grandparents? They are too prefect with the wall color and age of the house and where would people sit? The old tv or old stereo (also inherited). Super cool and great talking points, so they have to stay. Shelves hold plants and plants are a must, especially in front the big windows. My desk? Also holding plants (and I’ve had it since junior high and am so attached). Ugly Coffee table I inherited from Deacon? Where would people put their beverages? The little white cabinet? It looks perfect under the thermostat with the $700 lamp on it. Sigh.

In the end, the awesome armoire got booted and people will just have to put their coats in the real coat closet and games can go in the back room and pulled out when needed. It still feels a little crowded. Future project is to rethink, but for now I’m OK with it.

The wall hangings also went through several rounds of rearranging, which made me feel super guilty about putting nail holes in my freshly painted walls, but I’m over it.