Time for another room! Finally...the morning room!

We've had the  morning room furnished pretty much from moving in.  You'll see a photo in one of the previous posts.  We refinished the old table that I love (it's even on casters and has huge leaves to seat probably 12 or more).  We had the beautiful antique china cabinet from my mother-in-law.  We had older chairs that came with the table-I had planned on refinishing them but they didn't turn out to be in as good as condition as I thought so we changed to new blue chairs to match the wall color.  And I recently made a cute burlap rose center-piece.

BUT, the morning room was the hardest room for me to decide window treatments.  I don't really care for blinds and we don't have them in any room of our house.  But, since the golf-cart path is at the end of our backyard we needed something for privacy.  I love floor length curtains but I wanted a way to have privacy without feeling like I was closing in the room.  The other big thing is we LOVE our backyard view. 

So I went back and forth a MILLION times.  We tried out blinds in stores.  We bought blinds.  We returned blinds.  And we repeated that over and over!  I thought I had decided on faux wood but I didn't like how much of the window it covered when closed(again don't want to block that view!).  We thought we had decided on roman shades outside mounted above the window to not block the view...but that didn't work for me either.  Custom cornices and faux wood mounted up higher?  Nope.  AND FINALLY the light-bulb hit.  We need top-down-bottom-up blinds! 

The top-down-bottom-up would give us privacy from golfers while keeping our view and light coming in.  We ordered color samples and then took the plunge!  I love how they turned out and we are just now trying to decide if we should have two sheer panels added on one long rod.  I say yes...Need to convince the hubby.

So here is the long awaited pics...and a quick shot of the mudroom (since it's not all that exciting to get it's own post!)

Don't mind our gate still on the slider!  Hopefully they'll take that down at our 10 month coming up.

 

 

 

Paint colors are the same as in the Family room.  Here's a shot with the blinds half up.

 

 

 

 

Here's a pic of the blinds open. The cellular shades barely take up any space!

 

 

 

There will be no pretty rug!  This is one of the things I was most excited about moving (we had carpet in our old dining room).  We have 3 kids so easy clean-up floors is a must!

 

 

 

 

 

The view we can't get enough of! (except for our yard that 10 months later still has not been finished!)

 

 

 

 

 

Our mudroom- The coat hooks are for guests.  We keep our jackets and shoes in the chest.

Two more rooms...I'm on a roll!

I'm trying to update the blog a little more frequently.  The next rooms to show are our office/computer room and school/craft room.  We have the Naples floor-plan so these rooms are immediately when you come in the house (the formal living room and dining room by floor plan).

We didn't have much use for a formal living room and we use the morning-room as our dining area.  So to make these rooms functional for us; we changed them up a little.


And Selections you can see:
Flooring- Base-Initiator carpet, Upgrade-Armstrong Illusions Sedona Cherry Laminate
Oil-rubbed bronze fixtures
Paint Color-Olympic One Weeping Willow


Pic time!!!

This is to the right when you first walk in the house (our Naples is reverse floor plan)

 

 

Computer desk and book-shelf area.  We refinished our old computer desk and bought this shelf for $30 and refinished it too!

 

 

 

The book-shelf-some of my favorites on here are the old car-factory part drawers, the Encyclopedia G (cut into a G) and some of the kids favorites at a level they can reach. 

Here you can see the antique pie-case (still waiting for pretty stuff to go inside) and our window-bench area.  My grandparents made the barn in the corner and the kids love playing with the animals inside.

 

 

Little window-seat with storage.

 

 

 

Looking into the school/craft room from the computer room.  You can see the old school desks to the right (I played with these as a kid).  They still even have little hand-written things wrote by my cousins and I.

 

 

 

 

Our school table and china cabinet full of crafting supplies!  I love the little frames with chicken wire and clothes-pins for the kids art work.  You can also see the pantry to the left where there is a walkway into the kitchen.

 

 

And here are the rooms from the front of the house!!!

 

And there you have it:)  Hopefully we will finish the morning room window coverings and I can show that room next!

Long time no blog!!!

We are all still very alive...just haven't had much time for blogging!  Having 3 kids-age 5 and under is busy but throwing in homeschooling this year definately made it even more so!  I've been keeping up with a lot of your blogs just haven't been commenting.  I've loved all the diy ideas and especially Nadase's awesome closet!!! 

We've been loving our  new house and slowly but surely finding time for decorating.  Our intentions were to do one room at a time...but I'm sure you all know how that goes!  We ended up doing a little here and there and not finishing anything!  As you saw in our last post-the kitchen was pretty much done (because there was so little to do!!!) and we had planned on tackling the morning room next.  But, I had such a hard time deciding on window treatments- so that was tabled (I have finally decided though so we'll be finishing it up next!).

So as things stand now-the family room is closest to being finished!  We still plan on buying a new tv and mounting that and possibly doing something new underneath but for the most part it's done!  We'll add in some family photos here and there but here's how it looks so far!!!

Family room-looking from the kitchen

Love these old cottage windows!!  Best find ever!

We didn't like the look of accent chairs so we found a place for my Grandma's old rocker :)

We decided against a fireplace because of the kids, but that doesn't mean we don't want a mantle!!! 

 I love functional decorations like these old books (Little Men, Anne of Green Gables, and The Bobsey Twins! all from the early 1900's).  We can get them down to read and pop them right back up there! I can't wait to add seasonal decor here too!

 This beautiful Victorian dresser was refinished in Arles chalk paint and dark wax...hard to show the beautiful finish in this picture!  And that book is a really old family Bible-complete with artwork and a children's story section!  Another great antique shop find!

 

 

We're really loving how everything is turning out!  Next up is refinishing some furniture for the office/computer room.  After that we'll be making/putting up window treatments in the morning room and changing out fixtures in the powder room! That should just about finish up the first floor! Stay tuned ;)