Living Room

How we blend toy storage with our decor

May 8, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

How To Keep Toys Organized While Keeping Style In Mind

A Boho Momma’s tiny home living room and playroom combo

For anyone who has been curious about the latest toy storage to enter our living room, today I can finally share the details with you! We don’t have a dedicated space for toys. Nope, no toy room, no play room in this house. With a 3 (almost 4!) year old, it’s definitely something we’re had to ensure we accommodate into our other living spaces. Most our his play happens in the living room and creative items are in the dining room.

On the Remodelaholic blog, I’m sharing the tutorial for this wood wrapped cube shelving unit. Cube organizing units are phenomenal storage pieces, but they look like storage pieces and I’m not a fan of how they look in their plain form. So I looked at the furniture I have, the furniture I like, and I came up with this solution.

wood wrapped ikea kallax cube storage unit - storage made to look like mid century furniture (DIY tutorial)

It’s been an awesome way to sort out legos from train sets from plastic animals from blocks. For the things he has a larger collection of, I utilize bigger baskets.

all the favorite toys are hidden in cute baskets

Sure, they’re not perfectly hidden. But in a space where there’s practically never toys about, it’s the perfect blend of our real life and our aesthetic.

My kid is a huge fan of garbage trucks. He watches the Youtube videos over and over. So naturally he’s acquired a collection of larger trash trucks, too. For that? I found this awesome ornate hardware wicker trunk that holds those and a few of the Green Toys trucks he has, too.

ornate brass details wicker trunk boho

And finally, we utilize heavy duty end tables with cabinet space for things like puzzles and board games. I’ve found really neat ones on Offer Up and local thrift stores.

I’m a fan of wood with brass details for the look of my living room, but also the large cabinet space. I have 2 dedicated to lesser used toy storage and 1 that I use in my pseudo “office” aka the white chair in my living room.

thrifted craigslist side table perfect toy storage with pretty brass details

And that’s all the ways I store toys in my living room. And where you can find the tutorial for the cube organizer I created. If you’re having to pull double (or more!) duty in your living spaces, furniture with storage capacity, cute baskets and adapting classic storage pieces to suit your style are a great way to go!

How To Keep Toys Organized While Keeping Style In Mind - A Boho Momma's tiny home living room and playroom combo

Epic Etsy Finds & The Shops Behind Them: Ball And Claw Vintage

April 17, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

If you know anything about me by now, I love to get off topic. Especially when a room has a deadline. Instead of talking about the dining room I’m supposed to be working on, I wanted to chat a little bit today about another Epic Etsy find of mine and the shop behind the item! Because every great item on Etsy has an awesome shop behind it. Today, the spotlight is on Ball and Claw Vintage.

Have you seen their Instagram feed– holy beautiful boho!

So the reason why I wanted to chat about this particular shop today is because of their mud cloth inventory. And the reason why I wanted to chat about indigo mud cloths is because they are really beautiful faux upholstery fabrics. I love draping them over a chair, tucking it into the sides and keeping it that simple to cover old/ugly fabric.

And here’s a really cute clock I picked up to eventually use in my son’s room when that space gets finished. I love the turquoise!

The shop has a lot of other really cool merchandise, too. You’ll see the merchandise styled in their Instagram feed to give you an idea of their potential, but these pieces will look so good in an array of space. Here are a few of my faves:

Vintage Guatemalan Woven Wall Hanging	Vintage Kilim Rug
Vintage Moroccan Berber Pillow Cover	Southwestern Sand Art Painting on Canvas
Vintage Indigo African Mud Cloth	Bold Colorful Vintage Hand Woven Rug

Isn’t their stuff so cool? Perfect if you’re loving boho vibes like I do! Or if you just need a dose of cool textiles, they’ve surely got you covered. If you stop by their Instagram or Etsy shop, be sure to tell them I sent you.

Vintage Bohemian Spring Home Tour

March 22, 2016 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hello! Today I’m giving you a little glimpse into how we do Spring around here. Most rooms are chaos right now (bathroom on the tail end of a renovation, kitchen getting a facelift, dining room just started furnishing and decorating, and all bedrooms are storage/dumping grounds right now. In a house with this much chaos, the one room that is in useable and shareable shape is the space we need to enjoy. And it’s our living room.

Our living room is a multifunctional space. It’s not a living room in any traditional sense of the room but more a family room. We watch TV here, we listen to music here, we eat in here, we play games with our little one here, I use that white chair to do a lot of my blogging from, and drink tea in the chairs by the large window. We do pretty much everything but cook and sleep in this space.

Hopefully once we finish the dining room we can remove the eating responsibility from this room. And move some of the games/arts and crafts, too. Right now I’ve simplified this space as much as possible, but kept as much seating and storage as possible. We keep the large carpeted space open for play and dancing. Anyone else find themselves dancing a whole lot more with Spring’s arrival?

I’ve switched out the heavier throw blankets for lighter ones and swapped candles from cinnamon to lighter fragrances like mint and citrus.

And I don’t think any proper Spring tour would be complete without flowers somewhere. I like to get out and go on walks to the beach when the weather allows and I pick wild flowers along the way. But the weather hasn’t been forgiving enough yet for that so these store bought blooms worked.

My decor doesn’t change a whole lot with the seasons. The biggest change for me is the removal of holiday decor and thankfully that’s been packed away for a minute. It’s mostly taking the time to make sure the space is working for us in the current moment. With less hot cocoa and more dancing, a table in front of the sofa is no longer needed. With less cold days than warm, we’re needing fewer heavy blankets. And with the front door open to let in the cool Spring breeze, I moved my little one’s toys to the other side of the room.

What changes do you find yourself making as the weather changes? Do you find yourself using the rooms of your house differently as the seasons change?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look into this space. For more Spring decorated spaces, check out the tours below. You definitely ought to check them all out bUT they’re separated by style so you can find your mecca.

Day 1: Transitional and Vintage Decor Style

Iris Nacole

Love Your Abode

Organize Nashville

Hobnail House

Knock It Off Kim

Day 2: Eclectic Style

A Designer At Home

Up To Date Interiors

Welcome To The Woods

Casa Watkins

Day 3: Farmhouse Style 1

The DIY Mommy

Twelve On Main

The House Down The Lane

Our Crafty Mom

Day 4: Traditional Style

Old House To New Home

2 Bees In A Pod

Green With Decor

Day 5: Farmhouse Style 2

Lehman Lane
Elizabeth Joan Designs
My Creative Days
Farmhouse 40
My Life From Home

Future Plans for the Living Room

August 14, 2015 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey Guys!

I’m sure it’s a feeling you’ve felt before. Perhaps you even feel it all the time. You’ve decorated a space, announced it as done, but know there are a ton more things you want to do with it. Or maybe you don’t ever declare it done because you have all those other things running through your mind. That was me up until recently. Over the course of the past month I’ve taken you through my living room. I’ve shown you the furniture in there, the things I’ve made, and some tips and ideas along the way. But the space has been far from done. And, if I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve already been switching things up. I’m not going to spend eternity talking about and focused on one room though. Especially since we’ve begun a bathroom renovation that I hope to be sharing with you in the Fall.

The next finished space I want to share with you in our main bedroom. There is no master bedroom in the space so it’s the “biggest bedroom,” but before I get there I wanted to talk a little about my future plans for my own living room. I don’t know about you, but I personally feel a bit relieved when I write or type down my ideas. It gets them out of my head and into a place I can reference back to later. This is that space and that’s what I’m doing.

One thing I’ve already done is flip the layout. So if you see picture on Instagram of Facebook and you’re wondering why it looks different than what I’ve “revealed” here, that’s why. But, like I said, let’s not beat a dead horse and just know that the couch and TV has switched spots.

Behind the sofa I really want a console table. I’ve played around with the idea of using a simple system with a plank of wood and shelf brackets. What I really want to do, and what I’m aiming for, is to line that bit of wall with short bookcases so I can style the top, have seasonal decor storage behind the sofa, and have space for more books and toys on the shelves that hang out on either side of the sofa.

I also really want a tall campaign style lingerie chest/tall dresser. I’m obsessed with storage and ages ago when I saw my idol, Emily Henderson, put one in her living room, I knew I had to do the same.

Emily Henderson's Living Room — Emily Henderson’s Living Room

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but my dream is to take down or open up the wall between the living room and kitchen. My gallery wall would have to go (not nearly as sad about that as that may have come off), but I think a nice island or peninsula here would make a really great family interaction flow.

Underneath the large wall of windows I have a gold bar cart. I think it looks a little silly in size in this spot and I’d like to pick up something more scale appropriate for the wall. Maybe even adding in more seating with a loveseat or sofa (vintage, of course, and awesome, of course). Or a trunk for more toys?

Sneak Peek: Julia Okun of Rennes on Design*Sponge

I’ve been stuck on the fence over my sofa situation. I LOVE my sofa. Like, a lot. But I also really love the look of a plush sofa covered with drop cloth or loose fabric or a coverlet. I picked up a coverlet a while back for this purpose but I can’t do what I want with my current living room sofa. But I could with the one I’ve banished to the garage (it’s mint in color and absolutely destroyed with stains from the little one, irrelevant if I’m covering it up though). I find both to be comfortable, it’s really just the aesthetic I’m struggling with.

Apartment Therapy: Rohde's "Opportunistic" Design Laboratory — Apartment Therapy: Rohde’s “Opportunistic” Design Laboratory

Do you own a vittsjo shelf? I’m obsessed with their simplicity. I had always planned on putting one in our only bathroom, but it’s a tight squeeze in there already. So I’m thinking of flanking our credenza with two of the skinny units. More space to decorate, more storage, and it fills up blank wall? Where’s my credit card… I think I’d want to give them a finish like the shelves below have.

Irene Neuwirth's home via Mix and Chic blog. — Irene Neuwirth’s home via Mix and Chic blog.

And one final idea for the space: Right now I have the bentwood rocker in the corner of the living room. I never wanted it in the first place but had to buy it for the bentwood foot stool I actually wanted. So I’m going to clean it up and put it on craigslist (email me if you’re interested!). I’ve got a rattan armchair I’m going to pull in that I had banished because I didn’t like it’s cushions until I threw a Mexican blanket over it. Thank God I hoard things I sporadically love and hate, amiright?

So that’s where I’m going to wrap things up with the Living Room. The only other space I’ve decorated is the “main” bedroom, so I’ll start sharing that next! And then we will hopefully be ready to start chatting bathrooms! We’ve already started demo but it’s going very slowly… Have a great day!

How I Made It: Gold Arc Lamp

August 12, 2015 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey Guys!

One of the hardest pieces for me to decide on in a room is lighting. There aren’t many lighting options out there that I like, and even fewer than what I can afford. Short of living in complete darkness until I could stumble onto the perfect floor lamp for the perfect price to pop up and not sell within minutes on Craigslist, I had to put something in the room.

The style I’m particularly coveting at the moment are arch lamps. They’re not especially hard to come by on a budget. But the lamp shades turned me off on a lot of them. The ones I found through Walmart, Target (though Target & Walmart have gotten in better models than what was available back when I first made over my particular lamp), and IKEA all has fabric shades and it wasn’t the style I wanted. The one I ended up settling on was this one from Amazon.

I wasn’t thinking a whole lot about the brushed nickle finish of the lamp. Once the lamp had lived in my living room for a while, though, I realized the finish wasn’t going to work for my decor. I needed a warm leaning metal, and who doesn’t love gold at the moment? Nobody, that’s who.

So I toyed around with the idea of spray painting it, but I’m a lazy spray painter and didn’t want to live with the paint drips and flaking because I didn’t prep properly and I didn’t want to take the lamp apart either. Then just a few months into this dilemma I came across a View Along The Way’s tutorial for saving a garage sale lamp with rub n buff. I’d never used the product but if it worked for her, I was going to make it work for me.

I was aiming for a finish similar to either this Alto Sconce from Cedar and Moss,

Or this Modo Table Lamp form Matter Matters.

I ended up going for the rub n buff method for a lot of reasons- spray paint inherently hates me, things I spray paint normally don’t wear well, and the finish from the View Along The Way inspiration post looked exactly like what I’d hoped for.

Here’s How I Made It:

Supplies:

Rub ‘n Buff

Inexpensive Lamp

Small Sock

So if you’re familiar with how to use Rub ‘n Buff, you probably won’t need me to go on any more. Just be sure to leave me a nice comment before you leave 😉 If you aren’t familiar with the product, like I wasn’t familiar with the product, then keep on reading for my process.

I actually snatched one of my 3 year old’s sock since I knew it would hug my hand better than a larger sock. That and my husband is tired of me stealing his socks for staining wood, so I figured I’d give his socks a rest this time. I focused the product onto one fingertip and massaged the product onto the surface.

I found it best to be easy with the amount of pressure otherwise I was simply wiping the product away. Work in thin coats, allowing the wax to harden in between applying more. Again, I found I just wiped the product off the lamp if the layer beneath wasn’t hard yet.

I think getting opacity was the most frustrating part of this process. It’s not difficult, so don’t let me deter you from attempting this. But the tutorials I’d read using this product before gave me the impression that the stuff lied down more opaque than it did. So keep that in mind as you work and apply the product in layers.

The finish is perfect, but the color is way more yellow than the swatch made it look. I wasn’t sure at first if I hated it or loved it, but now that it’s been in my home for a while, I love it.

The gold suits the space so much better now though, and feels more luxurious than the cheap lamp that it once was. I’m really diggin’ how the gold plays against the white walls and wood tones in this space.

Industrial Rustic Boho Shelves

August 10, 2015 by CORINNA HENDERSON

Hey guys!

My favorite DIY’s always involve wood. I love the look and what it adds to a space. But sometimes wood needs balance and that’s why industrial style is so fantastic. Pairing wood with metal elements is a harmonious blend between cold and warmth. But the typical metal pairings are just a bit too industrial for my taste. So I found these very cool shaped white brackets from IKEA. Their geometric shaped paired with the softer white metal paired with a rustic wood finish really lend themselves well to a boho styled space. But really, they’d look pretty darn great anywhere.

The look I was going for involved having to use the brackets on top of the shelf versus below as traditionally used. These brackets are designed to be used traditionally. We’re going to “hack” them in a sense to work the way we want.

Here’s How I Made It:

I picked up my lumbar from Home Depot and asked to have my 10 foot piece cut into thirds and they did all the measuring for me and ensured it was even. I brought the wood home, dusted them off and stained them. I used a very light layer of a wood stain in “special walnut.”

While those dried, I started marking out where holes for the brackets need to be made on your wall. I like to use painter’s tape for this so that any mistakes won’t be written on my walls. The design of these brackets works by using a smaller headed screw that the larger hole fits over, then sliding the groove of the bracket onto the neck of the screw and then you’d just tighten the screw down. I wasn’t planning on using them this way so I made sure to mark the larger circle of the holes in the bracket that went against the wall.

I predrilled holes into the wall where I marked and put in wall anchors since where I wanted my shelves didn’t line up with studs. I knew I had to predrill the holes because I wouldn’t be able to use the power drill for the final install step.

Then I lined up the brackets onto the lumber and marked where the screws need to be screwed into the wood. These holes will line up with the end of the groove. Unlike the wall, we are using the sliding into place feature with this side. I noticed, on my brackets at least, that there were some imperfections in the holes and grooves, so I numbered the brackets just in case it caused variances in how they fit.

With the holes marked, I went in and drilled the screws partially into the wood, making sure to leave room for the bracket to slid into place.

The only way I could get into the bracket to tighten the screws was with a socket wrench. Because I wasn’t using the bracket as intended, I couldn’t start the wall screws until I had the bracket up against the wall. So hubby and I took turns hand cranking the screws into place.

When all of the brackets were secured to the wall, I took a piece of lumbar, lined up the screws with the holes and slid it into place. Either be the person holding the lumber in place or have someone else do it while tightening the screws. This lumber has some weight so be careful.

And then It’s time to have fun with them. I kept them pretty high up off the ground because my 3 year old would love to turn them into a ladder.

Shelves are so practical and a great place for parents to have fun with decor. I’ve collected a lot of old and new items here that make me happy. I played around with the arrangement until my eyes were happy.

Supplies:

Quantities will vary based on the number of shelves and how long your shelves will be.

10x8x2 Piece of lumber
Heavy duty walls screws and anchors (with a head larger than the holes for the brackets)
1.5 inch Wood Screws
Power drill and phillips head and general purpose twist bits
Socket wrench and phillips head bit
IKEA Ekby Lerberg shelf brackets
Optional: Wood Stain and Sealer

Are you a total IKEA lover? I love how easy it is to mix in IKEA pieces with vintage pieces. I also love how easily they can be hacked into something unique. Have you ever hacked an IKEA piece before? What’s your favorite IKEA hack?