The Mostly Finished Living Room

We've been living in this house for nearly seven months now, and I'm finally getting the living room decorated. It's been a big challenge for me to figure out what to do with it. There's only one way the furniture fits in the room, and it left me with large expanses of stark white walls to deal with. Painting is not an option in this house, because the living room is connected to the dining room which is connected to the kitchen, etc, and I am not one of those people whose things match in every room. Lord, help me if we ever live in a home with an even more open floor plan.

A couple of months ago, I finally got a handle on the wall over the couch. You can see it here.

A little while after that, I invested in some curtain panels from Wal-Mart. That's right, Wal-Mart. I had to order them, because the store doesn't stock the longer length. Want to see the ones I got? Click here. As an added bonus, they're energy efficient.

Around the same time, I ordered some green ticking stripe fabric to make shades for the living room. We have some lovely metal mini-blinds that I'd rather not look at every day. They're just one more layer of white-ness. Also, the living room has four windows, and our loveseat is pushed up under two of them. I didn't feel like the long drapes would look right there, so I've put the shades on all four windows and the curtains on two. The fabric shades serve the purpose of tying everything together. I'm posting pictures even though they're not completely finished. I think I want to put dowels in the bottoms, roll them up a little, and secure them with some cream ribbon. I just haven't found the right ribbon yet.

The final challenge was the wall over the television. I'm not really crazy about having photos staring out at me from over the TV, but I also wasn't sure what else to do. A couple of days ago, we were driving home from the grocery store, and we passed a moving sale on base. I came away with the most awful banana yellow wall shelf they had. It was the only one that didn't have those little heart cutouts. I like most things country, but I don't dig the heart cutouts. The color was so horrible that I didn't even take a before picture. Sorry! Now, it is black, it hangs over the television, and it holds silhouettes of the kids that I made at Christmas. I did a bunch as gifts for grandparents and great-grandparents, and I made myself an extra pair while I was at it. I'm not sure why I didn't think 02.   uu, put them over the TV sooner! I love them there! The shelf needs a couple more tchotchkes and maybe something else hanging above it, but it's definitely better than a blank wall.

Here's the finished product...well, most of it, the wall that needed the most help, anyway. And yes, we are doing the dinosaur dance with Dance A Lot Robot. What? ;)