Living Room and Master Bedroom

This fall, Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is doing sort of a Tour of Homes as part of her "Show Us Your Life Friday."

I was so pumped when I heard this because I am a voyeur at heart and love to see how other people live. ha ha!

I have loved seeing other people's living rooms, and getting decorating ideas and all that fun stuff.

So here's how the Withers live!

Tom bought our house in November of 2006, right before we started dating the following April. Our house is about 1,800 square feet with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It is the perfect size for us. I LOVE our house because it's big enough to have people over, but small enough to clean in one evening. :)

(Last week was Living Rooms, and this week is Master Bedrooms. I missed last week so I'll do both in this post.)

Living Room:

This is our 'formal' living room that we never use. Except at Christmas time because I put our tree in here. I don't *love* this room because the furniture is so dark, manly, and traditional. I don't really feel like it's very 'us.' But it's not a big deal since we never us it.


The living room we DO use....

The view above is standing in the den, looking back into the kitchen. The kitchen is nice and open and I love that, makes it so easy for entertaining.
Then this view is standing in the kitchen looking into the den (this pic is older...notice no rug. But the set up is still the same). Those french doors open up onto our patio in the back yard.


One more view....the SHELVES. These shelves have been the bain of my existance for a long time. I never feel satisfied with the way they look. Like, they always look too knick-knacky to me.


UNTIL THIS WEEK!


I am excited because while decorating for Halloween I totally redid the shelves and I think they look good now.

Here is the before:To the left of the shelves is a dry bar that used to be a coat closet. Tom converted it to a bar and it is much more functional for us this way. :) Ha!

I mean, I shouldn't say that I don't like everything up there...I love all my pottery and vases and stuff. They are all wedding gifts that are both functional and pretty. But I never feel like I can put them together in a good way.

And after:I think it's better, don't you? I love the different black frames and the black and white pictures. It's much more minimal and clean this way....much better. And as the seasons change I'll change out the Halloween/Fall decorations.


I took a page from Kendra's book and repurposed things I had around the house. The only things I bought for my shelf makeover were the vase fillers on the bottom shelf. They came from Wal-Mart for about $5. Pumpkins, gords, etc. in the produce section for those of you who care.

Master Bedroom:

Oooooooooo the bedroom. Here is a picture of what this bedroom looked like when I married Tom and moved into this house:

So depressing, yes? It is a huge room, and there was no rug. It felt like a cave in there.

The bed was Tom's bed from college (don't even get me started) and it was sooooooo squeaky. Like, you couldn't breathe without the bed squeaking. It was just a Queen box springs and mattress on a bed frame.

And the linens....THOSE LINENS. Terrible bed-in-a-bag from Target or something. Don't get me wrong...Target has some cute stuff. Now. But back in 1999 when Tom was in his college apartment the pickin's were slim.

So fast forward about 7 months and this is what my mom and I came up with:
Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief. I just did.

We got a great deal on this GAW-GOSS king-sized bed. Love it. And my mom's boss, an interior designer, hooked a sista up with some fabric remnants from an old job. I had my seamstress in Southaven make the king shams and the throw.My mom gave us the three Euro pillows and the monogrammed pillow as a Christmas gift our first Christmas we were married! That monogrammed pillow is probably my favorite thing in the bedroom. So classy, and I love the ball fringe!

When you're laying in the bed, you face the closet and our teeny-tiny-1985 TV. We don't watch a lot of TV in the bedroom so this oldie works fine for us.
To the right of the TV is where Tom built-in an awesome vanity for me! This is where I do my hair, put on my make up, etc. I love it!There is a story behind this closet. When Tom moved in, the closet was covered with three sliding wooden doors (sorry I don't have a pic). It was a pain because if you wanted to open the closet, you had to close the portion that covered the TV. Only one third of the closet could open at once. Plus it was ugly as hell.

So we came up with a plan for the closet and had scheduled my brother-in-law (who owns his own construction company) and his men to come and makeover the closet. At this time they were also going to paint the room, molding, and ceiling. One weekend I went to Nashville for a girls weekend. I came home on Sunday night and the room was totally done!

Tom had scheduled the guys early to complete the room and surprise me. They worked around the clock for the weekend to get it done in time for me to come home and be totally surprised! I was floored and soooooo excited.

So that's how we live these days.....hope yall enjoyed peeking into our house!