Changing Up the Family Room

Along with every other space in our house, our family room is a room in progress but it’s come a long way since the day we moved in:

I’ve already blogged about several projects we tackled in our family room, including painting the bookcases and adding new knobs and trim, having stone veneer installed on our fireplace, lining the back of the bookcases with burlap and upholstery tacks, and switching out our old traditional rug for a new one from West Elm. After getting the basics of the room into place, it was time to start working on some of the smaller decorative details.  First off – styling the bookcase shelves. After adding the burlap to the back of the bookcases, I half-hazardly threw a bunch of things up on the shelves with the intent of rearranging them in the next few weeks. This week (months after doing the burlap…) I finally got around to styling the shelves:

They are pretty tough cookies to style because they’re only 10″ deep, making it difficult to do a lot of the layering that you usually see in well-styled shelves but at least they’re an improvement.

I shopped my house for most of the things on my shelves, making only two purchases – a basket from Hobby Lobby and this tarnished brass goblet (at least I think it’s a goblet!) that I got along with my vintage trophy cup at the Tri-state Antique Market last weekend:

I grabbed several things from the tack trunk down in our basement with stuff from my days of horseback riding, including a set of stirrups to use as bookends,

a silver plate that was a championship award at a horseback riding competition years ago,

and even my old boot pull that I propped up beside my vintage bottles to add some height:

Another recent update to our family room is the addition of some new pillows to our sectional.  It all started with this runner that I found at HomeGoods – I loved the colors in it and wanted to use it on my stairs but I needed two of them and never had any luck finding a second. 

I was getting ready to return it to HomeGoods when my friend Vickie gave me the idea of using it for pillows. Perfect! The colors and pattern worked well in the space, it was a great way to add an interesting texture, and it was cheap –  I was able to make three large pillow covers out of my $29 runner. Our HomeGoods almost always has a variety of these textured runners in various colors and patterns so next time you’re there, stop in the rug section and check them out!   I have my “rug pillows” paired up with citrine and ivory moroccan pillows and grey velvet diamond pillows from Etsy shop Pillow Flight (affiliate link).

Finally, I added two Jill Rosewald / Surya poufs that I found on Joss & Main a few months back. Our family room ottoman serves as our game table and the poufs have been great for the kids to pull up and get their game on!

Isn’t it fun when you can finally see your room start to come together?