Coffee Table Style – living room sneak peek

I’m still waiting on my new tile for my fireplace, which means my living room redo is coming along in excruciating baby steps. Let’s just say patience is not my strong suit, since I typically decide I want to change out my tile and then just go get a sledge hammer with no plan in mind….

but I’m taking it slooooooow for once, which is making pulling the room together hard.

I mean, how am I supposed to make major life altering decisions about throw pillows when I don’t know what my fireplace is going to look like!? We all know how life altering a good throw pillow can be…

I’m giving you just a sneak peek of one area of the room that I’ve got down (I think) – my ottoman. I got this fun new tray from HomeGoods. I love anything galvanized and it’s kinda perfect with my new barstools.

I scored this blue jar there too and dumped some of our shell collection from various vacations in it.

Oh and you guys! I’ve also been meaning to show you how I roughed up the legs of my ottoman to look a bit more rustic and cottagey. I did this in the fall and just never got around to showing you, but here is a close up…

I went to town with my electric palm sander and then added a coat of warm honey colored stain over top. I left a bit of the original dark finish to give it a more rustic look. You can check out the darker more modern before here.

This nautical thingy is from my Joss and Main sale, it was originally a light blue and I added a bit of Napoleaonic Blue Annie Sloan Chalk Paint to it to brighten it up.

And can we talk about the fact that this plant has been alive in my home for 3 whole weeks? What, what?! Setting world records over here left and right, keeping plants alive, not knocking down my fireplace myself, it’s a whole new zen me :)

Pretty soon my house will be spotless, I won’t have paint permanently embedded under my nails and my kids will be eating their veggies…ok so my world is not quite that zen, but a girl can dream!

My favorite art book (I love the Beatles and Sir Paul is my fave), my favorite cookbook (if you are ever in Chelsea MI you have to eat at the Common Grill), a copy of Celebrating Every Day Life, and Miss Mustard Seed’s book.

You can see the hints of color that are starting to pop up in the background – stay tuned…

and cross your fingers that my tile shows up soon!

Oh, and of course my favorite coffee table accessory of them all…

after all, what good is a beaten up rustic cottagey ottoman if you can’t dance on top of it? :)