{Living Room} Pillows and Patterns

Our living room is the first room you walk into and I found it incredibly boring every time. Lately it is used more of a dumping ground from daily activities or of things that need to find new homes, like 3 full garbage bags of Lily's clothes and random house hold items that I'm donating. It doesn't help that we don't actually spend time in there as just our family of three until someone comes over and we sit there on the couches. 

So, over the summer I decided that I wanted to add some more color and design to it. Nothing fancy, as I didn't want to jump into anything crazy (yet) but something that may tie it to the dining room that it's open to. Enter the pillows shown below. I have a blue patterned rug in the dining room and have been thinking about adding another patterned rug to the living room. I wasn't sure of random patterns but I knew I loved the blue and white of the dining room rug so I searched on Etsy and found these pillows. Aren't they great?! Your eye immediately goes to them now instead of the odd green couches (that we got with the house and are not replacing any time soon). I'm still debating on the rug but this helps. 

Some where in my house I hopefully still have the blue and white table runner that I had on our dining room table. I'm afraid I donated it but am hoping it'll show up at some time to add more blue to these two rooms. Both rooms have light blue curtains on the two bigger windows. There are two smaller windows, like the one shown above, that I left plain. 

I know it's a small step but I feel like this room is slowly getting better. Now to think of an area rug at some point (and pick a color) and add more pillows. I can't sew a straight line to save my life, plus I can't figure out my husband's grandmother's sewing machine. But maybe if I can find some fun fabric to stay with the blue and white theme, I can have my mother in law sew some pillows. She's fantastic at them! 

And just to show you what it looked like back in the day....

The below photo shows the room after I painted the ceiling, removed the wallpaper, primed where the wallpaper was, and before painting the walls, windows, and fireplace. 

The below photo shows the fireplace (that's not useable right now) decorated with stuff when we first moved in. The candles and candle holders were all used in our wedding, I painted the artwork in college and the photos are of our wedding and family. Everything else (wallpaper, colors, metal scrollwork) was all left over from the previous homeowner.

Can anyone say YUCK to those two above photos!?? Mustard, glazes on the wall, wallpaper, weirdly painted fireplace (the paint came off every time I dusted), and dark everything, plus so much more that is now gone!