Our couch cost us about $600 and we bought it 9 years ago. It's still in pretty good shape-- sturdy. If I had known we were going to start our family as early as we did, I probably would've opted out of the cream-color though. However, I think we bought our first slipcover for our couch after the cat hacked up one too many hairballs on it and our dog's muddy paw prints ravaged it, which was all still BC (before children).
Anyway, slipcover #2 came about a couple of years ago, right before B's birth, I think. Today I noticed that it probably couldn't stand another run through the washing machine and that elbow grease and upholstery cleaner weren't going to get a couple of stains out. I pretty much refuse to buy a new couch until we can either a.) be sure that our kids won't puke, spill, color, put muddy feet on it or b.) afford to buy one that's leather or some other easy to wipe clean material. So it was off to Home Goods to get another slipcover. I had every intention of getting another cream colored one, or maybe tan. I ended up giving my living room a mini-makeover.
People, this was not intended to be my Sunday afternoon. And because it wasn't my intention, I didn't take any before pictures. So bear with me. Here's a cell phone pic from several months ago that shows the color of slipcover #2, which is pretty much the color of the original couch.
The gray curtains came with the house. We chose the light-ish green walls. For whatever reason, I decided to go with a black slipcover. I think I figured that it would hide stains and dirt better. Plus, in the picture below, you can kind of see a chair on the right, under the window, that looks green and white. It's actually a quilt covering a black chair. My train of thought at Home Goods was that we could take the quilt off the chair (that quilt has been used as a slipcover for roughly six years) so that the couch would match.
That only left one problem-- the Extorp chair from Ikea that is directly behind B. Luckily, they make a black slipcover for that and so I ended up making an extra trip to Ikea to get it. I mean, you might as well go all the way, right? And a pink, green, and white plaid didn't exactly go with the new color scheme. Besides, it meant C got to play in Small-Land (childcare while you shop). I bought a few other things besides slipcovers though. I got two zebra-print pillows, an LED candle lantern, a magazine rack, and a chair for B. The result?
(Sorry, I'm lazy, pics are from my phone, so the lighting is a bit off). Below is another view.
The gray curtains look better. The lantern in the corner gives the room a little evening ambiance. It flickers like a real candle. We already had a hook in the ceiling (sidenote: the people that owned this house BEFORE the people we bought it from were huge into plants-- we have ceiling hooks in a couple of rooms and a potting/planting shed in back of our garage). The magazine rack is a blessing. We can't keep our magazines out on the coffee table like we did BC, but throwing them in a bin somewhere B can't reach also means that One Ordinary Dad and I forget about them and end up not reading them. Now, they're convenient for us and out of lil' man's grasp (lantern, pillows, and rack also from Home Goods).
B's little black Kritter chair (from Ikea) fits right in with the Cracker Barrel rocker my parents got C when she was not quite 2. I'm really loving the black and white theme. I also went ahead and did our mantle up for fall.
So what do you think?
We're all about impromptu in our family anyway. Thursday after school, we had an impromptu ice cream date.
Saturday we had a little impromptu family yoga.
And impromptu snuggle/love fests are always in style around here.
It wasn't too shabby of a Sunday. And if you'll excuse me, I'm off to curl up on my "new" couch and catch up on my magazine reading.
~One Ordinary Mom :-)
