Looking back... a living room in evolution

The new year has me looking back and taking stock of all the changes that have taken place in our lives.

Yesterday, we all spent a good part of the evening crammed onto the couch while looking at photos and old videos of our family. All those old memories, in film and print, made me realize how bad I would miss this little tract home. My kids have grown up in this house. Our oldest was only a few months old when we bought this place and the other two came home from the hospital to this humble abode. As we talk about selling, I'm both happy and sentimental. We still have a ton of things to do to get this place ready to sell, but selling does lie on the horizon. How close are we to getting to that point? Only the Lord knows.

My sentimental mom side loved seeing the kids as infants and watching our family grow and change at movie speed. My design side thought it would be fun to share some little snips of the living room over the years. Some of these pictures are were scanned in, so please forgive the quality. Most of them are also birthday party shots so I had to crop around children. ;) My pool of images would have been bigger if I knew how to take pictures from HI8 video. (So glad someone came out with and SD/hard drive video camera!)

When we bought our house we were so excited that we went over and applied a faux texture on our walls right after we closed, which was around 6 p.m. After living in a an apartment that we couldn't paint, we went wild with paint colors. For two years we had been looking at white walls and yearning to paint... that led to this...

Yep, that's orange!
We sponged and ragged it on. I really loved that color/faux texture combination. We had bright yellow carved candlesticks and a huge tropical bird print with a deep turquoise matting above the futon.
That's my eight year old, sigh... and me younger, when I actually had time to work out... hold on while I jot that down for my resolution.

That was our futon. We loved it but had to get a couch because we were always stretching it out and napping the evenings away. lol. The look here was more of a bright Latin American vibe. The palette was orange, blue and shades of cream/beige to brighten it up.

Then, in an effort to brighten up a fairly bright orange...

Lemonade yellow walls!
This color was so bright that I remember evenings at home and having to check the clock only to realize that it was super late. It always felt early with this color. It was like living inside a tanning bed without the goggles.

We had icky blue carpet that we were stuck with for a while, a long while. As a temporary and cheap fix, we put a wood area rug over it. The look here was bright and Caribbean. The color palette was bright yellow with orange tones (in the wood and pillows), cream (in the furniture and futon cover). I threw in a lot of other colors in prints and plants around the rooms. All the hard surfaced furniture was wood to keep the palette more livable.
(I was pregnant with our second child here and opening a gift for our soon to arrive baby girl.)

Next, looking to hide dirt on the walls...


Brown. I really liked this brown. It had golden and green undertones that really gave the color life. White furniture... what was I thinking! The tables were the same. I loved those Wal-mart tables but the scale was off.
Notice the blue stained carpet that is still around... ick!

That turned to a brown shag rug over stained concrete. Yay!


Wall art and other accessories changed but the furniture and wall color stayed the same for a while. I wanted a more funky look here, thus the change in canvas.

The room may change but one thing stayed constant... the beachy accessories. True, they aren't the same accessories as I have now but all had the taste of salty seas. I wish I had taken more pictures of the accessories - because we all know that's what makes the room.

This house has such great memories. I'm going to miss this place. Now watch, we'll never sell this place and my love and nostalgia will turn to loathing, like Edgar Allan Poe's black cat story.
Well, see you all on the flip side.