golden labs

Picked up this $2 sleeping labrador decor piece at my favourite store Dollarama yesterday.  After priming it and giving it a couple of coats of satin finish gold paint - he's now a proper golden lab.  And he has my golden lab awfully curious...

a new old desk

When my dad was in highschool he made a drafting desk in woodshop - a flip top desk on an x base that resided in our utility room when we were kids and which has spent the last 10 years in storage in our shed.  So I brought it back with me for use in my apartment. 

The desk now occupies and unused corner of the living room which once held an ottoman that I've repurposed in the bedroom.  The space is just right for it - small and tucked away from the main sightline when you enter the apartment.

It's perfect to hold my current reading and upcoming projects and all my craft supplies are housed within.  I was also able to hang my grandparent's trader blanket off the rear rail.  Although I was originally thinking of painting out the top of the desk - I've decided that the patina'd masonite top is just right for my space.

blue all over

After living with the accent wall for a week, I decided I loved the colour so much that I ended up painting the entire corner of the living room with this pale blue gray.  Although a cool colour, it surprisingly warmed up the space (it just works so well with the red) and I'm now ready for both winter and Christmas.

During the day....

at night....

tying into my gallery wall with all it's accents of blue...

with my navy lamp and my lovely view...

and with the last remnants of greenery in the space.

And Lucy says Hi!

a blush of blue

So after a week of deliberation over swatches and test samples, I chose the perfect whisper of a blue gray colour for the accent wall of the living room.  I didn't want anything too bold or standoutish - and CIL's Etching was perfect.  I focused on just the space between the two windows behind the television and because I'm a fanatic about all the trim matching the paint colour [it gives the illusion of higher ceilings] I cut into the crown moulding on an angle to mimic the look of a bump out.  Although the colour is subtle, it's a perfect accent to my neutral interior.  My apologies for the crappy pics, will promise to post better ones.

white & bright

Is there any place filled with more light than David Delfin and Gorka Postigo's Spanish home?  What a great space to wake up to.  And can you spot all the Pez dispensers?

books.

Not really a quiet room for reading - but the couches are amazing and the shear number of books is overwhelming.  Karl Lagerfeld's apartment from The Selby.

lightening up & losing a coffee table

A few weeks ago I moved around some accessories, lightened up a few fabrics and my drawer credenza and eliminated my coffee table.  Here are the before and afters.  Subtle, but it feels a little more like spring.

BEFORE

AFTER

 BEFORE

AFTER

ann sacks tile

My favourite trend of 2011 - the return of ethnic and decorative tile.  And Ann Sacks does it best.

against the grain | getting rid of the coffee table

To satisfy my constant desire to redecorate, I did a bold thing yesterday.  I got rid of the coffee table.  And replaced it with - nothing.  A controversial topic, most people consider a living room unfinished without a coffee table, or ottoman, or if you're in college, a stack of milk crates.  But this isn't so.  If you're like me, and prefer a more open, airy and loungy aesthetic to your living room, your coffee table, or choice there of, may actually be cramping your style.  And my 48"x27" gloss black hand-me-down definately was.  So, it's been dismantled and stored under the bed in the apartment and while I track down my camera in order to take pics of the simple transformation - here are some other coffee-tableless living rooms to prove my point, sometimes less is more.

All images from LivingEtc.