You guys, we have been in our house for two weeks now and it is as empty as ever, with no end in sight. I always said I would pull the trigger really quickly when it came to decorating our home, and I am not living up to that one bit. I want to have a plan for the whole house before I start buying anything. I have made the mistake in the past of buying something I love in the moment, only to realize it does not go with anything else I want and then my house ends up feeling very thrown together. Not the look I am going for this time time around.
While we have more empty rooms than not, I am doing my best to make even the empty rooms feel a little homier. I haven’t bought anything new, just using a few things we had from our condo to make the house feel more like a home. If you’re struggling to decorate, or have no plans to decorate, here are three easy ways to make your home feel a little more put together.
PLANTS
There is something about having plants in the home that instantly makes it feel more complete. If you look at any designer’s website or instagram, the one thing their completed rooms have in common across all genres and decor schemes is a little bit of greenery.
If you’re like me, and have a really hard time keeping anything alive, here are a few tips. Go with something that is really hard to kill. I know a fig tree would look awesome in that corner of yours, but they are insanely hard to keep alive. They are sensitive to light and temperature, and I swear if you look at it wrong, it will die. I have killed 2. The only two plants I can keep alive are cacti and snake plants. They’re both really clean looking, which I love and can be moved easily from room to room. Even better, go faux. While I am not in favor of going all faux, since a little extra oxygen never hurts, a statement faux plant you don’t have to worry about killing is great! The world of faux plants is amazing nowadays. I am planning on getting a big faux fiddle for my family room and THIS faux cactus for my living room.
ARTWORK
There is no better way to make a house really feel like you, than artwork that makes you happy. It is so subjective, so personal, and the best way to let your personality come through in your home. It is also a good way to freshen up a space you are bored with. At our condo, I was constantly moving around our artwork. While there are a few larger scale pieces I have my eye on for specific spaces in our new home, a lot of our smaller scale pieces will float through the house as I inevitably want to refresh a space! Since we’ve moved in, I’ve been moving some of my favorite pieces from room to room to brighten up our empty rooms and help me get a better feel for what feels right in each room.
Personally, I think the best decorated homes have the perfect mix of high and low end art. I would rather invest my money in a piece of artwork I know I am going to love the rest of my life than a couch that is going to get spilled on 9,879,586 times and inevitably go out of style. My favorite thing Blake and I have ever purchased is our mother and child piece we bought each other for our first anniversary while in Bangkok. My second favorite piece of artwork is a print I cut out of an old coffee table book and the frame was about $12 from target. My third favorite piece is a sketch we got at a market in Barcelona, which cost 5 euro :).
I actually did a whole gallery wall in our office at the condo entirely out of pieces I cut out of coffee table books. Sorry if this offends you or if you find that to be sacrilegious. I have a deep respect for books and love to read, but I think putting a print from a book onto your wall to look at every day just speaks even more to how much you love the book! Should I do a whole post on this and other ways to mix high and low art!?
While we haven’t made any decisions about the furniture we are going to buy to fill our rooms, I do have the artwork picked out for most of the rooms. I am going to decorate around the art.
COFFEE TABLE BOOKS
Hi, I am Katelyn and I have a coffee table book addiction. Along with every other 20 and 30 something woman. Such an easy way to make a room feel more polished and put together!
A couple tips for buying coffee table books that are not ridiculously priced. Antique markets, Salvation Army, and resale shops all have old coffee table books for great prices! I have slowly been collecting all white, used coffee table books for a design element I want to incorporate into our living room. I have two chairs picked out that I swoon over every day, and I want to put a stack of all white books along side them as a sort of end table. Here is my inspo! Since these books can get pretty pricey, I am trying to find used ones for under $10 a piece as we go antiquing!
We also make it a point to pick one up every time we travel internationally! While I love some of the standard coffee table books you’ve probably seen in hundreds of homes, it’s fun to have some fun and unique books that no one else has! We have unpacked 80% of the house, and there is one more box of coffee table books somewhere that I am dying to get my hands on. There is an old coffee table book we got in Paris that I want to find a home for. It is the perfect motivation to keep unboxing.
I am clearly a neutral girl, and my house is going to mostly reflect that. But I do like adding in pops of color through books and artwork. They’re not as permanent as a couch or paint color, so I don’t feel quite as committed to them!
