My Family Room

My family room has been a little sparse when it comes to decorations.  Once Taylor came along and started pulling himself up onto furniture,  all of my cute decorations got pulled down and broken.  So, I put them all up and as more boys came along I just learned that it wasn't worth the battle to put things in the destruction zone.  Throw pillows got constantly thrown and I ended up picking them up off the ground so many times that I just put them away.  Plants turned into a sandbox and the dirt was strewn everywhere.  Anything fragile, was broken.   As I talked about in a previous post, when I have considered buying something nice (ie expensive or fragile or both) for my living areas I have realized fairly quickly it is a foolish thing to do.

For many years my family room has consisted of couches, a chair, a bare coffee table and an end table holding a fake plant, a clock that worked occasionally and a broken lamp with a chewed up cord.  Surprisingly though, I have some cheap ceramic candlesticks that have sat by my fireplace for 5 years and have never been broken.  I didn't think they would last a week when I put them out.  Maybe the reason why they are still around is because they are cheap and I could care less what happens to them.
 
About a year ago I got a new sectional and got rid of the end table with the broken lamp.  I hadn't had throw pillows for so long that I decided to give it a go.  I made a couple and put them on the couch.  Surprisingly for the most part they have stayed on the couch.  I have not seen them get thrown around or used for stepping stones on the floor to stay out of the imagined shark infested water.  My boys may be growing up or they are just getting sneaky. 

The other day as I was looking at my coffee table I started to wonder.  My boys don't jump on the furniture or the coffee table anymore (mostly).  Let me re-phrase that.  I do not see my boys jumping on the couch or coffee table.  They do a decent job keeping their balls and wrestling matches in the basement.   I wonder if I could put something on that table.  You know.   Freshen up the space a little bit.  I thought about it and decided if I could find something that was cheap, tough and non-sentimental I would give it a go.

I bought the tray at Hobby Lobby and painted it yellow (cheap).  I bought the bird at Michaels (really cheap) and the plants (cheap).  I had the books and I only needed to buy one large pot to match the 2 smaller ones that I already had from IKEA (cheap).  Do you see a theme here?  I put it all together and I liked how it looked.

I am not emotionally attached to any of this stuff and short of the boys knocking the bird or the plants onto the carpet,  I can't see what they would do.   There is still plenty of room for TV remotes and feet on the table so they can't complain about that.  I like how it looks in the room and the only thing I have to remember to do is water those plants every few weeks. After 13+ years of bareness,  I will see how it does.