I am so excited to share our living room reveal with you guys, oddly enough I am sharing this and we just moved out over the weekend…we are officially squatting with our parents until the new house is ready!!! As if it took me nearly 2 years to share this space lol!!?! In all fairness it took me this amount of time to truly figure out how to work with this space, to navigate this skinny & long room that we spent so much of our time in. This room is roughly 10 ft x 20 ft, it was the only living room we had. That’s 200 square feet to put together a comfortable space while also storing all of the toys kids can acquire over a span of 5 years…and so my constantly changing living room went from a dark tight space when we bought it to a nice bright room with SO much storage! Now this room doesn’t always look like this guys, I mean this is after a clean up – for 3/4 or more of the day it’s pretty busy in this room and we are always working on cleaning something up. We wanted this space to be lived in but for my sanity I wanted it also to be able to be tidy too. It was important for me for the room to stay “us”, this is a space that’s used daily and I didn’t want to portray it as anything else. This couch is white yes and it gets dirty – I throw the slip covers in the wash and get on with my day! Yes our walls are white, but our kids only eat dry foods when playing in the living room so I generally don’t need to worry about them smothering jam all over the walls haha – I mean, crayon is another story I would have told you a year ago but it wipes off? I hope you enjoy visiting this space as much as we enjoy sharing it with you! Storage tip: Baskets are a great form of storage, especially for throw blankets, I won’t lie – there’s a good chance that has a bunch of toys and home decor magazines underneath it too lol!
It was crucial for me to get creative when thinking of ways to store the build up of kids toys, if you are a parent you know that awful feeling of having your floor covered in little bits and pieces from the toy of the day in your home wether it be the paw patrol crew or blocks and stepping on them in the dark AHHHH the worst!!! So, Craig and I started by building the built ins of the space, the one with the cute chalkboard that the kids always have their tea parties in front of! This unit has space for shelfie displays, great for books (plants in tea cups obviously) and of course it has the 4 cabinets (with push open doors), each with 3 shelves inside. Here we stored some of our books but mostly the kids books, puzzles, baskets of toys etc. I also have a family of trees and house plants that I am always looking for spots for, this built in unit was the home to a bunch of our smaller plants too and the baby fiddles I am growing! My friend Ashley Davidson came by with some beautiful milk glass pieces for me to work into the shelves and added her designer touch with that beautiful big white vase too.
Secondly I made sure to have a media unit with storage, I originally had a vintage Canadian dresser with 9 drawers that I refinished – it is now for our new basement but we bought this one from Joss & Main for the living room here (that I also refinished to a brighter white lol). The mirrored fronts make the room seem much larger and catch all of the natural light that floods into this space – it’s no coincidence that my fiddle leaf trees are the happiest in this room! Our media unit has 4 cupboards, each with 2 shelves inside. Here we stored all of the kids tech toys, bins of blocks, arts and crafts items and the one holds all of our potty training items like a box of wipes and a stack of Pull-Ups! Every parent of a toddler knows how convenient it is to have baby wipes nearby!!! To save some funds I found our coffee table at a second hand store for $25 and painted in white, a great way to have extra cash to use towards more decorative items to finish a space but really I don’t need a reason to shop vintage stores lol – it’s my guilty pleasure.
Lastly, we have 2 storage ottomans – one by the tv unit that is the easiest to just toss all of the toys in at clean up time – we are strict with our kids on cleaning up their toys, we believe it’s important for them to do this on their own and we of course help them too! I mean when they are pulling a sloth move at bed time, I will gladly do 90% of the clean up for them to speed things up haha! The wicker storage ottoman houses most of the random stuffed animals, mini sticks and sponge hockey pucks, all of the cars and trucks and little ponies and Disney characters. It is actually a DIY one I got from Ashley Davidson (that girl is full of fun DIY projects!!). One more storage ottoman lives in this room, the Ikea stool that sits at our chair by the window – inside of it we have a full wooden train set and hot wheels car set too! So, as you can see, it is possible to have a ton of kids toys in a small space and still make it pretty & inviting! I mean, let’s get real here you can’t hide every thing – the kids Ikea kitchen that we DIY’d is on display and (another strategic purchase might I add). The ikea kitchen houses all of the kitchen necessities for an almost 3 year old and almost 5 year old, fabric foods for every palette wether you like Italian or French cuisine lol and cookware and the kids table {found here} that you all love actually has a basket inside the top that holds all of their crayons and small colouring books!! Having storage options in a space that the family shares is crucial in my opinion and there are always options to do so while being aesthetically pleasing – you aren’t tied to the usual kids toy bins we see in stores, get creative! With us having a bay window we could have also done a window bench (with storage in it of course lol) but since this was only a 2 year house we left it as is, I stuck this vintage storage table from Joss & Main there that holds a bunch more of our stuff like extra remotes and dvd’s that never see the light of day ha ha! As a mother I don’t believe that having a messy living space is a bad thing, when I go to friends houses I do not even see anything like that – as the saying goes, our kids are busy making memories. All I see is a friendly face willing to share her space with me and my littles and treat me with a little adult chat – as I said, this shoot was done of our living space tidied up…prior to was another story!
We loved how bright and airy this space was after all of the work we’d done and the added finishings, the tongue & groove ceiling and wainscotting we did with Metrie products made a huge impact in elevating the space – when people visited they were always commenting on their love of the trim work! I am especially in love with the window coverings by Q Design Centre, a local Ontario company that made these custom linen roman shades for us, you know my love of linen- they let in the perfect amount of light while giving privacy. They also are incredible with keeping in the heat, I noticed a huge difference from them on the temperature of the space – so much so that we ordered more for our bedroom and the office! I can’t forget to mention our rug, this chunky loop rug is my favourite – it’s nice and thick and truly changes any space it goes into. We ordered it in the biggest size possible and plan to order more for the new house too. The new owner of the house loved it so much too that she bought it with the house, luckily it’s a friend of mine so I can revisit this space and the memories in it :). You can find this one by clicking {here}, psst it’s on sale!
For this shoot my friend and interior designer Ashley Davidson convinced me to move the kids ikea kitchen to open the space up and pull out my blue rug I had layered on top of the jute one – I never thought I would want that rug moved out of this space because I loved it so much and I love layering rugs BUT as soon as she did it, the space looked much bigger!!! She also helped to remove a ton of clutter from the built ins which made it much tidier thanks to her and the beautiful milk glassware she brought! She also picked out all of the pillows for the space, one of the most difficult things for me for this room was committing to pillows – I am sure this sounds so silly but it was actually giving me anxiety!!! I love the pillows she picked, they totally completed the space. Working with an interior designer can be SO helpful and it’s fun to have someone with a different style than your own come in and work some magic together and if you are friends – even better, you can check out Ashley’s website {here} if you are on the hunt for a designer to work with, you’ll love her!
Photography: AnnawithLove | Rug: RUGS USA | Paint: PARA | Trim & Moulding: Metrie | Window Coverings: Q Design Centre | Interior Design Aid: Ashley Davidson | My Top: Paper Crown | Ella’s Outfit: Old Navy/Zara | Noah’s Jumpsuit: Tribe is Alive | Art: Minted & AnnawithLove
A beautiful Pinterest quote about motherhood I had to share as en ending to our tour…
“I have been that mother – the really focused, engaging, loving mother who was all in, enjoying every speck of motherhood. I have had days of basking in the moment and wanting it to last forever. I have been her, all of her. She is the woman I wish I was for my children at every moment…But I also been the mother who felt like I could not answer one more question, listen to anymore crying, clean up one more mess. A mother who has felt so tired I thought I would split in two. I have been all of her, every bit of her.” -unkown
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Very cute house?