Pineapple Express

I mentioned in my last post that I would soon elaborate on my plans for our Family Room. Well I am even more excited now than I was before based on some recent news/ feedback from my last post. Apparently more people than I thought were reading my new blog, and a friend Cara commented on my paint dilema with some good info. She used Grass Cloth in her old house and loved the color! She even e-mailed me some pics... I will only post one... she might hate me for this... but it was so helpful to see it in a real room! It was very reassuring to hear first hand from someone that they liked the color too!

So the theme we are doing on the first floor of the house is pineapples! The pineapple is a symbol of hospitality that dates back to 1493! You can read all about it here if you're interested. The store I used to work at in Virginia, Country Curtains, sells a collection of pineapple pieces called "Welcome Home" that I always thought were so cute! I decided I wanted to use the valances in our house and kind of picked everything else to go with the colors and work around them. It was kind of a hard sell to get Andrew on board with the pineapples but after compromises on some other things, he agreed. So here are pictures of the valance and the matching pillows. The windows already have nice blinds on them so I will be doing just the valance without long curtains underneath.

You can also check out the website if you are interested, I linked it on here. They have really cute things and not everything is "country;" there are many traditional, casual and contemporary styles as well. I sure wish I had my employee discount still!

So now that you've seen the paint color and the fabric, its on to furniture! We went to four different furniture stores before we found what we were looking for. We aren't made of gold or anything and we can't afford something too expensive or with custom upholstery. We were really glad when we found furniture that looked nice, felt super comfy to sit on (Andrew's number one priority) and worked well with our color scheme. We will be ordering the furnitue from Room Store in the near future so it will be delivered after all the work is done on the house.

You have to imagine the furnitue without the ugly accent pillows and substitute them for the cute pineapple ones! The color of the upholstery is called "Sand" and its kind of a dark goldy/ brown color that sometimes takes on tones of green. It goes well with the colors in the pineapple fabric and I'm really excited about putting this room together. We decided instead of getting the loveseat we would get the big oversized chair with the ottoman. I've sat in chairs like this at other people's houses and thought they were pretty heavenly. In fact, it was Andrew's idea to get the chair and ottoman, which I was totally on board with. I was glad he had an opinion about something! It's also good because the chair is a bit narrower in width than the loveseat but still can provide seating for 2 people. Being narrower will help it fit better in the room. With the cute pineapple decor, big comfy furniture, stone fireplace, fabulous paint color and hard wood floors this room is going to be awesome!

So to top it all off, we even designed the layout for this room! Andrew found the Bassett Room Planner and I LOVE this website! It is so fun to play with, even for pretend rooms! Once we had fallen in love with the furniture we wanted to make sure it would actually fit in the room. We tried to take measurements while we were over at the house but its more complicated than it seems. I love this website because you can put in the exact dimensions of everything and it makes the picture to scale. So barring any great oversight on our part this is how we will arrange the room.

The picture is even complete with Beamer and Macy sleeping on the couch and a pair of slippers next to the ottoman! I have seen several area rugs that I like for this room but I haven't settled on one for sure yet. I may just wait till we have everything done and set up and then I will decide what looks best.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, the green paint will carry over into the kitchen. There is a window above the sink that I will put the Welcome Home valance on as well. The family room, breakfast area, and kitchen are going to look so cozy and welcoming! I can't wait to have you all over to our pineapple house!