A Coffee Table Switcheroo, A $5 Pillow, and Some More Ramblings...

 Sorry for the long title, but thought that about sums this post up;)

I made SUCH a smart decision yesterday that I just had to share it with you...not that I'm patting myself on the back or anything. Oh who am I kidding, yes I am! :) You might remember from my New Family Room Visions post that I wanted to switch our current coffee table out with a wicker trunk that's always been in our bedroom? I bought it from Target (surprise surprise) forever ago, envisioning it at the foot of our bed. It's not all that large though, and didn't look as great as I thought it would. Point being, I never was a huge fan of it in there, so when I had the thought of moving it to the family room, I wouldn't be missing anything upstairs, know what I mean? So yesterday at naptime (or should I say "quiet time" :( Mr. 3 Year Old is putting his foot down a LOT lately on the whole nap thang. Lord help me.) I took the existing coffee table down to the laundry room for the time being, and swapped the trunk in its place.

Smartest. Move. EVER. There is SO much more room now - even the kids noticed when they were playing legos on the floor, how much more space there was to move around. Amazing how I never thought the round table was that obtrusive, but it's made such a difference. Here's a pic of the old one (Metropolitan Pottery Barn table):

Yes, it's Christmastime in this pic. Don't know why I couldn't find a better photo to show you!?

And the best part? The top opens up for, you guessed it...MORE STORAGE!! Can I get an AMEN on that?! Toys, blankets, board games, DVDS, not sure what I'll put in there, but am I psyched!

You'll notice that's the same $2 Tray I fixed up, that's about to get a BIG makeover. I'll keep you posted on that, but I'll give you a hint: the gold ain't stayin'.

See how much roomier it is to get around the couch? Maybe it's not too evident in the pics, but trust me. HUGE difference. So yay on that one...

Moving on...My $5 Pillow!!

Oh Ikea, I continue to adore you. This is just their Emmie Land pillow cover zippered around an old pillow of mine. Best 5 bucks I've ever spent! Here it is before:

Weird, for some reason it's uploading vertically? Here's a better up close shot, so you can see the shape it was in:

Nice. And the threads were all coming out, it was a show. But not anymore! Enter the Emmie Land pillow cover from Ikea...

30 seconds later...

Ta-da! Brand new pillow. LOVE it. What an improvement, and for $5?!! (Oh, and did you notice that cable knit throw there in camel? Couldn't leave that in Ikea either, had to snag it on my latest trip too;)

Some more updates...if you follow me on Facebook, you're aware that I did indeed change my mind on Misty for the paint color for the family room makeover. I know, I know, I'm a nutjob. Nothing new. It's just the next morning, the color looked sooo silvery on the wall, and I just happened to be hearing about Sherwin Williams Sea Salt here, there, and everywhere in blogland. And I've been so drawn to it, so I decided to throw the kids in the van one afternoon and head on over to SW for a sample. I had them lighten it to 75% of the formula. Did you know you could do that? If you love a color, but wish it was just a little bit lighter, or maybe a lot brighter, you can lighten it to 50%, 25%, whatever you want. I do it a lot. Colors always look SO gorgeous on the paint chip card, and I get it home, and just looks a tab bit too dark for me. Keep that in mind if that happens to you a lot too! So Sea Salt it is.

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Seriously people. This is THE PERFECT COLOR. It's unbelievably gorgeous. And I've had it up for a good 4 days, and on sunny days or rainy days, morning, noon, and night, it is perfection. It's like a chameleon color - it's gray, it's blue, it's green. Love love love it. So as pretty as Misty is, this is the color I've been searching for this entire time. And are you ready for this? You know my inspiration pic?

The Lettered Cottage

Guess what? The color here is SW Oyster Bay, but when I looked it up, it's a super dark color (must be extremely sunny in this room, or lots of lightening in editing!?), but guess what's two colors above it on the very same paint card????  Yup. Good ol' Sea Salt. Meant to be, right!? No wonder I love it so.:)

While we're talking paint (geesh this is getting to be a wordy post - sorry!), a friend of mine gave me this tip when trying out samples: paint on poster board and tape it to the wall, that way your existing paint won't influence the color. I had always heard this tip, but never tried it. Besides, the color on my wall was a pale yellow, and Sherwin Williams is such great paint, I thought, eh, how much can it really alter it? It wasn't like I was painting over a super dark red or something. Well turns out, the existing color can alter it A LOT. The same day my friend told me this tip was the day I ran in to pick up my Sea Salt sample. While the employee was mixing it, I started chattin' it up with the workers behind the counter. I asked them about it, and they said it can completely  change the look of it. I told them I had picked out some gray blues, and put them up on my yellow wall, and they said, "Oh, I bet it looks SUPER blue, huh?" Uhhh, YES!! So the employee was so helpful and wanted to show me an experiment (thank goodness my trio was on their best behavior that day, because we were there a while;). She picked up a blue paint chip, a green paint chip, and a yellow paint chip. She placed the yellow one over both, and the yellow looked ENTIRELY different when placed on the colors! So I tried it when I got home - I placed one of the gray blues on a piece of white foam board, and held it up to the same sample on the wall.

Now here's the trick: Take your pointer finger and hold it up across the line in the middle there. Look at the top then the bottom. They look different, right?! Maybe it won't work as well in a photo, but trust me, I was BLOWN away in the examples she showed me in the store! Lesson here: always paint a sample on a WHITE surface for the truest color. I know I will! Thanks a bunch, Kelly!!

Ok, so that WAS a lot of rambling, huh? All over the place with this post - Lol! Just felt like sharing the latest on Operation Family Room with you ~

Have a fabulous weekend! :)