Dining Room Update

  So we pretty much worked on pretty-ing up (totally a word) the dining room at the same time we were doing the kitchen.  Truth be told we were having one of our first shindigs in the house and wanted things looking better by the time a decent-sized group of people saw the house.  The only thing that we've really done so far is paint and hang some stuff, but it made a huge difference.  Here's a shoddy picture of a corner of the room from our original house tour:

The room isn't big at all, I'm standing pretty much in the back corner.  This used to be the eat-in kitchen!  That, by the way, accounts for the strange outlet placement (all but one are on the upper part of the wall).  What you can't see is the other area on the linoleum where the previous owners apparently used some heavy-duty carpet tape to hold down small rugs, and the peeling painted fruit border.  Ugh.  And don't you just love builder's grade brass light fixtures?  I know I don't!

Well here's the view from the opening into the kitchen:

I'm not a huge fan of the light fixture in here, I'd like to get something that fits the room better.  Jed loves it, though, and there's not really anywhere else that it can go right now.  If we can't afford a new one, I thought about tackling the brass one that was in here with some spray-paint and seeing what I can make of it. 

The frames in the back are from various places; Hobby Lobby, Garden Ridge, mostly Goodwill.  All but the long skinny mirror had to be spray-painted either black or silver.  I hope to eventually get more as I find them and fill the wall up a little more, I think it looks a bit sparse.  I did try to get a bit crafty with a couple of them, which went both good and bad.  On the bad spectrum, you have the oval shaped frame, which is is desperate need of something real to go inside of it.  I'm not going to post a close-up of what's in there now because it's just a mess.  Let's just say that DIY stenciling with spray-paint did not go well.  On the good end, I wound up with this:

The ceramic bowl in the middle is our ring bowl, that we used in lieu of a pillow for our wedding ceremony.  Super-fancy frame, spray paint, scrap-book paper, some jimmying, and there you have it.  I love it, it's my favorite thing in the room.

And from the other side:

The sideboard from Ikea was an awesome find, got it in the as-is section for $140!  It was a nice splurge.  Right now it's holding our "wedding china" (from Target) and fancy glasses.  I want to change up some of the stuff that's on top,  as the French-themed stuff in the front isn't my favorite anymore, it's just what I was able to dig up out of the basement.  I also feel like maybe there's too much going on, but I have a need to fill up every space with stuff, just stuff everywhere.  Not good in a small house, but dammit I love my knick-knacks and random crap. 

I also feel like something needs to go above it, as there's just a big block of space.  I did think about waiting for a bit, then hanging some empty frames to hold random bits of future toddler artwork as seen all over the internet.

I'm realizing now that it's hard to tell the color of the lower walls here, but it's a deep plum, like the color of...

These pants.  Like that.

 There's still obviously stuff to be done: I'm still deciding whether or not I want curtains in there, and it's yet another room that needs the flooring completely ripped up and redone.  Still, it's in way better shape than it was!