A few weeks ago I promised you all some photos of our new apartment and of course I have yet to deliver because I am such a bad blogger. Really I was waiting until everything was completely photo ready. Although we had the place unpacked in two days it took us several weeks to finally get all the pictures hung. We have a lot of pictures. And I am not quite tall enough to hang most of them myself which means that Josh had do it on the weekend and only when Eleanor wasn’t napping so that we wouldn’t wake her. We did them a little at a time over the last month and last weekend we finally got them all up!

Now that everything is ready, I decided I would just show you one room a week so that my house tour post wasn’t a million pictures long. That also buys me some time to get the finishing touches on Eleanor’s room done. I’m saving that room for last.

Without further ado, The Living Room:

Okay so this is the front door that leads into the leaving room. Don’t you just love my new welcome mat? It’s so bright and friendly. It really looks like it means it when it says “welcome.”

Are there any better plants than succulents when you live in Southern California and are not great at remembering to water plants? I don’t think so. And they are just beautiful! I plan to get a bunch more when we have a few extra dollars.

One of the things that was “thrown away” when we moved out of our old apartment was this carved long-eared jack rabbit that I loved! It was one of my favorite things I owned. I was so sad to lose it. I replaced it with this one. It’s not as good, but I still really like it. There are real rabbits everywhere in the area around our apartment building, so I feel like this one fits right into the neighborhood.

Okay, now here really is the living room.

This is the view from the front door, looking straight ahead. I have always wanted to pull our couch away from the wall. Ideally, I wanted to have a long side table behind it, but have never had the space to do something like that. In this apartment we don’t quite have the space. We lose a lot of the extra space between the couch and the television stand, but this furniture arrangement was necessary. At our old place we were able to have our two tall bookcases in the dining area, but in our new place we don’t have the extra room in the dining area so the bookcases had to go elsewhere.

I really like the walking space behind the couch. Just wide enough for hippy me to walk through and enough room for the bookcase doors to open.

This is our entry table that used to be a desk, well I guess it still is a desk, but now it holds my purse and our keys and mail when we walk in the door. The apartment has a built-in desk in the hallway so now we have this extra desk. I thought about getting rid of it before we moved, knowing we wouldn’t need it anymore and that there wasn’t room for it in the new bedroom. I’m so glad I didn’t because it works perfectly as an entry table.

I love Mucha! I have two larger prints framed in the dining area and would like to get a third.

My favorite fall bag that I had to pull out a little early because my favorite summer bag just fell apart.

If you’ve been in our apartment before you may notice that we had to get a smaller coffee table to fit into the now smaller space. I thought about not having a coffee table at all and I know that a lot of people don’t, but I just can’t break myself of the idea that a living room needs a coffee table. I mean, where else will people put their drinks and appetizers when they are here for our cocktail parties (that we don’t really have any more now that we have a baby)?

The black and white is a gorgeous photo of Josh’s mom when she was about three. It’s one of my favorite photos that we have.

I love these pillows. They are from Ikea. The embroidered pattern is white on one side and dark orange on the other. I keep the white facing out in spring and summer and turn them over to orange in the fall and winter.

I agonized over the placement of the pictures. I think I’m pretty happy with it, although they aren’t quite centered on the wall and the tv isn’t centered under them. Not that that is a problem, but it bothers me a teensy bit.

Eleanor has this empty corner by the patio door for her toys, although she rarely uses it. Just before we moved, I bought that green basket for her toys thinking that it would make it easier for her to help clean them up after she plays with them and would make the living room look a little more organized rather than having just a pile of toys in the corner. Unfortunately, she seems to have no interest in looking in the basket for toys, so once they are in there they rarely come out. Oh well.

And that is our living room. You may notice that I’m a lazy shopper, so all of my furniture and accessories come from either Ikea or Target. I should consider branching out a little, maybe when we have more money to spend.

I’m pretty happy with the room in general. If I had an extra $40 I’d buy a few more accessories maybe some throw pillows for the couch or some ceramic vases. If I had an extra $80 I’d put up curtains. If I had an extra $200 I’d buy a bench to go next to the entry table. If I had an extra $2,500 I’d get a new sofa (not from Ikea).

Next week, the Dining Room and Kitchen.