Bring Your Story Into Your Home: Entry Way to Living Room

After living with brown in our front room area, I’ve been itching for over a year now to exchange the brown for some bright happy colors! I call them Dr. Seuss colors, and we’re so happy with them.

We’re colorful people. It was time to make our home feel more like us.

From many areas you can see the blue and blue-green, and a yellow all at once, though not in these pictures. From my bedroom I can see a lime green, and the blue and yellow all at the same time.

Does Your Home Tell the Story of Who You Are?

I’ve been working on bringing our stories into our home — the stories of what we love, where we’ve been and what we do, where we come from, and who we love.

I’m also patient. I think it’s important to take your time and bring in only the things that you love, rather than to buy stuff to fill the house. There are lots of sparse spots right now. Below is what we’ve got going on so far…

Entryway: The Story of Film and Video-Making in Our Lives

Izzy loves films. Blake will be a film-maker not many years from now. We make a living through video. Izzy does small local cinematography products on the side.

I found these faux film reels at Pier One.

This is an old vintage (still working) light for filming — a Mole Richardson Fresnel. Izzy was going to sell it and I told him, “Absolutely not! It’s going on our cabinet.”

Now he’s happy he didn’t. It’s such a beautiful thing and I love having pieces and symbols of our lives and passions around the house like this.

Living Room to Kitchen Transition Area: The Story of Wine in Our Lives

The reclining chair with side table will be outta-here ASAP. I will be replacing it with a low already-used wooden cabinet as soon as I can find one I love.

The dining table is from Razzmatazz.

Izzy and I love red wine. We’re part of the wine club at D’Vine Bistro and Wine Bar in Mesa, and we do tastings there about every other week.

Floating shelves from Ikea.
Wine bottles – some were wines we loved. Some were bottles we loved, even if the wines weren’t our very favorite.
My tiny collection of decanters and corks – top left one is from Peir One. All the others, including the wire basket are from garage sales.
Lights from Ikea.

The House from the Outside

And just because…here’s a current picture of the outside. The usual flowers aren’t blooming on all the plants, which means we need to work on the soil a bit.

I’ll share more interior home photos in a week or two!

How Have You Brought Your Story into Your Own Home?

Is this something you’ve consciously done? If so, please share how!

Tags: entry way, home, living room

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2011 at 9:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

robbieandmelissa

I really like your colors – I noticed them earlier this week when you posted a shot of your son heading out the door. We have yellows, greens, blues, pinks, peaches, and a chocolate brown in our home and will never live with white walls again! LOL
http://www.chalicat.com/blog/ Noelle

Excellent color choices…though I’m sad to hear the Ikea chair is going soon. I have that same chair with footstool, and visitin family always fights over who gets to sit in it. (as do the dog and cats.)

I’ve been working on refreshing my photos. I had framed photos I hadn’t changed in years. So I’ve been printing and updating. Now you see pictures of my sister and I growing up, Dave and I through our years together, and of course baby Hailey. I also have a collection of cat and pug artwork I’ve been gathering over the years. I adore cats. (I own 3 currently.) It’s a slow process, because I grew up with a mom that had TOO MANY nic-nacs about, and a dad who refused to let us put things on the walls. (“You’re not putting holes in my walls!”) It’s a constant struggle to overcome those influences.
http://www.juliekintaiwan.wordpress.com Julie K in Taiwan

Love the new colors on your walls. As soon as I saw the film reels I thought they were perfect for your home.
Right now the story of our home is filled with kids’ art. We have very little wall space available and practically no decorative surface areas so whatever is available is considered gallery space for the many creations our little artists construct. I’m hoping to put up some of my art, as soon as I deem it finished.
http://www.paperclipping.com Noell

Wow — how fun!
http://www.paperclipping.com Noell

The chair is over 8 years old and it’s looking it. I’ve gone to Ikea twice
with the intention of replacing the covers but if I remember right, it was
almost as much for the entire chair/stool set itself, which I find
frustrating. I want a storage area for our cloth napkins and some other
things. I was thinking about putting the chair out on our back patio or
something.
http://www.paperclipping.com Noell

That’s awesome! I hope to eventually have some of my own art to hang, too! I
have some art from the kids that I’m thinking about hanging in the hallway
that leads to my scraproom.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715560629 Kim Vail Brown

I would love to see your garage since you have turned it into a production room. I’m curious how you did since it looks like a normal garage from the outside. How are you keeping it cool? I would love to use the garage we have as a room or studio, but I have the problem of heating/cooling it. we have no windows, so a window unit is not an option.
I have been curious about the house since you mentioned painting it. I love the color of your dining room. It is my favorite color, along with gray and orange right now. I also like how you are mixing found items with modern ikea items. I heart ikea to. Just wish one was closer than dallas for me. I’m pretty shocked wichita or kansas city doesn’t have one.
http://www.paperclipping.com Noell

We hired someone to cut a hole in our garage wall and install the box air
conditioner. It’s really good at keeping the space cool, even with our
115-120 degree summers.

Let me know if you have other questions about it!
Dedra Long

Wow and Wow! I need to come visit pronto. Look at cute Gatsby. The color choices are fabulous and it totally fits the family. Those film reels and the walls look amazing and immediately had be thinking about how to make a minibook out of them.
Miss ya!
d.
http://www.paperclipping.com Noell

Hey, Dedra! Do you mean, make a mini-book out of film reels? Of course, you
would be thinking that, lol, it’s YOU we’re talking about. You’re awesome
and I miss you!
Debra

What a colourful house! Good for you. I did a dumb thing in our new house (one we built no less) and got the colours wrong. I’m still kicking myself for that. We have cream walls throughout – which I totally LOVE – but I added green and brown accents including the kitchen bench and I hate green and brown!
I make cards and my favourite combo is a cream background with all colours on it – red, blue, yellow, green, pink, orange and a couple of shades of a couple of those colours. Well, when I discovered they were my favourite cards, I decorated my house the same. Luckily I had the cream walls and I just added all the colourful accents. So much better. I felt comfortable for the first time. Still stuck with a hunter green (my least favourite colour) kitchen bench though…but one day we’ll fix it…somehow. My husband’s already made a timber top to cover the island bench, so at least it’s a lot less green. Love the film reels and the stage light – very you guys!
TracyBzz

YES our home does tell our story! Most ‘stuff’ has a story. Where we got it or why (I love that you bought film reels at Pier One – not a good story but add in that it reflects who Izzy is and what he does and it means so much). So many things in my aunt’s house have a story and I always wanted that in my home. Not “oh thanks, I got it at Wal Mart, because something had to go there.”
My girls’ rooms are bright purple, ours is blue, kitchen/dining/entrance is pale celery. Living room is a brownish colour, which I love. The bathroom has a large jar of small shells and larger ones lying around that we had so much fun collecting on a vacation. I have photos I’ve taken framed and enlarged on every wall space in every room.
Oh I could go on and on. We are re-doing our basement and I want to paint it similar to the colour in your dining room. So happy you love your ‘new’ house. It’s only pain and if you get tired of it redo it.
http://www.liznessstudio.com Liz Ness

Very pretty (and cool), Noell! I really like the film reels and light in the entry — AWESOME!
http://www.chalicat.com/blog/ Noelle

Oh I’m on my second cushion set for my chair. I had the white one, but my friend’s kid got chocolate on the footstool cushion which I could never get out. And then one of the cats threw up a green something on the chair cushion. I replaced them with bright red and covered them with an easily washable fleece blanket when company isn’t over. But such is the trade-off, I feel, for living with pets. I accept my furniture has some blankets protecting them from pet issues, because I love having the pets.
http://www.chalicat.com/blog/ Noelle

Oh I’m on my second cushion set for my chair. I had the white one, but my friend’s kid got chocolate on the footstool cushion which I could never get out. And then one of the cats threw up a green something on the chair cushion. I replaced them with bright red and covered them with an easily washable fleece blanket when company isn’t over. But such is the trade-off, I feel, for living with pets. I accept my furniture has some blankets protecting them from pet issues, because I love having the pets.
http://www.paperclipping.com Noell

Were the new cushions not outrageously priced?

Paperclipping: The Video Podcast | Design Your Story