Hooray for Gray

When we were first married, we bought an Ektorp sofa at Ikea. We went with a white slipcover because it was the cheapest and also happened to be the color we like best. Lots of people with white slip-covered couches love them because they can be washed easily. While that is certainly true, washing the slipcover has got to be my least favorite chore. They always need ironing and I hate stuffing the cushions back into their covers. When Claire arrived, I realized that I would need to either:

a.) wash the cover on a weekly basis

b.) learn to live with it looking disgusting most of the time

c.) get a different cover that actually hides stains

I don't know about you, but the third option sounded pretty good to me. Since we purchased our couch, Ikea introduced a gray slipcover that we both really liked but, at the time, it was $250. Well, our couch was originally $400 with the white cover, so the idea of spending more than half the original cost on a new slip cover wasn't too pleasant. Luckily, they slashed the price to a much more manageable $150 over the summer and we added it to our list of items to eventually purchase with the ol' furniture fund {our credit card cash back that we transfer into a separate savings account each month}.

When we moved here, we emptied our furniture fund to buy a twin mattress for the nursery, a thrifted dining table, and a really basic dresser for our closet. It's slowly been filling up again over the last couple months. Last Friday, story time at the library was cancelled, so naturally I decided to brave Ikea alone with Claire instead. Always a brilliant idea. But, I ended up finding a gray slipcover in the as-is section for $75 and, after a quick call to Adam to make sure he was on board, into {or on top of} the stroller it went.



We're really happy with it so far! Claire has already christened it with spit-up several times and so far, so good. {Those yellow side table used to be our night stands once upon a time. They were hand-me-downs from Adam's parents and actually used to belong to his grandparents. The lamps are from Target; we've had one for a while and got another to match. I'm not loving the black shades with the darker couch, though.}



If you are thinking that the frames are arranged awkwardly high up on the wall, you would be correct. But, any lower and my tall husband would bonk his head on them when he sat down. In the big frames, we have two fun map prints from These Are Things with a random oversize key in the middle. The top row of frames are little paintings I made of the three states and vintage postcards of the three cities that we've lived in together. The Houston and Pittsburgh postcards are from the coolest store in Austin, Uncommon Objects, and the Seattle postcard is just from Ebay.



The other side of the living room is pretty boring so far and still needs a lot of work.

I do like this small wall between the living room and the kitchen, which is as close to a mud room as we're getting for quite a while. We actually have a coat closet in the hallway, but it's used to store the vacuum, stroller and doorway jumper. I will have to show y'all a picture sometime; it's slightly ridiculous. But, this boot tray and coat rack do the trick.

The canvas prints above are from our wedding day, our first year of marriage and our second year of marriage. I'd love to continue the tradition and eventually have a whole wall devoted to these photos so you can see how our family has grown over the years.