Hello there! It's been too long. Thanks so much for checking in after our really, really long absence. I'd mentioned that I took a job for a couple months, and it ended last week. Hooray! I'm not going to lie: It was really hard working a job - communications - that doesn't have set hours, and that basically ended up requiring me to stick West in a play pen for a couple weeks. Combined with a rotating series of illnesses, a big birthday party, several guests and a couple trips, February was a hectic month.

I'm so glad it's over. And in the process of putting everything back together, I realized that I just was never going to like the last living room rug I bought - this one -

And I gave myself permission to stop trying to work with it and start trying to sell it. It sold quickly, along with another rug I'd been storing, and I put the proceeds toward these two beauties.

Here's a shot from when I first laid them down. Love. Having really regretted that last rug purchase, I spent a lot of time looking at rooms I really loved and figuring out what I wanted this time around. Then I set a budget and made a nominal attempt to stick to it. I got the 8' x 10' bleached jute rug from Overstock for about $200. It's light color and natural texture are exactly my jam. The vintage Turkish rug is a find from Etsy, and I am ooooooobsesssed with it. The difference in how I feel about this room now versus last week is pretty extreme, and it reaffirms why I care about this stuff in the first place. It just feels like home in here now - like it belongs to us, specifically - and I lurve it.

I hated this back corner of the room, so I experimented by trying one of the metal Ikea shelves I was using in a back closet. I love it. A little height, some surfaces to hold some fun books and objects - it looks about a million times better than the placeholder table I had shoved there when I moved the loveseat in here. Here's the before, complete with a plant in badly need of a trim.

We decided to keep the loveseat in here. I pretty much hated it at first, but its functionality won me over. It's so nice to have a place for everyone to sit, and to have the pullout bed available for sleepovers. And I didn't hate it nearly as much with the new rugs and the bookshelf backing it.

Here are a couple more shots for ya -

Are you as smitten with it as I am?These are all some as-is shots, without a ton of styling. (I straightened up a tad, but that's it). I have some plans for in here, of course, becuase that's how i roll, but I wanted to share this short and sweet intro for our return! Thanks for checking in and staying with us. Now that I can devote my full attention to it, it's project galore around here, so stay tuned.