Living and Dining Room Makeover

Testing testing... anyone still out there??!? 

In the wake of the whole Google Reader fiasco (which was really a whole lot of nothing right??), I feel like I'm out of the blogging loop. 

I'm still home, enjoying my last few weeks on maternity leave with my girls. I wanted to share some more makeover pictures. The house is really coming together! 

Here is our living room when we bought the house:

And here it is today (sorry for the crappy iPhone photos)

All I can say is Home Goods is the greatest store ever in the whole wide world...next to Target and Amazon of course

I was at a loss with what to do with a "formal" living room. I always felt like this was wasted space, since we spend most of our time in the family room. But we actually use this room quite a bit, especially the desk. It's nice to have a separate office space, and this room is so light and calming that it's a great place to hang out when you need quiet - hard to find when you have two kiddos ;-)

Here is our dining room before:

And here it is today!

I was nervous to do such a dark dramatic color in the dining room, but with the light from the living room and the bright light fixture, it's actually perfect (hard to tell with the iPhone, but trust me). I am thrilled with the way it turned out. It feels much more like a "grown up" dining room than what we had before. Though we usually eat at the table in the kitchen, I'm excited to host dinners and holidays at our house in our new fancy dining room :)