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Living Room

All Things Home

madame mére

I finished yesterday’s post about the Uffizi portrait gallery with a bit of a cliffhanger.  I didn’t include the setting, though.  This was at Isle of Palms a few weeks ago.  Several extended family members live near Charleston, so we visit them (or they visit us) while we’re there.  So, my aunt interrupted my story about people walking right past a Rembrandt with an intriguing offer.  “If you love portraits, I have a proposition for you.”  Now, I had no idea where she was going with this start.  Maybe she had a portrait to show me or had a question or request.  I wasn’t left in suspense for long.  She started telling me about a few antique oil portraits she had in a closet, and she wanted to pass them along to someone who would love them.  She also offered some details about the size, age, and subject of the

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All Things Home

Christmas 2025 Living Room

If you missed it, I shared the details about our 2025 Christmas tree HERE.  In this post, I’m sharing how the rest of the living room looks dressed for Christmas this year.  Here is the view through the doorway from the kitchen… curtain rod | curtains | rug | pillows | sconces | paint color I do need to say that we don’t usually have this many pillows on our sofa!  I learned a long time ago that sofas and chairs photograph better when they are generously styled with pillows, quilts, blankets, and throws.  This is the room where we watch movies and hang out, so the sofa is usually in disarray, styled for comfort instead of photos! Anyway, it is fun to play around with the styling and make the room look nice, even if those pillows will be on the floor as soon as I give the guys

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Living Room

six-inches to the right

A small decorating saga has been playing out in this living room corner for the past couple of years.  If you recall, shortly after we moved into this house, I arranged these plates and antlers on the wall in the style of James Farmer.  It’s one of my favorite decorating “moments” in the house. When I painted the living room walls Card Room Green in November of 2023, I took everything down, patched the holes, and left it down through Christmas since we put up the tree in that corner.  Once the Christmas tree was taken down, I excitedly put the dresser back in place and hung my plate & antler arrangement back on the wall.  I quickly realized I hadn’t put the dresser back in the same place.  It was pushed into the corner a bit more, so now the arrangement felt squished. I got sidetracked with other projects

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Living Room

check on check on check | tufted wool living room rug

Over 10 years ago, I shared here on this blog that rugs were my decorating nemesis.  I would get a room where I really loved it and then I would miss on the rug.  It would be too busy, too bright, too light, too dark, or not the right color, material, or style.  It would hijack the room and fight with other elements instead of complementing or enhancing them.  While I think I’ve gotten better with selecting rugs (I mostly go with neutral, safe selections), it’s still an area of struggle.  I don’t know if I’ll ever feel entirely confident, but I have picked some winners in recent years that have made me feel a bit better about the whole thing! In the living room, we’ve had my default rug of choice – woven jute.  They are neutral, work well with antiques, and are forgiving when it comes to kids

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Decorating

Christmas 2024 Living Room

Well, I might be (literally) limping across the Christmas decorating finish line, but I’ve made it.  I added things this year and left other things out, making decisions based on how I felt at any given moment.  Sometimes I had a spurt of energy and was really excited about what I was doing and then other times I thought I might be finished.  In the end, nothing in life hinges on Christmas decorations, so I did what felt fun and most important to me.  While I do share my Christmas decorating online as a part of my job, I am woefully behind, weeks behind, for that to serve its intended purpose.  I’m sure your decorating is done, so you probably don’t need to see mine to get ideas!  But there isn’t a time limit on when ideas can be used or when inspiration will show up at just the right

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All Things Home

simple, natural fall mantel | autumn decorating

In the very early years of my blogging career, I connected with Layla of the Lettered Cottage.  I was smitten with her design aesthetic and eye for styling.  We both wrote tutorials for HGTV.com (you can find mine HERE) and wrote and contributed photography for several of the same editors and magazines.  We met at a few blog conferences over the years and even partnered on the very first Chapel Market hosted by her community in Alabama.  As another fun piece of history, one of the colors in the MMS Milk Paint line, Layla’s Mint, is named after her.  It was a color I custom-mixed for a secretary desk for her kitchen and we added it to the line soon after.  (That color is still available HERE.)  So, when Layla asked if I would like to team up to share fall decorating inspiration or a project with our readers, I

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All Things Home

living room lighting from Lamps Plus

This post is sponsored by Lamps Plus.  As always, all words and opinions expressed are honest and my own. I shared the plug-in wall sconces from Lamps Plus before Christmas, but I never wrote about the details of the fixtures as well as another lamp we selected for the room.  So, that’s what this post is about!  Within the first few months of living in the house, we had recessed lights installed in the living room, my studio, and all the bedrooms.  There was no overhead lighting and we didn’t want to rely solely on lamps, especially during the winter when it gets dark so early.  So, we turn on the recessed lights and wash the room in light when needed, but we mostly like to use lamps in this cozy room for tasks and ambiance. For the chair in the corner opposite the sofa. we got the Antique Brass

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Decorating

card room green living room | the “dresser corner”

Yesterday, I finally finished putting the living room back together after painting the room Card Room Green in November.  As I started arranging the plates and antlers on the wall over the dresser in the corner, I wondered why it took us so long!  Did I really procrastinate that much?  Then, I remembered we put the Christmas tree in that corner and made the decision to not hang things on the wall until we took the tree down.  And then I involuntarily started playing virus Bingo.  If I get Flu B or RSV, I’ll complete a row on my card.  Anyway, it felt good to get something done and bring the newly painted room to life a bit more. Here is how that corner looked before the room was painted… And here is how it looks against the Card Room Green… For me, this is a case where both wall

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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