At Home with Aimee (Living Room + Wayfair Discount)

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Wayfair, but my opinions and commentary are entirely my own.

It’s been nearly 3 months since we moved into our new home, and I figured it was about time to walk you through it since most of you are too far to stop by for a visit. We’re going to call this weekly series “At Home with Aimee”. This week is all about the Living Room + an exclusive Wayfair discount.

 Each week we’ll peek inside one of the rooms so you can get a feel for a more personal side of our little family.

I’m always fascinated with blogger’s home tours but extremely apprehensive about sharing my own.

Your home is so very…..personal.

And let’s face it, I’m no interior designer.

And while I considered it, I didn’t hire one to help with our construction.

And…..it was not in the budget to go out and buy all new furniture simply because we built a new home.

I just like what I like and frown at what I don’t and try to make things that we have work by adding a few new things here and there.

Merging two personalities into one home is where I think it gets challenging for some. But for us, our preferences were so similar that our building experience was actually quite fun. Brian grew up in New Orleans and tends to gravitate toward architectural features, gas lanterns, and old Southern charm. I like blending the old with the new and joked that we were building a “new old house”.

So, enough chatting. Let’s go inside shall we?

Originally, I was going to start with the Foyer since it’s the first place you walk into but the rug I purchased for that space was too big and I had to do some reconfiguring.

Our Foyer is massive and even though I taped off the dimensions and thought the oversized rug would work well there, it just consumed the space and I was missing the wood floors.

Rug: via

So, off to the living room it went.

If you followed my build process on Instagram, this is what you see as you walk under the brick arch threshold separating the rooms.

You’ll see it when I share the Foyer, but the distressed white wash on the fireplace is exactly what we did on the arch.

The fireplace was sort of a hodge podge of me wanting a traditional older home fireplace (no carved fleur de lis for this chick) and wanting to incorporate more brick. The addition of the wood painted mantel on the brick kept it old, but fresh.

It’s by far on my top 5 list of favorite design decisions we made.

(Just look at my Stella looking all bothered that I’m photographing her space)

When you’re working with a neutral color palette, you can totally swap from room to room. I think people tend to focus on one room at a time and choose colors individually and that’s so not me. I want the entire house to feel cohesive, not necessarily matchy matchy but cohesive. Like you had an overall plan to the design and your choices.

I’m also a firm believer in light colors. It just keeps things looking clean and fresh.

Here’s the view from the Kitchen.

Design wise, I would’ve loved not to have a ceiling fan. But it’s unheard of in the South and pretty much required.

And from that window to the left of the gallery wall.

(Now looks who’s napping on the bench)

The gray striped rug totally neutralizes the gold of the couch (that we’re trying to make work for a bit longer) and with pops of patterned gray pillows and throw blankets, it brings in some color without putting it on the walls.

Tracking down the “right” rug totally stressed me out, but I’m loving the gray stripes.

Have you been looking for rugs in all the wrong places?

If you’re in the market for a new rug for your space, Wayfair is currently having a super fast sale on their rugs. 15% off using code RUGLUV02 and most ship FREE. Shipping large rugs will kill you, and when I was debating rugs, the free shipping on my rug won me over.  The rug discount is only valid 7/31- 8/4 though so you’ll need to be lightning fast.

THEY NEVER DISCOUNT RUGS, so if you’re on the fence, go buy yourself one now.

Enough about rugs, let’s chat accessories.

I’m extremely picky about what I bring into my spaces. I don’t like “filler” objects and knick knacks. It’s purposely why we  didn’t do built ins in the living room. While they look nice they just beg for you to put stuff on them and “fill” the space.

And dust.

It’s more things to dust.

I would rather incorporate pieces with a story and leave things as minimal as possible.

A hand crafted pottery bird perched on an antique serving tray serves a tidy way to store tv remotes.

A stack of vintage books tied in matching pillow fabric makes me happy.

And an old egg crate turned dog toy holder? Yes, please.

So there you have it.

There’s my living room where the husband and I spend movie nights and where Stella and Milo spend most of their time napping and bird watching on the bench.

Next week, I’ll share a snack with you in the Kitchen.

Come hungry!