A Tiny Corner

This week I have been hard at work putting together one of  the rooms in our house. It's our second living room...or den...or dumping ground. Whatever you want to call it. For the past two years that we have lived in our house, we haven't used this room. Unless you count throwing in whatever and anything that didn't have a home in our house. Ground Zero. A nightmare. I hated this room. And still sort of do. The layout is AWFUL. It's a long, narrow room - with a nine foot window on one end. I think the room is 10 feet wide. I'm 5'3". Two of me couldn't lay end to end in this room. There are two doors - one leading to the garage, another to our back deck (that got ripped out last summer and never replaced - so basically the door leads to air.) There are two entranceways into the room as well as a giant cut out sort of "window" into our kitchen. Also throw in a brick fireplace and hearth, another window and registers along each available wall space. It's a nightmare to decorate around. You'll see some photos of what I mean as I finish different parts of the room.

I finally got my gumption together and put together a corner of the room that I am completely satisfied with. Okay, mostly satisfied. All right, I probably won't change it in the next month. So here it is!

The smallest area of the room to decorate! It's where I keep a number of our dog "parphenalia". I think I'm leaving the stool there - but I may change it. Who knows!

Can you believe I actually bought that sign for my husband? Clearly it was before we were married and clearly before we had a home of our own. Before I had a sembelance of style. Or wanna-be style.

The curtains are the most luxorious silky fabric you've ever touched. I bought it for $2 a meter - WOW! All of the women in the fabric store were oohing and ahhing. I knew that I had picked up the right bolt of fabric.

There are real doggie treats in that jar. Though our pups rarely eat them. We had a friend over this past weekend and he tried to give our dog, Jake, a treat. And Jake had no idea what to do with it! The wicker balls are from The Dollar Tree and the lantern was $2.94 on clearance at Walmart. Don't think that while redoing this room I didn't break another lantern. Shattered glass everywhere.

Want to know what's in the baskets? Well, the top one is holding extra dog dishes and their water bottle. The middle on holds bumpers and dummies. They are for dog training purposes. They help teach the dogs to retrieve. The bottom basket holds their first-aid kit (in the blue lidded box), grooming tools, a pink collar (they don't wear collars either - we are rebals) and two small books on dog first aid.

I can't wait to show you more of this room. Let's just say that some frames need painted, then put on the wall. Some other things need a coat of spray paint. I need to take a few trips to the thrift store to drop off some junk and then tidy tidy tidy. I've been working like a mad woman. Look for more soon!

And P.S. I apologize for the quality of my photos. My camera is dying a slow, miserable death. My birthday is in two weeks and I'm hoping and praying by some miracle that I open a gift and a new SLR will be in it. It's not in the budget so let's just say it would be a miracle. Until then though, I apologize for the quality of my photography.