{ the four seasons: not vivaldi. }

Hello, my name is Rebekah, and I’m an addict.  I’m addicted to… pillows.  (Hi, Rebekah.)

Throw pillows, that is. Or toss pillows, accent pillows, sofa pillows, whatever you’d like to call them.  I shudder to think of the number that are stored neatly in plastic trash bags up in our attic.  I shudder, and then… I start thinking… what about the plum pillows I used a few years ago?  They might look great on our espresso velvet couch for a rich jewel-toned fall palette. Or maybe the soft fluffy cream ones could be paired with some new jute or grain-sack ones for a texture juxtaposition… wait, that would mean buying more pillows… uh, oh.

You see, it is a sickness. I’m working on it, I’m taking pills and having injections. I do try to always get a good deal on said pillows – and usually never spend more than 20 bucks a piece.  If only Cost Plus and Pier One weren’t such enablers!  Yet there is something so satisfying about changing a room to reflect the season.  Which brings me to the point: Our living room goes through about four five iterations per year.  You see there are the four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, plus Christmas (which makes five).  Our living room, of which you saw the wall renovation featured on the blog, is the prime location for seasonal decorating, although it’s fun to add touches through the whole house. I’ll give you a little Spring versus Summer example:

Ah, Spring.  Who doesn’t see bright green and soft yellow and think of it?

To accessorize the bookcases on the cheap, I used lemons and limes ($1 a bag!), ferns from our yard, large chunky green candles, and a couple of things from the antique center on 8th and Main which is, by the way, an awesome place to pick up random knick-knacks (or as Matt says… curios).  Your local flea could work just as well, however!  At the antique center I got the floral painting you see on the left ($6) and the old phone and old camera ($20 for both). Oh, and also the metal vases on the mantle – they are actually some bizarrely-coated terracotta pieces from the 1970′s ($12 for both).  Crazy, huh? Green baskets are from Cost Plus. The regular baskets I’ve had forever and can’t remember where they came from.  The wheat grass thing is fake, even though I don’t typically use artificial plants, and they were $3 each from Pier 1 on sale.  There, you’ve basically just bought all of the accessories in my living room! The books I chose from our “library” (which is what we call the office/study, it just sounds more glamorous).  I limited the palette of books neutral, brown and green.

But then, it got warmer, days became longer, Spring changed into Summer, and the Spring palette needed a little refreshing:

Vibrant red!  Out with the green books, in with the red and burgundy ones!  Etsy was my best friend here, I bought a letterpress print from Green Chair Press and put it in a frame that I already had.  Same with the bird print on the left side, and the painting on the right.  That painting (called “Optimism”) was definitely my biggest splurge at $50, but I fell in love with it, and it’s an original oil, not a print.  The glass jars that held limes and lemons now hold corks on the mantel.  The framed piece on the far bottom left was a little art project Cam and I did together – a messy ink sketch from a photo of the Eiffel tower sparkling at night that Matt and I took while in Paris this spring, painted over with red paint (me) and splotched with little white stars (Cam).  It’s not a museum piece let me tell you, but it was fun and adds a pop of color and we enjoyed doing it together. The red lanterns on the left were internet finds for 6 and 8 bucks, respectively.  The rest of it was all just moving stuff in the house around.  A little bit here, a little bit there.

Here’s a side by side:

And here are a few fun elements and vignettes, first, for Spring:

And then, for Summer:

Saw a couple of pillows in those batches, didn’t ya?

This post is meant to inspire me to get my butt in gear and update the living room for Fall.  It’s been so busy I’ve had a tough time getting around to it.  You’ll have to keep me accountable, so I’ll post Fall on the blog when it’s done.  Let’s aim for October first, shall we?