Home Tour - Our Living Room

Hello everyone and welcome to a little tour of our house over here in Germany! Our family moved into this house in February 2012, shortly before giving birth to Lily. It is a huge house, bigger than we need, but the only house we could find that winter that was close to our work and would take two dogs! Since we rent the place, we haven't put near as much effort into making it exactly how I want it, but we know we are here only temporarily. However, we have tried hard to make it feel like home.  I'm finally going to start photographing each part of the house. Room by room. I'll start with the living room, and we'll see where we go from there. So come on in!

  

 When we first moved in, the walls were painted a really crazy green. Like play-doh green. Tropical Thai restaurant green, (see the picture below to see what I mean). We decided we couldn't live with the color, especially in the main part of the house, so we actually paid some painters to paint the dining room and living room, and our room before we moved in. We paid an arm and a leg for the job, but, since I was due any day with Lily, I was happy I didn't have to do the work. When shopping for paint colors, we literally were really limited. They only have one white at our local OBI (like a Home Depot), and maybe two or three choices of other colors, and only one brand of paint! I went with a creamy tannish white that works for us. Helped brighten up the room.

Before

 This is the room that we spend most of our time. Our family plays games on the jute rug (I wish I had 5 of these rugs), watches movies in here, and all our dance parties after dinner are in this room. We even use that window/door as our main door to the house in the warm months. It goes straight to our fenced in back yard/patio.

 The chest in this photo is a family heirloom, and my favorite piece of furniture in the house. Honestly. Passed down from my mom's parents to her, and now to me. And I have damaged it terribly which I just get sick thinking about, and need to get it fixed. You can see the right hinge is missing and some wood along with the hinge was torn off... I used to store games in the chest, and toys, but that was what lead to the damage so I keep it empty now.

 This is the photo we have above our couch. I need something bigger, but still haven't changed anything since we threw up our photos the first month when we moved in. This is one of my all time favorite photos. Frank took it when we were in the Louvre, out a window! The quality is perfect in the real photo, but my picture of the picture is a bit fuzzy. Check out those clouds! It threatened to rain on us all day, but never did.

When we first checked out this house, I was so excited about all the fireplaces! I love fireplaces. But, turns out, this one is completely fake. A facade that my son likes to climb up into to hide. So disappointing.  But, it is fun to decorate during the holidays. Right now it is a bit sparse because Cooper likes to climb up on the shelf and jump to the chaise, so I have removed all breakables...

 And there you have it! A glimpse into our home over here in Germany. More tours to come!