Living room progress...sort of - suggestions welcome!

I have been a bad bad bad blogger. I've gone from daily posts to once or twice a week! I need to get back in the groove. It's not that i'm lacking in things to write about...i'm just lacking in motivation. 

Part of it is work related. I'm beat when I get home. I mentioned the "work crap" last week and now that it's been formally announced I can fill in the details here. Once upon a time there were a whole bunch of people in my department! 10 actually. Several months ago we had to transition one of our staff members to another department because our regional management team said we had the largest team in the region and it was unnecessary. Not that they ever actually came to see if we all had plenty of work to do...you know how that goes. So our department of 10 sort of got divided into a department of 6 and a department of 4 prior to this transition. So I'm in the group of 4 and the 3 of us remaining split up #4's work. We were busy before...now we're really busy. The last week #3 tells us that they accepted a position with the regional folks. Mini-department of 4 is now department of 2...and we've been told that we will not be filling the position. So now the 2 of us are doing work that kept 4 of us busy. Everyone says "look for another job" - sure, that's easy enough to do, but i've been here for 8 years and because of that I have 5 weeks of paid vacation and 80 hours of additional PTO a year. That's part of the reason Mr. P and I decided to buy a vacation home. Have you checked out corporate benefits these days? If you're lucky you get a week of vacation your first year. If you're really lucky you might get 2 weeks.  How long do you have to work there to get to 3, 4 or 5 weeks off? If they even go that high? Mr. P's company - 5 years is when he'll get his 3rd week. He gets about 5 weeks off a year right now between his 2 weeks of vacation and comp time for working overtime, but overtime isn't always a sure thing so maybe he won't have that much time off this year - who knows. So it's not at all advantageous for me to look for a new job - outside of another position in the company. So there's my excuse - i'm on the computer at work all day and when I get home I check my personal email and take a peek at Facebook and then I crash.  Now that i'll be adding more work to my day, i'm going to schedule all my breaks that I never take. You can bet I will take them now...and my full 1 hour for lunch. I can only do so much...

Back to the living room - which hasn't gotten much better since last Sunday...(see above...LOL)

2nd coat of paint and the trim is done (still need to paint the door, but someone didn't listen when I said "a quart of trim paint is not going to cut it...")

New rug! It'll look better on top of bamboo floors at some point...

These are the sheers I picked up - I liked the lattice design - they're too short though. My mom and I are going to go look at fabric this week. She might end up whipping up some panels for me. I've not had luck finding what I want at the stores. Plus I need a weird length. 89"  easier and probably cheaper to just make them.

This is my old mirror from my master bathroom - it's much smaller than the one that used to be inside the front door. I'm thinking about hanging this one instead. I might have to do take some paint to it though. The metal is kind of a dark antique brass color with a gold "sponge paint" over it. Bought it that way - I take no credit for it. It was fine in 1997...it might do well with an update.  NOTE: when taking photos for you blog, clean up the junk you can see reflected in the mirror....and while your at it, grab the vinegar and microfiber cloth and clean said mirror that's been tucked behind the entertainment center for 3 years collecting dust...yes...yes those are snow boots...in my Florida living room. They've been there since I came back from the snow at the Cabin...in February.

I purchased these 3 panels for $25. They will go up over the sofa on that big blank wall. Someone kindly pointed out that what I had there previously was far too small...I liked it. Whatever - it doesn't "go" anymore so I bought these. They don't photograph well. The first one is not at all pink. The last one is actually turquoise / aqua on the bottom. As i've said before, i'm a "fall girl" but I also have two really cute canvas pieces that have some aqua in them that i'd like to use in this room, so I looked at lots of stores before I found this set that had my fall colors plus the random easy breezy aqua. Do you think I need something else with them? How far apart should I hang them?

Behold my HUGE vintage ugly yellow chest of drawers (or "chester drawers" as folks like to call them on Craig's List) This piece was great back in the day - it was in my bedroom and it went well with my tropical Mediterranean bedding. The bedding is still here - but hidden inside the lovely copper duvet that's on our bed these days. I gave up the matching night stand, but I couldn't let go of this giant chest. So much storage in a house that has none built in. You can't really see it in this photo, but the drawers and edges are trimmed with bamboo...yeah baby! It's always been sitting there, it just had a 3 panel screen hiding it from view. Don't worry - it's getting painted. It'll be fab, just you wait and see.  Espresso brown is in it's future...maybe with a little gold wax to highlight the grooves in the bamboo.  I now have a place for my gorgeous orange glass lamp that I picked up for like $9 on mega clearance at Beall's eons (years) ago. As you can see, it needs a shade. I think I want an off white rectangular shade for it. 

Love it or hate it? Picture it dark brown! What's that in the woven chair?

Another goody I picked up. I love carved wood stuff. This one is kind of a fluer de lis pattern. I also happen to have a large metal fluer de lis here somewhere...anywho, i'm not sure where to hang this yet.

Anyone want to offer suggestions?  Note that the sofa is going to be reupholstered (probably drop cloth) and as much as I'd like for the bookcase to go away, I need it for storage. It will go away when the wall gets moved, but until then it stays. The light wood cabinet by the door is also going away. I'm thinking I might put a floating shelf there and move the wood trunk  (you can see part of it under the side window) under that.  I'm also not opposed to painting any of the other stuff - the bookcase is probably not "real wood" so I don't know how well it would take paint. The ceiling fan is going to get traded with one in another room since it has reverse painted glass shades with palm trees and blue skies on them...which I love, but they don't go ;-) My office will end up being the "odd" room as far as my colors go...