Something Gold, Something New

I've been planning for ages to replace the rug that was in our living room. It was just too small and too worn down. It had come with us from the Husband's last two bachelor pads, so it had definitely seen better days.

So...notice anything?

When she was here, my mom very generously offered to pick us up anything we needed for the house. That was the perfect opportunity for the old rug to go! We went over to Next and picked up the beauty in the picture above. It's the Shah Gold rug, in a medium.

via, Next

I love that the pattern is a traditional Persian rug-style pattern, but that it comes across very muted. Plus, the browns and blues work fantastically in our living room. I'm excited to get to layer some bolder colours on top of it eventually.

Oh yeah, and then there was the matter of our white HAGALUND couch from IKEA. Seriously: don't ask me what we were thinking when we picked up a white couch at the store when I was already about 5 months pregnant. How we expected a white couch to survive intact with a baby is beyond me.

To be fair, the white slipcover for our Hagalund has weathered pretty well. And then during my mom's visit, disaster struck. In quick succession, Ethan managed to wipe a face full of spaghetti sauce on the arm of the couch, and then stealthily peed all through the cushion. Seriously: we had no idea he was even peeing! He was just sat there watching Sarah & Duck as we got him ready for his bath, and then later as I pulled out the mattress to set up the bed: there was a foot-wide puddle rapidly soaking into my couch cushions.

Luckily, the slipcover is washable, so we treated the stains and put everything through the wash. But my mom - quite sagely - pointed out that a darker colour might hide the stains better so that we wouldn't have to take the cover off to wash it so often. I admit, though I picked out the tan cover, I wasn't sold on it at first and I worried it would look odd since we were so used to our (mostly) white couch.

Personally, I think it looks great. The Husband loves it and pointed out that the tan slipcover actually gives the couch much better definition against our white walls: so it doesn't just blend in and get lost so much. Now if only I could get this gorgeous paper up on the walls...

Petal Pusher by Joy D. Cho, via Hygge & West