Additions to the Living Room

We used Christmas money from parents and grandparents to purchase some additions for our living room.
First, we bought a shoe cabinet from IKEA.  I had my eye on this piece of furniture for the past several months.  I love how narrow it is (about the width of the bottom step), and that it doesn't really look like a place to store shoes.  Our entry closet is quite small and inadequate for shoe storage, so we were lining up our shoes along the wall by the front door.  It just looked so cluttered and disorganized, and I longed for a better solution.

Before

Here's a picture of the shoe cabinet, closed and unclosed.  We use the top drawer to store gloves and hats in winter, and it will probably hold things like suntan lotion and sun hats in the summer.  I love it!

After

The second thing we bought was canvas prints of photographs I took of flowers in our yard (I posted a blog about this project back in July).  I'm really happy with how they turned out.  It was fun to take the pictures myself, and to know that these are flowers from our own yard.  It puts a fun personal touch on our front room, a guest's first impression of our home.

Now, I'm not completely done with the things I want to do in the living room.  At some point I'm planning on taking down the wallpaper border and repainting the room a solid green to match the other wall (that you can see behind the shoe cabinet).  At some point I want a new couch (the West Point blanket is laying on it to cover up the rips in the vinyl).  And I also want a different picture of the Savior, preferably one that's horizontal and looks good in a black frame (I picked up that picture at DI for $5 - I like it, I'd just rather hang it somewhere else in the house).
Even though I still have more projects and ideas for the future, I really do love our front room the way it is now.  I feel like our new shoe cabinet and art work lend both functionality and beauty, and I'm really pleased with how it's all coming together.