Sweet Disarray

e are in full-swing moving mode here - our living room is piled high with brown boxes of every imaginable size, I've resorted to scrounging for meals (no meal plans of late, ahem) and last night I got a headache from the double whammy of cleaning supplies and paint. Fun!

But now that we've officially signed a lease on a cute, but very tiny house in Suburbia (the moving truck is coming on Friday!), I have given myself permission to move in our furniture in my head. The new place is 3 bedrooms and only 1100 square feet, but it's bright and well-kept and has a yard. In short, is it enough and then some. But since our place now is nearly 1400 square feet (one less bedroom and a much, much larger living/dining space), I have to figure out which pieces of furniture need to be donated/given away to friends and how to arrange the rest.

What I really want, however, is a way to make our living room look something like this:

Jan's Perfect Living Room via Apartment Therapy Los Angeles

I pretty much love every single thing about this room. Unforunately, none of our current furniture looks anything remotely like what's in this room. And that yellow couch from IKEA? Not even sold in the US. (Boo!) We have a heavy brown leather couch and matching armchair, a few antique Korean chests and way too many black Expedit shelves of different sizes. So far from the colorful, midcentury loveliness above.

So what to do?

My redecorating budget is approximately $0 (moving is expensive yo!) so I'm not about to go out and buy a new living room, but I think there are a few things I can do to add some much needed color and lightness to the dark, heavy pieces I own right now.

First off, it's relatively cheap and very easy to make your own accent pillows. Pulling from my inspiration room, I could do pillows out of bright yellow and hot pink fabric.

Kajsastina at IKEA

How awesome is this pattern? Annamoa at IKEA

Pink Bacatelle Tossed Flower at Reprot Depot

Ella Grey at Sew, Mama, Sew!

And I still have these pillows I bought at IKEA a few years ago:

I'm hoping to find a big light-colored rug on craigslist, but if not I'll probably go with this one:

Flokati at IKEA

And that lovely little tulip chair in the corner of Jan's room? Well, I'd like to be able to buy the real stuff, but as I can't (and won't ever be able to, likely), Overstock happens to have excellent knock-offs retro-inspired versions:

Retro Design Contemporary Accent Chair at Overstock

Retro Classic White Accent Chairs at Overstock

Still to come: lighting, coffee table and artwork! Oh my!