Home Tour: Our Living Room (Halloween Edition)

I'm sitting here on a Sunday afternoon sipping a bourbon-spiked hot cider while both of the munchkins are napping AT THE SAME TIME upstairs. Has life turned a super duper corner of amazingness? Le sigh! I hope so because a lady who wears her houseslippers as shoes to CostCo (shut up they look like Uggs and I wear them to work sometimes too, shhhhh) <-- that classy lady could really get used to this.

Our soup party slash housewarming yesterday was so fun. I made three great soups and they were all hugely popular. Here are links to the recipes I used, in order of their popularity...

Rainy Day Lentil Soup (the balsamic splash is the secret to taking this from great to afreakingmaaaaazing)
Tarragon Chicken w/ Wild Rice and Mushrooms (this was my fave, for the record)
Classic Broccoli Cheddar (a fantastic recipe using real cheese that's super easy. the only change I made was using vegetable broth instead of chicken stock so my veggie friends could enjoy and it still tasted amazing)

Like a pud, I totally failed to take pictures at the party. But this morning we woke up super bright and early to tidy up and put up our Halloween decorations. I've been wanting to share some pictures of our new house here so badly, but up until yesterday it really wasn't in any shape to be throwing pictures up. Now though the only thing we still need to do is put the family photographs up on the walls. Family pics are my favorite, favorite way to decorate every wall so right now it feels a little in need of some smiling familiar faces, but otherwise we are settling in nicely. Here is a little tour of our living room...

We were lucky enough to find our green chair and vintage sofa on the same day at a little independent thrift store here in town on 50% off day. We snapped them both up for $100 total and they suit us just great. One day I'd really love this sofa or one like it, someday, but for $50 for now I am happy with our current sofa.

With all of the crazy in my life lately, I'm just really loving all of the white in our house. I love how open, bright, and uncluttered it is in this new home! Even though I do want to hang up some photographs, beyond that I really don't have any plans to fill the space further. It is calm, bright, and pretty. In fact, every day I find things that we just don't need and we've been donating like crazy ever since we moved in. And I can't emphasize enough just how lucky we are to have finally gotten into the student housing program at UO! It will be a sad day when Rob graduates and we have to downgrade to a worse place that is more expensive - honestly I may stage a sit in because I really never want to move again. I think next time we will pack a suitcase or two with the things we can't live without (computers, photo albums) and then open up the entire house estate-sale style just to avoid moving things from here to there. We did that once when we moved from New York City to Tucson and loved moving that way. But I go on...

All of our Halloween decorations are either homemade or purchased at 80% off clearance during previous years. After every holiday I like to visit Target and scrounge around for really inexpensive decorations. My mom always went to town decorating for the holidays and I just loved it as a kid, so even though I'm not much of a decorations person myself, I'm making a point of doing the holidays for Ot and Et so they have that experience growing up like I did.

I hope you all are having great autumn weekends! I love seeing everyone's farm and pumpkin patch pictures! We are hoping to get out to a farm next weekend and I'm already looking forward to it.

Ok, Imma go make out with this spiked cider a little more before the munchkins wake up. xo