The dining room's first attempt

One of the top things that we looked for in both of our houses was a separate dining room.  We really enjoyed entertaining in our old house, particularly before we had kids.  Once they arrived it slowed us down for a bit, but we are aiming to get back into it.  In fact one of my personal resolutions for this year was to have company over at least once a month.  So far we have succeeded but not quite in the way I anticipated.  In January we had people over for my husband's birthday, in February we had a bunch of 2 and 3 year old's over for my daughter's birthday, and luckily for us, Easter falls in March this year and we are celebrating at our house.

Dining room from listing photos

The former owners of our house used the dining room as a music room, with a piano and place to play the guitar.  Because they had nothing in the middle of the room they installed a cheap flush mount as the lighting source.  They had their dining room furniture set up in the eat-in area of the kitchen, but I knew I wanted to utilize the dining room as the dining room and the large, eat-in portion of the kitchen as a hang out space for the kids.  

Kitchen from listing photos

Our kitchen in progress

This house really threw me for a loop in the beginning because our last house was so clearly an architectural style and this one so clearly wasn't.  It's just a nice, brick ranch, which is perfect for this point in our lives, but gave me some design challenges when I was first planning it.

Anyway, I took my inspiration from a bar designed by Phoebe Howard in Southern Living and painted the room turquoise.  I then put up some floral drapes which had a background that perfectly matched the walls.  I had wanted to install World Market's brass lotus pendant but after seeing it in person decided it was too small.  My husband built me a basic wood shelf to store my magazines and linens but we couldn't decide what to skirt it in so it stayed looking like some 2 x 4's nailed together for probably a year.

Phoebe Howard's bar from Southern Living

We hosted Christmas at our house this year and I realized I wanted the dining room to look finished so I found a fabric remnant at Hancock's that had a turquoise color in it and replaced the floral drapes with some basic Ikea Ritva's and hung an inexpensive paper lantern.  We will probably change the room up at some point but for now it works.