Good morning bear cubs! I am happy to report we FINALLY listed our sweet little house for sale on Monday. Whew. It’s been a whole lotta painting up in here and I’m happy that it’s finally out there. I can relax and focus on making sure I catch up with my scattered collection of my Mpls band of friends before I pack my little bear family up in the our little bear sedan and head south.

And I’m truly embarrassed to report that I’ve had a lovely almost-finished dress nearly done since mid-January before all this moving nonsense began. I’m eagerly looking forward to hopping back into the thick of things and getting the darn thing FINISHED. Of course, since our house is officially on the market, I will have to be the most neat and clean sewist on the planet.

Until then, I thought I’d post a few before and after pictures of the little changes we made in our living room to get ready for the sale….

The basset hound is NOT part of the house offering! Not much was wrong in here. The sofa pillows and blankets were a bit warm and folksy, while the bright white slip covers showed every single smudge from the basset hound and her weepy eyeballs! Our pictures were cool, but they are of the hound…

I made new pillows in neutral colors, swapped out the hound art from the funky instrument prints from an antique shop, decluttered the tables a bit and stored away the quilts in favor of a fisherman-style cable knit afghan… Lucy obligingly switched sofas, and it’s very hard to see, but we upgraded our Ikea slipcovers from the basic (inexpensive) bright white twill to a light beige linen-look slipcover that hides the lucy-goo quite nicely!

Here’s another view – the window seat cushions were a natural black and white toile that I swapped out for a more modern, appealing print.

You can barely see the windowseat cushions in this photo – there are better ones below. You can also see the other blanket that we added to the room – it’s one of those fake fur ones that seem to be super-duper popular right now. It’s dark brown and surprisingly dog-fur friendly! I thought Lucy’s fur would render it disgusting within minutes, but her fur seems to float right off…

Another view – you can barely see it, but Mr. Bug and I received a super-awesome caricature of us as a wedding gift. One of his college friends is an artist of this type. Lucy’s even in it! I love it, but knew it was a little too goofy for the walls during open houses.

Here’s the updated view. A little pillow in the corner (anyone recognize the fabric? I have a skirt made from the same stuff!) We swapped out the caricature for a silly Lucy photo and added a hound ball to the sofa in the foreground…

The before is a bit blah….

After looks cheery and cozy. It’s amazing what all that lighting does, isn’t it?

Close ups of the sofa with the old cushions and artwork…

You can see the silly Lucy artwork and the old blankets and pillows!

Here’s the new view. Very symmetrical, isn’t it?

So I HAVE done a bit of sewing getting the living room ready…. the biggest project was new box cushions for the window seat. I reused the 3″ upholstery foam from the original cushions, used my cutting mat to determine the correct size of covers and sewed together with a simple lapped zipper.

Here’s a closeup. I was really happy to find this fabric – it hides Lucy-goo (she spends an inordinate amount of time sleeping on this bench!) and it has a pretty wide appeal. It’s not my personal favorite (I loved the toile!) but it looks nice with the wall paint, the new cushions and the dark brown shelving. The pillow are a mix of purchased and made-by-me – the three pillow below are from right to left a purchased Ikea pillow, a pillow I found at Hancock for $4.00 and a pillow that I sewed. It was REALLY hard to find patterns that all worked together in this spot!

Here’s a few more handmade pillows – the beige and the yellow.

The BIGGEST change in the room is the least easy to photograph!! It’s all that white trim. Grrrrr… it needed so much repainting!!

Alright ponies, what’s been up in your neck of the woods? Other than working on the house, I’ve just been working at, you know, WORK and obsessing over our new house in Texas, which is yet to be located. I’m heading back down on the 20th of March to do more house hunting. Mr. Bug will join me a few days later and by the end of March we are going to have a contract for a new house or someone is getting a fork in the eye. I’m just sayin’….