A hand-me-down decor

I love the feeling on this blog lately. I post some fabrics that need a purpose and you actually leave me comments! I chortle. Comments make me happy. Helpful comments make me happier. Yay, you!
So suggestions included pillows, book covers, wall art on stretcher bars, and a quilted lunch bag.

I should probably have warned you all: my house wouldn't mesh well with New York fabric, too...country? traditional? mixed up? I'm not sure.

I moved out into an apartment about 3 months after I graduated from college with my best friend. I had no money (this will be a theme in my life) and she had less than I did. We brought our own bedroom furniture. I left the coordinating white plastic butterflies for the wall with my mom. I got a sleeper love seat that weighed approximately 800 pounds from an aunt. It was covered in velvety stripes of greens, ranging from olive to chartreuse. And one night we made a scary drive into the backwoods to check on a dining table listed in the paper. We bought it, probably paying too much, and it, along with the 4 chairs, barely fit in the back of my Dodge Daytona. Thank goodness for hatchbacks.

My  mother was crafty, thrifty, helpful, and such a blessing. She helped me cover up the green stripes with a "quilt" from WalMart and recover the chairs. Those chairs were trick chairs. You might be sitting in one, talking on the phone, and then suddenly you'd be sitting in the floor, having fallen right through the legs. My mom was so cool. She also helped me clean up spilled green paint out of the floorboard of my car. Her vacuum cleaner was never the same. That was my first move.

Eventually, we replaced the love seat with a garage sale couch. With this furniture, I moved from the first apartment to the next apartment to the rent house. In my first house, I got rid of the trick chairs and dining table and just went with wide open space.

Most of the decor in my house was purchased then, roughly 11 years ago. And that's okay. I still like it. Eventually I did buy a new couch, love seat, chair, and fabbity fabulous pillow top mattress. When I moved to my new house, that came with me. Someone gave me a dining table and chairs. I bought/made new curtains and a new comforter. I put my old stuff in its new place.

And then my mother died and I got furniture. Lots. Some of it, like her china cabinet which stood in her kitchen before I was born, I would move to keep if I had to. I have a few other things like that: her sewing machine and my grandmother's sewing machine, both in cabinets, her cedar chest and my grandmother's cedar chest. I did replace my childhood dresser and chest of drawers, held together by at least 10 different coats of paint and some decoupage, with a set from her house. Just because. There's a Smurf sticker stuck on the mirror. I probably put it there. Five years ago, I wasn't ready to just give that away.

So what I'm saying here is there is no single style for this house, but none of them work with New York fabric. I sorta wish I had a fun studio that would, though. Somebody sign me up for Extreme Makeover, okay?

That living room furniture? Until Jack, it was in good shape. This is the back cushion of the chair. Don't worry. He's still alive.

I still haven't decided what to do with the fabric but I have the urge to start cutting...