Furniture week: It’s all in the details

Our house is so plain! Aside from the sort-of-matched-together furniture and a lot of kid stuff, we don’t have much in the way of decore. We have some photos on the wall, but we don’t like clutter and I don’t like to dust. However, I saw a few knickknacks at the Hillside Furniture Home Expo that I think would work well in my home, as well as yours.

First of all, check out this faux-fireplace. It’s electric, doesn’t require any wood and it actually gets warm. We don’t have a fireplace and would never have room for a fake floor model, but this one hangs on the wall. We could do that!

It was brisk in our house the other day and our three-year-old told us we should turn the fire on. She wanted us to get a fireplace and have a fire.

Sigh. If only it was that simple.

However, we could remove it in the summer and just make it a seasonal piece in our house. And imagine how cute our stockings would look hung above this, waiting for Santa, rather than thrown over a arm on our couch. (Though mine would look equally awesome draped over the arm of the purple Stressless chair! Just sayin’.) Incase you are worried about how big it might be on your wall, they carry it in varying sizes.

I’m always worried about having to patch drywall and repaint when we hang things on the walls. I see paint as final. I see it as the room being all dressed up and ready to go. Maybe I could see it, instead, as the base code for all that will go on it. I guess I could get over that to have something as neat as this fireplace in my living room. Maybe I could cover the spot during the summer months with one of the optical illusion pictures that they have out at Hillside Furniture.

These mirror slash light slash optical illusion are pretty cool. Like the faux fireplace, it hangs on the wall. They come in varying sizes and can go pretty much anywhere in your house. They light up so they can create a nice ambiance in the bedroom, an interesting piece in an office or home theatre area.

One of the areas I really lack at is rugs. We have a few in our bathrooms, one by our front door and one by our doorwall, but other than that we don’t have many. I saw some really neat concepts at Hillside that put rugs under dining room tables and in rooms to provide a splash of color, even if the room already has carpet.

Having one under the dining room table scares me, but our eating area is located in a room with Pergo with a doorwall. That floor gets really cold. Maybe having a rug would help to keep it just a little warmer, especially on the tiny toes in my house.

I’m afraid of rugs. First of all, they are expensive. And with other things we have to pay for, rugs are generally just a way to keep our dogs’ wet paws off the carpet rather than a decorative piece. Second. I never know what size I need. Is it too big? Is it too small? Does it look ridiculous in the room?

I’m no designer, as you can clearly see, but by checking out the displays and the rugs at Hillside Furniture, I can easily see how rugs can bring color, help a room look bigger, provide an added sense of comfort and just complete the look and style of the room.

I just worry about keeping it clean. Food is going to fall. My dogs are going to lay on it. Sweeping the foor seems like no big deal. I also steam mop it once or twice a week to make sure it’s clean. I can’t really steam clean a rug weekly. And think of the liquids and foods that could get caught between the rug and my kitchen floor. It’s a bit unnerving!

Rugs can be really plain, like a solid color, or they can have some dimension  depending on what you need in your room. They also had a really cool one that felt really soft and appeared to be made out of bowties!

There was some stuff at the store that I know my very conservative husband and I could not pull off in our house (i.e. the bow tie rug) but I certainly know lots of girls with glitter in their veins who could incorporate some of the more unique stuff into just about any room in their house.

For example, there was a rhinestone encrusted end table. My brother’s wife, for example, could take this and make it look like it has always and will always be part of her room. While I think it’s beautiful and fun, something tells me it won’t look so awesome with the rest of our furniture.

And the gems didn’t end with tables. I saw them on headboards, dressers and mirrors. It was so fancy and rich that there was no way I would feel comfortable sleeping in a bedroom filled with that furniture in my ratty t-shirts and yoga pants! It makes the room fit for a queen! Or a little princess! Maybe my daughters will want that one day and I’ll be able to justify it. Until then, I’ll just look at it from a distance and wish I had the style to pull it off.

Hillside has so many unique accessories, art pieces and accents that you should really go check them out. I’m sure you’ll be able to enhance any room in your house without walking out of the store with a large piece of furniture.

Disclaimer: I was compensated by Hillside Furniture and SoGlamMedia for this post, but the thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.