Living Room Makeover

I hate complaining about our apartment-we live in a great community. The outdoor amenities are nothing short of breathtaking (especially in a city like Sao Paulo), but the apartments, and the buildings that house them, leave much to be desired. The rumor is that the architect was a bit of a communist and he wanted all the buildings to be "equal". All 8 of our buildings are plain cement towers and none of the buildings have balconies. The communist architect put all of his efforts into the grounds surrounding the buildings so that people would come down and "commune" (or sunbathe and drink caipirinhas for hours on end) with each other. He certainly accomplished that objective! But the apartments...some are better than others. In reality we got very lucky-our apartment has been renovated in the last 15 years. Although the decor is not my taste, per se, it is fairly neutral and we've managed to make it work. The biggest problem-the white! When we arrived last August it was so very white. The floors. The walls. The ceiling. Everything!
Remember?

The we painted around Christmas time and the apartment began to take on some personality:

Finally, at the end of last year, we managed to collect quite a few things from people that were leaving. Most of July was spent unpacking, arranging, and rearranging everything to make it feel like home...we're almost there!
Here are a few recent pictures of the living room/dining room. We're still looking for a large piece of art for the far wall, but things are coming along. The rest of the apartment is looking much better too, but this room has had the biggest change by far!



If Noah and Sophie don't stop waking each other up "to play" at 5:30 a.m. my next project is going to be to transform our playroom into an additional bedroom. They're making me crazy (and each other grumpy!).