decor: couch update

There have been two recent additions to my couch that have made a big difference.

First, I saw this beautiful old quilt in the guest room at my parents' house over Christmas. The colors coordinate really well with my orange-and-blue living room. My mom was hesitant to hand it over at first ... but ... I can be very charming.

The quilt is now living on the back of my couch. I bought my couch when I moved to D.C. five (!) years ago, and over time, the cushions have become a bit saggy. Maybe I could just add some more stuffing, but for now, the quilt is doing a good job at making the couch look neater.

Second, I now have a boatload of pillows on my couch.

I used to think I didn't want a lot of pillows on the couch for practical reasons. Tony and I share the couch when we watch TV or movies, and I thought it would get too crowded with two humans and a half dozen pillows on a small couch. So all I had on the couch were two matching floral throw pillows. Here's a photo of Jamie playing his guitar my couch before Christmas to give you an idea of what my couch used to look like. In hindsight, it looks pretty plain.

But Jen bought me this pretty ampersand pillow for Christmas, which prompted me to experiment with adding more pillows.

I brought out from storage some more pillows (which were DIY projects with fabric and stuffing from Jo-Ann Fabrics) in a mix of colors and patterns.

It looks like some place you want to curl up and read a book/take a map/watch a DVD.

But, let's be honest, that's only what my couch looks like when I know guests are coming over or when I'm going to take a picture for, say, a blog post. Most of the time the pillows end up tossed on the back of the couch to make more room, which actually makes it very cozy. The too-many-pillows problem that I was worried about hasn't turned out to be a problem at all.