Living Room Transformation

I was getting a little sick of our living room decor.  The space hadn't been fully put together since we moved in (over a year ago) and it just looked really unorganized.  Plus, Adam despised the rug.  I wanted to update everything but on a small budget.  With the help of my amazing sister-in-law I made it happen!  I am so happy with how it turned out.  There are still some empty wall and shelf space but I will work on that in time.  So, he are the before pictures:

I knew I wanted a new rug as this one was so old and always wiggled it's way under the couch.  I also thought we needed some curtains and something tall in the back right corner to balance the room.

I was also not happy with the DVD stand as well as the TV stand.  The TV stand has black glass shelves that attract dog hair and dust like nobodies business!  The stand to the right of the TV also looked totally out of place.
 
Here it what it looks like today:

I love it!  We bought the book shelf at Target for about $160 (a little more than I wanted to spend - but it is good quality) and the rug we got from Walmart (I think it is perfect with the spiral statue).  We decided to keep the TV stand mainly because we couldn't find one we liked for a reasonable price.

Here is a close-up of the curtains - giraffe print! Thanks Lindsay for inspiring me!  I found the fabric at JoAnn's and made these panels without using a sewing machine!  They were super fast and easy!  The toughest part was hanging the darn curtain rod - I couldn't hang them as high as a I wanted becuase every time Adam tried to drill into the wall he kept hitting some sort of metal plate.  So frustarting - for both of us!

As for the DVDs, we went through the entire rack of them and decided which ones we never thought we would watch again.  I typed up a 'for sale' list and posted it on the intranet at work, selling them for $5 each.  What a success - we have sold over 30 of them and people keep showing interest.  This allowed us to get rid of the huge DVD stand and make a little money!  I found these wicker baskets at Target that were the perfect size for the TV stand - they hold the DVDs nicely and may even cut back on the dust collection!