New Rug in the Loft

If you've been following along lately (and if so, might I just take a moment to say Thank You for that?) we've done a little work to the Loft.  First we replaced the carpet with hardwood floors in a manic 5 hour wirlwind to end our holiday weekend:

And then added a fun, white, antler chandy for mood lighting and character:

The next step was our hunt for an area rug for this space.  We had a couple of prerequisites: A.) It must be cozy to fit the chillaxin', book-reading vibe we have going on up here, and B.) It must be cheap affordable. We also thought it would be a good idea to bring a little more white into the space to balance our new, shiny light fixture.  We landed on this $80 shaggy white rug from Ikea:

We found the sheep skin a little too much layered with this high pile rug, but that's a happy accident because we actually needed another sheep skin for Baby Boomer's room, which I swear we're going to get started on soon.

In in a short amount of time our Loft went from this:

To this:

I can't believe how much the lighting makes a difference.  The over head light is on in both photos, but as you can see the chandy does a much better job lighting the space than the 6 bulb track light ever did.  There's still tweaks we'd like to make to this room down the road, but for now it does the trick, and it's the perfect little space to curl up with a book and a glass of wine after the kiddo goes to bed. (Or glass of lemonade currently, but a girl can dream.)  

The next big project up is that nasty staircase which has been plaguing us since move in day.  We have most of the wood, and we're ready to get started.  Well... if I'm honest, we're running out of steam, but the impending arrival of our second little monster is providing a deadline that we can't mess around with, so hopefully you'll see progress shortly!