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Last I talked about the house, we had painted all the walls and stained the floors white, but there were no furnishings as of yet. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to get the house decorated so we can start having guests over this summer, but like most things, if you want them done right, it takes a little bit of time.

The one area of the house that is now complete is the dining room.

We spent so much time sitting at our new kitchen table last weekend that I wonder whether it’s because we have no other furniture, or if it’s because that’s where families generally congregate.

Time and couches will tell.

We are keeping the house fairly minimal. One, because it feels really nice to have so much open white space and two, minimal is a great decorating aesthetic if you are trying to keep costs down.

My good friend Lisa who is the designer behind Play Chic Interiors has been helping me make decisions and suggesting ideas that wouldn’t have occurred to me on my own. (I am so lucky to have so many creative friends.)

To start, I put a mood board together on Pinterest of all the dining rooms that appeal to me.

Someone once told me that when it comes to decorating, you should pull everything you like and then compare the photos to find similar themes.

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My photos suggest I like modern farm house tables with contrasting chairs. (Although, I have the Eames chairs in my apartment so I wanted to do something different.) There are a lot of wicker elements in my pics which I would never have considered if I hadn’t seen the common theme. In addition to the overall white feeling of many of the rooms I pulled, I also had a lot of accents in primary colors. Again, I wouldn’t have thought my summer house palette would be primary colors (I’m more jewel toned in my city space), but the photos don’t lie.

After discussing with Lisa and getting Mike’s buy-in, I decided to get the following items for the dining room:

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The table is the Boreum dining table from West Elm, the chairs are Willa side chairs from Crate and Barrel and the lighting fixtures are Laika Pendant Lamps from BluDot.

I was picking more modern chairs originally but Mike kept veteoing them for being “too weird”. We compromised with the Willa chairs because they are traditional chairs in a fun color.

The funky looking blue thing on the top right is something Lisa found on Pinterest and convinced me to do to the back wall. I hired a painter to do it correctly but I honestly wasn’t sure if I was going to hate it until I saw the finished room.

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I am in love with it. It’s bright, cheerful, and a little offbeat. And the wicker really makes the room feel like summer. You’ll also notice, we covered the lattice wine rack thing on the end of the kitchen counter (which I hated) and painted it chalkboard black.

So far, I haven’t told the kids it’s a chalkboard. I might never.

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The blue wall is like something you would see in someone else’s house and really like, but think you would never do it in your own home. Well, I did it and now I can’t stop staring at it.

In a good way.

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It adds something visually interesting to the room without breaking the bank. Plus, the wall looks really good in photos. Which is what’s most important. To me, anyway.

Here is our dining room in action…

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Yes, Harlow likes to stand while she eats.

Here’s a step back so you can get a little taste of the living room…

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For now, we have a rug and new window treatments. There’s also a fireplace which has made Mazzy newly obsessed with Cinderella.

She keeps lying down at the foot of it and saying, “They make me sleep here and it’s SO HARD.”

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I guess we need to buy the princess a couch.