Before the summer, our beloved sofas (which we had for more than 12 years and which had been passed down to us from friends who used them for over 20 years before us!) well, died. The covers were completely torn and the springs were so bad you basically ended up on the floor when you’d sit down. Tamar and I decided it was about time for a new sofa!

We ended up buying a huge petrol-blue corner sofa from Ikea. We had to hack the corner piece though — the corner of our living room is not on a 90 degree angle. So we sawed and sewed to make it fit perfectly.

To break up the big blue surface, I got some sheepskins for the corners and a bunch of fun pillows and throws. The entire exercise made for a whole new look of our living room!

It’s funny to see how much more time our kids spend on the couch now that we have this big corner piece. They love lounging there in the late afternoons, reading their books or comics or playing a game together. And, now that it’s too cold to spend our evenings outside, we watch a film (or an episode of ‘The Voice’) together on Friday evenings, all cozied up on the sofa together with nibbles and drinks and tons of blankets. So nice!

To introduce some colour and to give a place to some of our ‘treasures’ (mostly Pim’s!), we installed a few orange Vitra shelves above our sideboard. I love this pop of colour on the wall! And then I like using plants to add colour and freshness as well.

Most of the other decoration consist of art made by family of friends, or by the kids. And then there are the children’s toys, of course.

Another fairly new element in our living room is this big Danish shelving unit from the early ’60s. A lucky find on Ebay, as it fits the wall and our house so perfectly! It’s the perfect storage unit combined with bookcase combined with desk. Cool looking, but very functional too. (The designer of this unit is Olof Pira.)

I hope you enjoyed this little ‘tour’ of our living room : ).

xxx Esther