Free-for-all Friday: Decorating a Dining Room

This dining room is a hard room to really bring together and establish in our homes as a functional space. Here are a couple of ideas that I have come up with and I am in the process of executing. I have found that now our dining room is decorated, we use it so much more!

First, pick a fun color. I am on my second I have to admit. I went from a traditional gold to a deep purple. I have included in my decorating a couple of antiques that I have gotten from my grandmother. If you do not have any, you can have a blast at the Flea Market looking for plates and vases to display.

Second, you need to decide on how to decorate the walls. I always wanted to hang our wedding pictures in there but never found a clever, trendy way to do it until now. We are coming up on our 10 year anniversary so I finally took two wedding pictures and had them blow up from 4x6 to 5x7 and had them changed to Sepia coloring. I got a side by side frame and then I am going to write a poem on the back and give as a present. :)

The next idea I have is to get a china plate from both my mom and my mother in law's patterns and hang them with plate hangers both along with a piece from my set. Plates are a great way to decorate in this room because you could also get some trendy ones to bring in some color and you can always change them out!

Hope you have fun and I would love to see and hear some of your ideas on how to conquer this old school room in a fun way~

In this picture you can see my new color and also how I found a mantel at Pottery Barn for $50 and used it as a shelf on this wall.