Adding color to a sea of beige

A few months ago, we rearranged the layouts in some of the rooms in our house to accommodate Roman's belongings. One room that changed significantly was the Living Room. The coffee table I'm very fond of and hope to have for a very long time is hibernating in our guest room for the next few years. We didn't want to subject her to the wear & tear a toddler could bring her. In her place, sits a train table. Although I might add it is one of the more attractive looking train tables on the market right now {honey wood-stain color and rolling drawers with chalkboard labels}, it does hold a fourth of the various bright blue and orange buildings in the Thomas the Train collection. Plus, the honey-color doesn't exactly match the dark walnut stain of the rest of the room. On any given day, it looks like a tornado went through the Island of Sodor and then a earthquake, hurricane and finally a tsunami all struck, too.

Not only did my beloved coffee table have to go, but my delicate beaded pillows did, too. They had been used to build one too many forts and had played the role of "stepping stones" and "base" way too often. They're now tucked away in a closet nearby so that I can whip them out when I'm expecting adult company. {I did take them out for the sake of the pictures.} Once the pillows were gone, the room looked kind of... BLAH. It lacked color and although we painted the walls gold a few years ago, the beige carpet, brown couches, walnut {and honey} furniture, cream-painted trim, made the room look very bland. So my mom is going to buy me more Thomas the Train toys. {ROMAN! Get off the computer and go back to bed!!!!} So I took my tension rod idea from Christmas and turned it into a concept for year-round decor {or at least the 11 months the Christmas tension rods won't be up.} I didn't want to cover up the windows with a curtain because we specifically put that number of windows in at that particular size so that we could gaze at the treed beauty behind us {which I think we have yet to do.}

I bought 4 tension rods at Walmart for the whopping price of $2.38 each. {Then I spray-painted them oil-rubbed bronze to match the hardware in the house and in hind-sight, I didn't have to do that, but it only cost about $5 for the can of spraypaint and I've already attacked other things in the house with it now that I have it!} If you know me well, you'll know that I'm a ribbon girl, so I had tons of ribbon I'd collected through the years, but I also scored tons of spools at the 50% off sale at Hobby Lobby. I'd say that in addition to the ribbon I already had, I bought about $30 more of ribbon. If you have half a brain you can do this project because it only involved tying knots and cutting the gnarly end of the ribbon strand with a little decorative diagonal edge.