A Guest Ready Room

I've been lacking in posts showcasing projects and rooms that we have been tackling recently. I guess that would expected with all of the guest traffic we have going on. Well, I'm back today with a peek at how I fluffed up the guest room for those coming to stay. We didn't have a lot to spend, but wanted to make the room feel really comfortable, cozy and inviting for our family and friends.

Back in early June, we had our first house guest, and in a rather rushed attempt to prepare for her arrival, we got the room looking like this:

Not awful, but still incredibly bare, so we had our work cut out for us. The first thing we did, was add a little bit of artwork. We shopped our home for this and pulled out the headboard from our old bedroom in Toronto, along with a print that B gifted me a few Christmas' ago. The colours worked with the bedding from our old bedroom, along with the paint colour on our garage sale find headboard. 

I also figured, our guests could use somewhere to hang towels, purses, jackets, sweaters - whatever they pleased really. Thankfully, we had some hooks that hung in our house in Toronto when we had moved in. We had taken them down when we painted, and never got around to hanging them again - but we did decide to move them out west with us. So, up they went, just next to the door to the guest bedroom. The perfect place for our guests to hang whatever they may need.

I also wanted to make sure that our guests had everything they needed right at their finger tips when they arrived. I brought down one of our newly painted blue chairs and placed a basket of towels, face cloths and goodies on it for them. All the toiletries one could ever need are in that basket, along with a hair dryer.

For the nightstand, we decided we needed a lamp for our guests to flick on before they crawl into bed. Whether they would like to read, or just not have to worry about getting from the door to the bed in the dark, it was necessary. Since it was short notice, we actually moved one of our master bedroom lamps down there before my friend came to visit in June, and it remained there right up until B's parents left. But last week, after they were gone I was at IKEA and found a much smaller lamp in the As-Is section for only $10. Perfect solution for our small table, and it made room for us to add a clock, as well as a place to keep our guest book.

On the floor next to the night table, I placed a basket that I picked up at IKEA for $5.99. Inside of it, I placed all of the brochures we have collected for the surrounding areas, and other places we have visited. I figure this is a great resource when people are coming to stay from out of town. We don't really make a ton of concrete plans in advance, so this way our guests can take a look at the different places nearby, and maybe decide what they would really enjoy seeing. After all, I'm around all day to help them see the sights, and I'm happy to bring them wherever they would like to go...

I'd say, for mostly shopping our home (with the exception of the $15 I spent for the lamp and basket... not including some toiletries I picked up) that we did a good job setting up the space for guests...

There is still room for improvement to cozy it up a little. Maybe a nice chair, or a dresser, and definitely another nightstand. We'll get there eventually, but slow and steady is our best way to go. We enjoy finding the right pieces and not just throwing stuff in there because it was a great deal. I need to really love it. So I'm keeping my eyes out, and maybe by the next month we have a ton of visitors, I'll have some more updates to share.

So far the reviews from B's parents were great! They loved the room and found the bed incredibly comfy! Come back tomorrow to see how we whipped our "office/work out room" into a guest room in a pinch! Yup you read that right. We have three people staying at the moment and needed to provide some privacy for our extra guests, so we made some moves and shopped our home and pulled together a cozy little space for extra over night guests!