The Highest Form of Flattery

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm going to be taking you for a spin around my living room.  This is a room which, when we first moved in, was completely unfurnished.  As in, we had no living room furniture. None.  Nada.  Zip.

We moved to San Diego from Chicago six years ago.  Our house in Chicago was a 100+ year-old Victorian.  It was a beautiful house but very different from the one here in California, which is kind of a cookie-cutter, suburban tract house.  Don't get me wrong, I love our current house and am enjoying making it my own, but in terms of character, the Chicago house had this one beat.  One thing the Chicago house didn't have, however, was a "family room."  Instead it had one living room which served as a family room, TV room, den, as well as a formal living room.  (Well, as "formal" as you can get with a baby and a preschooler in the mix.)  So when we moved to California, our well-loved living room furniture immediately went into the informal family room leaving the formal living room empty.  This meant I got to start from scratch which was both exciting and overwhelming.

I didn't really know where to begin.  I knew I didn't want it to be too matchy-matchy so I set out to find pieces that coordinated with each other but didn't need to be bought as a set.  One of the first pieces I fell in love with was Restoration Hardware's now defunct Estate Coffee Table, pictured here:

And here...

It was beautiful, and although it's kind of hard to see in the pictures, the top is actually a removable tray.  Although it's a lot more formal than the things I typically gravitate towards, I was in love.  The only problem?  It came from Restoration Hardware.  Which meant it cost roughly a bajillion dollars.  Believe me, if I had bajillions of dollars, I would not hesitate to get some Restoration Hardware up in here, but I don't, so I kept looking.

Imagine my surprise when one day, while browsing JC Penney online, I found this:

That is my coffee table, in my living room.  It is also an exact replica of the Restoration Hardware piece pictured above.  The difference? It cost about an eighth of the price.  It's also a bit smaller, but in the context of my living room, that's a good thing.  Of course it's from JC Penney, so the quality isn't quite what I imagine the RH table to be, but frankly, I don't care.  

Next up in the tour of my living room:  the pouf that launched a thousand Facebook comments.  Stay tuned!