some polka dots i spotted...

I love the mishmash of chairs in this place Mikka of A Mischmashed Life once visited. The whimsical hodgepodge of chairs - polka-dotted, striped, solid-colored - is just delightful!

Just last week, I moved things around the house to break the matchy-matchiness of our bedroom. But let me start from the beginning: how we began furnishing our house when we first moved in. At that time, I just wanted clean, sleek, minimalist lines. If I had my way, our house would completely be in minimalist Zen. But remember here how the hubby wants things to have significance? Well, he grew up in a house with traditional Filipino furniture - with capiz windows and sulihiya recliners - so he wanted our home to be reminiscent of an old Vigan house.

And so our living room became a fusion of clean Zen lines and traditional Filipino pieces. We had a Zen-themed sofa made - with built-in shelves and detachable cushions for easy laundering. The focal point of our 'sala' was a crushed bamboo armoire we had custom-made for our TV - in mixed wood finishes to tie everything together. Our Vigan-inspired pieces - our baul and even our narra bench outside - did not have the intricate curly-cue carvings to keep with my clean, minimalist aesthetic. We replaced the door-panel of our fuse box with a Vigan capiz window from Tiendesitas and it served as a wall panel, giving character to our foyer. We also got ottomans for added seating & storage - in wicker & rope for more native textures.

Our bedroom though was completely minimalist Zen. It was practically lifted from an Ethan Allen catalogue - with the Lotus bed, the big round mirror above the headboard and Lotus dressers as huge sidetables (you see, I'm obsessed with storage space). For a while now, I have been wanting to get new sidetables but I wasn't keen on spending when I had perfectly good ones - just lacking charm & character. Then it struck me to move things around the house. So one sidetable moved to the other end of the bedroom as a dresser, the other moved up to Isabella's room to hold her TV, my wicker ottomans moved up to the master's bedroom as sidetables and our narra bench from outside became part of our living room.

While it was really more of an accident - a compromise - that made us design our living room in an eclectic Asian minimalist aesthetic, I love how our living room has always had so much personality and meaning. And I love that years later, it continues to breathe life throughout our whole house - breaking the matchy-matchiness of our bedroom into a stylish mishmash with so much more character than before. 

Photos from amischmashedlife, here, here, here, here, here and here. Layouts are my own.

Click here for previous posts from the Some Polka Dots I Spotted series.