lol, minnie, Sherry is right, it does eventually come and you get the project finished. The only problem is, for me, it takes a long, long, long time. For instance. I started a pair of pillowcases (embroidery) in Jr Hi and didn't finish them 'til after ds2 was born. And again, I started two heirloom afghans in 1996 for my sisters and finished them last april. Inspiration is a long time coming for me. I just wish I could find something to kickstart my lazy *** that didn't take forever.

"we plan to have a family". You don't have that family yet so why not buy a sofa from IKEA that you can buy slipcovers that are made for that sofa? That way you can have the look you want now and add the brown dry cleanable slips when the little ones start to arrive. The brown cover is 87% cotton and 13% polyester, so you could wash it in the washer in cold water with woolite and hang to dry. My uncle used to own a dry cleaners and told me many things that would be washed and how that said dry clean only. If you want to go with one sofa and the day bed you could buy a (used from craigslist) baby bed mattress and crib and make your own. I'm sure it would be very easy to find white baby bed sheets (and maybe even brown these days) for the cover along with some pretty bolster pillows. I linked you to an IKEA sofa that you can get slips for. Including a dark brown. Here is a link that might be useful: IKEA sofa I think would work for this look.

Look at other's mosaics for inspiration. I spend hours and hours and have saved soooo many pics on my computer. I have copied a picture and resized it (I use Paint Shop Pro) and then just put a piece of glass or plexiglass over it. You can pick up an ugly picture at a thrift store just for the glass and frame. That is what I'm doing with

While there are many rooms I've seen that I'd love to out-and-out copy, minor details like budgets and existing architecture :-) get in the way. Normally it's a piece of artwork, textile, or rug that ends up where I take color, pattern, etc. I don't have a set overall budget per room, really, as I do things very gradually as money becomes available, but I know what I can afford/am willing to pay for certain things. I've only had the chance to really do up one room "from soup to nuts", the master bathroom at my previous house, and I did start with inspiration pictures for that. I saw two pictures of one bathroom in Jane Powell's "Bungalow Bathrooms" and thought "that's my bathroom", but I still only took aspects of it for my own rather than copying it - the high, stained-wood beadboard wainscot and clawfoot tub with English telephone faucet were what grabbed me the most, so those were the "non-negotiables", but I didn't care for the floor tile and white walls so I threw those out the window: My end result: I've got the same situation WRT the will-get-to-it-someday kitchen in this house (it's more or less functional so it has to wait for a few years while we take care of higher-priority items). I found a picture of some cabinets that will fit this house perfectly - they're actually very similar to the trashed remains of a pantry cabinet we found in the shed, so there might even have been something like them there originally - but I hate the appliances and the walls and definitely the colors LOL so it'll definitely be another case of "a little of this, a little of that", but the cabinet style really socked me.