Updated Mid-Century Dining Room Tour

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

*This post was made possible by the generous support of Article, and features gifted product for testing purposes. All opinions are my own.

Remember when I teased an update for our dining room late last month? Well, I’m back with the reveal today, and I’m so excited to share all of the details! If you read the introduction post here, then you know we absolutely adored our previous vintage dining set. The lines were so quintessentially mid-century (our favorite era of design), and we loved that we were making good use of a beautiful secondhand set. The one big problem? It was just too oversized for our small dining room. See it pictured below.

New Art Theme For The Dining Room | dreamgreendiy.com + @artfullywalls #ad #gifted

New Art Theme For The Dining Room | dreamgreendiy.com + @artfullywalls #ad #gifted

Truth be told, the oversized, ultra-tall scale of the old furniture probably would have worked if our dining room was tucked off to the side of our home’s layout with just one door in and out. Unfortunately for us and our current floor plan, the main path to get to our bedrooms and bathrooms on the far side of the house is through one door that leads into the dining room and out another dining room door. In other words, we walked through the dining room dozens and dozens of times a day, which meant that we were constantly dodging the high backs of our old mid-century dining chairs. Something needed to change.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

Catch up here if you missed my mood board and want more explanation for this dining room update, but the main goal was to find a new dining set with chairs that had much lower backs on them to make for easier flow to the back bedrooms. I was also anxious to find something in a much lighter wood tone, too. The old vintage set was stained a rich, deep shade of brown, which, I think made the small dining room look even smaller than it really is. I wanted to replace the set with something in a light oak color that matched all of the framed art that we have in the room, and I was also open to looking for a glass table that would all but disappear into the room, helping to make it look lighter and more spacious overall.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTableRetro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTableRetro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

The answer to all of these problems? The Emmer Oak Wood & Glass Dining Table and a set of four Alta Oak Wood Dining Armchairs, both from Article. I’ve been a regular Article shopper for years and years now, and have never been disappointed (click back here and scroll to the end of the post for links to all of my Article reviews from the past in case you’re curious). I know it’s not easy to shop for furniture online without being able to see, touch, and sit in the items in person, but Article furniture is really solidly built, and I love making good use of the reviews section of their website, too. Those help me shop so much more confidently, which is why I always make sure to write super thorough reviews for you guys here. I want you to go into your own Article ordering process without any doubts.

A quick aside about ordering from Article—I’ve always had a pleasant experience! There are several tiers that you can opt in on, like curbside delivery or white glove service. We went with the latter this time, and it was well worth the upgrade. Our delivery team unboxed the chairs and table, hauled away the trash to recycle, and even assembled the table for us. I didn’t have to do anything but sit back and offer glasses of water to the guys as needed. I was relived to see that the chairs didn’t require any assembly so that our delivery team only had to assemble the table base and attach the glass tabletop. The chairs are good to go straight out of the box. There are so many Article products that come that way, which I appreciate from a consumer standpoint, but I also believe that fully pre-assembled furniture equals a higher quality product in the end.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

Anyway, we absolutely love our new Emmer table and Alta chairs. The glass table is actually almost the same dimensions as our old vintage table, but the light wood frame, gently rounded edges, and glass tabletop all combine to give this table a weightless look that feels much better suited for the room. And our new Alta chairs are the perfect height. No more dodging them on the way to the bedrooms and bathrooms!

Functionally, the new set is so much more practical for us (and comfortable to eat at, too, I should mention), but I’m also just so excited about the way the room actually looks now. The light oak table and chair frames are a nearly perfect match to the frames in our art collection, and the light ivory upholstery on the chairs also nicely complements our painted kitchen cabinets in the room just off this dining space. This update makes the entire left half of our house look so much more cohesive and intentional. That was actually a happy surprise—I didn’t plan it.

Since I know some of you will be wondering, I wanted to address the upkeep of having a glass table. You do have to keep in mind that glass needs to be wiped down pretty much every day to get rid of smudges, but we used to wipe our old wood table after dinner ever night anyway, so this hasn’t required a change in our routine. We bought a streak-free glass cleaner, and keep that plus a microfiber towel in the dining room hutch that you see there in the back of the room. We reuse the towel throughout the week, and refresh it in the washing machine every weekend. It also helps that we use placemats during every meal. We keep those tucked in the hutch drawers and pull them out to set our plates/bowls on at every meal to keep the table as clean as possible. All in all, the upkeep hasn’t been troublesome at all.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTableRetro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

What do you think of the new look? Like I said, we loved our old vintage furniture so much, but sometimes a room just needs a modern set to function best for everyday lives. We had so many specific needs on our wish list, and this new dining set checks all the boxes. It feels good to finally be done with this room. Let me know your thoughts about the new design in the comments, and also feel free to ask any questions about the set in case you need more information on comfort and the ordering process. I’m an open book, as always.

Retro Contemporary Mid-Century Dining Room Tour | dreamgreendiy.com + @article (ad/gifted) #ourArticle #AltaChair #EmmerTable

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Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

*Today’s post was made possible by ArtGlo, and features gifted product for the purposes of a candid review. All opinions are my own.

Believe it or not, this is actually the first time that I’ve ever put together a Halloween fall front porch design. Our old house didn’t have a front porch, so I never really knew where to set up a harvest-type display with pumpkins and other cute fall things. I eventually got our side door carport entrance looking pretty enough to decorate, but it was very tight on space. Here at our new house, though, we have a front porch with tons of room for seasonal decor, and I’m really excited to go all out with it.

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Before you ask me about the “tons” of room when looking at this small outdoor entry, I have to admit that this is actually our back porch. I was hired by a yard sign company to shoot some content for their social channels, and was only willing to agree to the partnership if they were okay with me photographing the setup on our back porch so that we could avoid giving away details about our front facade for privacy reasons (the brand was fine with it). Anyway, that’s a long-winded way of saying that everything you see here was photographed on our back porch, but has since been moved to our front porch for our neighborhood to enjoy!

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

To give a little more explanation about the brand, these photos were part of my collaboration with ArtGlo, which makes solar-powered light-up yard signs that you can swap out depending on the occasion. We, of course, chose Halloween art for our ArtGlo sign since it was the beginning of October, but we can peel that off and choose a different art print for Thanksgiving, Christmas, baby and bridal showers, birthdays—pretty much anything you can think of. You buy the easel once for about $100, and then add to your art collection over time for something like $29 per print. To get it set up, just assemble the easel, slide the art into place, and then place it out in the sun to charge for a few hours. Then, the sign lights up automatically when it senses darkness. It has a 4-hour light-up schedule, and then automatically turns off. We love it! Pssst…When you purchase an easel your first print is free!

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

I think the “Trick or Treat” art is so cute to use if you live in a neighborhood where you have active youngsters walking around on Halloween night in search of candy. This is our first Halloween in our new home, so I’m not sure if there are any trick-or-treaters in this area, but we’ll be ready for them is we do. Since the yard sign lights up, it’s a great way to advertise to passersby that you actually do have candy available. Wouldn’t it be cute as a Thanksgiving dinner greeting, though, too, with an art print like this sitting on your front porch? That’s next on my ArtGlo wishlist.

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor IdeasHarvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

As for the rest of the porch, I just kept things simple with the normal cast of Halloween characters. I piled pumpkins in a range of colors and sizes near the doorway next to my new seasonal welcome mat, and I also incorporated gourds for texture. I was really determined to add mums to the mix, and so far they’re thriving. I heard that you’re supposed to water them from below, so I’ve been giving them a drink of water from saucers every couple of days, and that has kept the flowers very happy. To make one of them more visible, I elevated it using a plant stand. I finished things off with a harvest wreath surrounded by stick-on bats, a couple of lanterns on the steps, and a wooden skeleton hung on the wall. What do you think? Tell me about your own Halloween decorating traditions in the comments.

Click here to see my video for ArtGlo, which shows this entire porch coming to life in motion!

Harvest Halloween Porch Décor Ideas

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*I earn a small percentage from purchases made using the affiliate links above. Affiliate links are not sponsored. Rest assured that I never recommend products we wouldn’t use or don’t already love ourselves.

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