You can fill a room with all kinds of beauty but if all of it is hard how can you relax? Incorporating softness was a really important component to creating a comfortable, inviting, and inspiring room.

1. Area rug. My husband works at a treatment center for delinquent youth with mental health issues and they often receive donations from company's trying to fulfill their philanthropic goals. Pottery Barn is one of them. Often there is so much donated that it can't be used and it gets stored away in an attic or barn until someone can decide what to do with it.  Two rugs had been stored in the barn loft for far too long before we kindly rescued them from their squalor.  One quickly made it's home in our basement family room and the other has waited patiently for the moment I decided to tackle this room and give it a home.

The 5x7 jute rug fits the area perfectly!

2. Curtains. I don't need to tell this story again {If you missed it you can catch it on the last Thrift Blitz} but curtains are a simple way to lend instant softness to a space.  I grabbed a curtain rod from the Dollar Store - you can seriously find anything there! - gave them a good once-over with the iron and hung them. Simple and lovely!

3. Homemade Throw. Not only a great way to pull some new colour in but it's practical too for a chilly day. {Also featured on Thrift Blitz}

4. Pillows. Throw pillows come in all sizes, colours and styles. The owl pillow was a birthday present a few years ago and I LOVE it - I think it's so cute - and the red one is a pillow cover from, you guessed it, the Dollar Store. One of them lives on my comfy corner chair and the other is softening the back of my desk chair which, for now, is just an old dining chair.

What are your favorite 'soft things' to include when you decorate a room?

Come back on Monday for Part Four - Walls and Things