My kids love to write plays together. One of my very favorite things in the whole world is listening to them working together on these absurd little masterpieces and then seeing them perform the finished projects. There are few things more heartwarming than watching your seventeen year old earnestly discuss the character development of Dr. Pibb and his brother Mr. Pepper with your five year old.

So anyway, the title from this post comes from one of their plays, “About Couches and How They Live,” which features the very memorable line, “It all comes from letting the bison drive!” And that’s what happened with this dining room. I got this bison tapestry from my friend Cassie of Cassie Bustamante fame and then let it steer my dining room redesign all on its own.

And I have to say that letting the bison drive worked out much better in my dining room than in the play:

I wasn’t looking for a full-scale makeover in the dining room, really, as all the furniture is staying put. But I was ready to lose the blue walls and finally figure out something I was happy with for that problematic space above the buffet. Enter Bison, stage left.

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So here’s where we started:

And now we’re here:

We still need to re-paint the table, as its current paint job has seen much better days. But it’s too hot and humid to paint it right now, so I just plunged ahead with this post even though my table has spots of brown paint all over it (leftover from ANOTHER bison project).

We kept the table that my mom bought me when we moved into this house and the Pottery Barn chairs I craiglisted awhile back, along with the Lane buffet that holds a bunch of our homeschool stuff (we don’t eat in this room very often, but we do USE it all the time for school plus board games and general socializing. That table is only clear like that when I take pictures).

And then once the bisons arrived, I found myself making most all decisions with them in mind. Which meant a whole lot more brown (and even some orange!) and more of a 70s vibe than I usually go for (disclaimer: I have no idea how old the bison tapestry actually is).

The walls are Benjamin Moore’s White Dove–a slightly creamy white that’s the same color we used in our master bathroom. And then we bought the chandelier from All Modern, and I’m still loving it.

We added in dark green velvet curtains from Ikea (this room had never had curtains before–one of those things we kept meaning to get to and never did) and found a place for my new fancy lady painting in between them:

I went with brass curtain rods from Target for both the curtains and the tapestry and brass rings with clips to attach everything (the curtains came with silver grommets, but I folded them over and used the clips because it made them match better AND be the right length). My fancy lady painting came without a frame, so I got one on ebay that makes her EVEN FANCIER.

And THAT frame came with a paint-by-number in it that I hung on the opposite wall along with a print of one of my photos from the Grand Canyon and this thrifted tree print.

I was trying to stay kind of minimalist in here and not do yet another elaborate gallery wall….but honestly I’m kind of itching for another elaborate gallery wall. So we’ll see.

I had fun with the buffet, largely because I found this hippo at the thrift store, and I LOVE him. Doesn’t he look friendly?

And then I found these wooden owls!

They were a little more than I wanted to spend (at the thrift store: I think they were $6.99 each), but I’d never seen any like them before, and I loved the live edge thing on them. There were something like 6 or 7 there all together, but I just brought home my three favorites.

Everything else I already had around (wait! except these stone eggs! also thrifted). Again–lots of brown, which is not my usual go-to accent color, but…the bison were driving! It was out of my hands.

And there you go–if you’ve been wondering what a bison-driven dining room looks like….wonder no more!

Source list

Paint color: Benjamin Moore’s White Dove

Curtains: Ikea Sanela

Chairs: Pottery Barn (no longer available)

Table: thrifted

Buffet: Lane

Light Fixture: All Modern

Curtain Rods: Target

Accessories: mostly thrifted….here’s some similar stuff I found for you:

maybe you would like to pin this?