{ more change }

Happy Friday dear friends, woo hoo, we made it to another weekend.

I'm sitting in this room right now, this the second most unused room in my home.

This room has proven very difficult for me to decorate, and has changed several times

over the past 6 years.  First there are 20 foot ceilings, secondly it's kind of an awkward 

rectangular shape and it has to be passed through to get to the keeping room, and a back door.

I've arrange, rearranged again all to try and get a pleasing room that we will use.

This is how the room looked in 2005, 

It's very sparse, because we came from a much smaller home, 

all of the furniture we did have went into the basement and upstairs to the kids loft.

I suggest thinking about the furniture needed to fill a large home before moving,

something we never really gave much thought...it can be a very expensive endeavor. 

The rug was picked out by a designer that we hired briefly, and I'm still happy with it.

The furniture hmmm, well, that was one of the first purchases we made when we moved in.

 It's very neutral, and rather blah because I made the mistake of covering a sofa 

in my old house in a plaid fabric....what was I thinking?  Don't do that, don't cover the largest

piece of furniture in the room in a plaid, even if you like said plaid  { I call it the big plaid albatross }

We still have it by the way, and it's in the kids loft, and it's still an albatross.

Here's the living room today, with a lot more going on.

My friend teases me about the feng shui of this room being so bad.

She hates how it's closed off when you walk in from the front door.

In my defense for this arrangement,  I wanted this room to be more than just a pass through

to the keeping room and kitchen.  I used to have the sofa's facing each other in front of the fireplace,

and that arrangement was okay too, but I wanted more seating.  The room is very rectangular, and I 

couldn't add chairs by the fireplace or at the end of the sofa's without blocking the traffic pattern,

so this is the arrangement I came up with.  I actually like it because it makes the room feel 

more intimate, and now I can have more people in here at one time.

Before there was no view out of the window, now I can look out from the sofa's,

and I have a nice sunny area by the windows to read and have my coffee.

My sister, my good friend and I added the bookcase a couple of weeks ago, 

I really like it in here because I feel like it gives the room a purpose....

it's our new library.  I took over the old library and made it my studio.

Finally, my family is using this room, papa will sit here in the mornings and play his guitar

{ the sound in this room is great },  my son likes to sit in the chair by the window and read,

I sit in the corner of the sofa and look out the window at the robins building their nests,

we are  finally using this room on a daily basis, so....mission accomplished.

I promise that the color looks much nicer in person, 

the paint color is reading really gold in these photos.

The actual color is " Toasty ", and  I like the name.

This is the view from the keeping room.

Things I would like to do in this room include:

1. recovering the red chairs

2.  re-paint...again 

{ shh don't tell papa, we just had it done }

3.  add more architectural details

4.  change the fireplace surround

5. new curtains

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the room, but of course my taste changes daily,

and the more I look around in magazines, books, and blogs,  I want to change it all again.

Hindsight is so 20/20, and if I could do it all over again, I would have taken much more

time picking out furniture and thinking about what I really wanted.

Alas, I'm not much of a planner, and I have absolutely no patience,

I want things done, and done right now, so that approach is very hard for me.

I admire you ladies who know exactly what you want and have the patience to wait for it.

Papa came home yesterday and asked me what I thought about moving to Wilmington, N.C.,

so change may be on the horizon for me after all.  

I'm seeing a smaller historical home, maybe in the downtown area....Oh so lovely.  

I could get excited about this...a chance for a do over, and much needed change.

A beach cottage, that would be a big change.  I think maybe I could get on board.

If you know of any lovely old homes for sale in the area, please let me know.  

I'll keep you posted.  Have a lovely weekend, I hope you have lots of sunshine...

I think we have rain in our forecast for the entire weekend....

glad I got all of my planting done yesterday, now if it will only hold off long enough

for me to get my raised beds going today.

* peace & love *

Carrie