A Peek in My Family Room

I don't know about you, but I love looking at other people's homes.  I had so much fun the past couple of days peeking at other people's lives through their beautiful (and not so beautiful, actually, lol) homes. That's why we go to home shows, right?  I know not everyone I've seen walking through home after home are looking to buy. Okay, so maybe I'm a stalker, I'll admit I enjoy seeing how other people live.  Hopefully some of you are the same way.   Today I thought I'd give you a glimpse into my home and show you our family room.  Oh, and I'm keeping it real here, crooked pictures (I can't believe I didn't notice that before), messy desk, and everything. :)  And it's kind of hard to take pictures of this room.  While it's nice and bright with windows on 3 of 4 walls, every direction is shooting towards a window, so bare with me. 

As I mentioned here, we redecorated our family room about a year ago.  Here is the "before" picture:

This was a couple years ago at our Superbowl party with some friends, Bill's brother and aunt and uncle.

The redo was brought about because the couch had seen better days and Bill had FINALLY warmed up to the idea of color on the walls.  So the whole family went shopping for a new couch.  Imagine trying to make 8 people happy.  Well, I got out voted when they all fell in love with this couch.  While I liked it, I didn't love it.  I didn't really want a sectional again, thought the fabric was a little weird (it's kind of like terry cloth), and really wanted something more tailored.  But it had room for all 8 of us, Bill could definitely see himself falling asleep there, and it was a "non-snuggling" couch (Bill's term) - important now that Cheyenne can date.

I do like it more now. :)  It is very soft and great to relax in. As I said, Bill liked white walls.  When we built our house 10 years ago, he even wanted me to take a picture of the nice, white, bare walls before I hung anything up so he could always remember it.  He warmed up a little when he finally gave in and we painted our bedroom a beige color.  So to my utter surprise, he picked out this dark brown for the walls.  This was a very bold step.  When we finished painting, I was almost sick!  The walls looked purplish.  The next morning it wasn't much better.  I was ready to redo the whole thing, but Bill convinced me to wait a few more days.  I don't know if it was letting the paint cure more, getting used to the color, or having the couch delivered and more brown in the room, but it looked a whole lot better.  It's like the color of chocolate milk. Really!  Kind of makes me hungry sometimes.

This is the other side of the room, looking into the kitchen, complete with the vacuum still sitting out. Like I said, keeping it real.  At least that means Billy did his chores. :)

This is my favorite part of the room, my photo gallery.  I hadn't heard the term "photo gallery" when I did it and didn't know if I could really just have this across this great big wall.  I'm no decorator and have serious doubts when it comes to my decorating ability. lol  Plus, you can see a little bit in the before picture, I had a whole quilt hanging here plus all the kids' pictures - just a whole lot more stuff.  I wasn't so sure it looked "right" to be so plain, but I love it now.

Other end of the room.  Really dislike the desk, and the reason we have to have short curtains, but Bill's not too excited about a new desk.  This is sort of his desk so it has to meet all his requirements.  So still trying to convince him we need a new one.

I love this little desk/table, but it is also in need of a makeover.  I think I've decided what I'm going to do, now just waiting for the weather to warm up a little to get started.

And finally we've made it around the room.  That's the couch in the lower right corner, and the opening to the kitchen is just to the left.  You can also see the front door in the upper right corner, we have a very open floor plan, it's nice.  I love this spot, too.  I told the whole story about this spot here. 

So that's it, a little tour around our family room.  If you read this post here when I said my family would be laughing at how spot-on the description of "Classic Traditional" was for me, you can now see it, too.  Beige - replacing the navy and burgundy, a little boring, plenty of family pictures, yup, that's me.  So help me break out of my rut a little.  While I really enjoy my room, the end with the desk has never seemed right to me, too empty, but I don't know what else to do with it.  Do I have too many tables in here?  I would love to hear any suggestions or what you would do different in a room like this.  It's always nice to get a fresh perspective on things.