A Living Room Walk-Through.. {Home}

I'm starting to figure out this blog thing. And I'm trying to do right by my readers (and me) and increase my knowledge of the inner workings of Blogger.

I'm sure I'm the last to figure this out -- that I can make headers along the top (I made an "About" page) and I'd like to keep going with this and create a house tour option. But first, I need to create posts about the rooms in our home where we carry out our day to day. Most rooms are unfinished. They are forever evolving and adjusting to suit where we're at in that moment.

So today, grab a cup of tea, and join me in our living room..

I wrote about our living space within weeks of opening this blog in 2013. It has been slightly tweaked since then but what hasn't changed is the amount of time we spend here. It's still that old t-shirt we throw on at the end of the day... in a good way. It's cozy, comfortable, and familiar. We spend a lot of time in this 11 x 13 space talking, reading, visiting, and playing board games.

Yes, we still have those brown couches which work hard and disguise much that this young family throws at it. I haven't switched out that brown rug just yet, but I will rejoice the day we do.

We are enjoying the opening between the kitchen and living room which has allowed for better sight lines and flow of conversation. And the big windows, which we replaced in the fall of 2013, bring in so much natural light. We're also loving our $10 coffee table with it's bar cart lines. I still plan to make over this thrift store find.

Here's what the other side of the room looks like. The picture wall has evolved to include pictures of our little ones and low hooks to accommodate their reach. They were away at school when I took this picture but when they are home those hooks hold their backpacks and jackets. In the future, I would like to disguise our footwear, backpacks, and jackets by creating a closed in system against the wall on the left (where we have our shoe rack and other baskets). But for now, this space works well for us and we do our best to keep it tidy. It's all apart of small space living. 

We choose to keep the toys at bay in the living space, unless their brought in and returned to their "home." Really, our living room just houses several books that the kids come back to again and again. We keep their books on the lower tier of an end table and a basket (to the left in the picture above). We have a subscription to the magazine Clubhouse Jr., from Focus on the Family, and those magazines are housed in the basket too. The kids also love to flip through photo albums that we keep at their level on the other end table. We enjoy fostering this love of books, reading, and looking at pictures. 

We keep a few special items around. Nothing that feels too cluttered and all have some significance whether it's a vacation keepsake or an item that has been passed on through generations. Oh and I love to have fresh flowers around.. which reminds me that I need to clip some from my gardens.

So this is our living space.. it's nothing fancy.. but we can hardly have it so since we have two energetic little ones. But I wouldn't feel completely relaxed in a fancy space anyway. My goal is simply to keep it tidy since it's the first thing you see when you step into our home.