I LOVE our living room! It is truly the hub of our home. There was a time, though, not so long ago that our living room seemed to be mainly for decoration. It was only used on the rare occasion we had a party like at Christmas. Not so anymore.
Our living room is also where we have family worship. The kids are usually more spread out than this, I just had them scrunch together for the picture.
The living room is also where we have our morning devotions and Sonlight read-aloud time daily, so it's central for our homeschool. We have an open floor plan so the schoolroom (which was meant to be a breakfast room) is connected to and open to the living room.
And since this is where we do read-aloud, I store puzzles and learning games for my pre-schoolers in here. This way they can keep busily occupied and quiet while we're reading. That's the theory, anyway.
A word about furniture: I got lots of comments on my entryway post about how beautiful our home is. Thank you so much! We love it! I did want to explain that I'm an only child and have inherited most of our nice furniture. My grandmother died the year I graduated from college and I got her piano (it's a REALLY nice one), the fancy chairs in our entryway, and the secretary in our living room. My mom got her dining room chairs, so she passed hers to me. I blogged about rearranging furniture so I'd have room for my mom's blue chairs, and our red leather ottoman in the living room was also bought by my mom. She special ordered it for her living room, but after taking delivery I convinced her that it really didn't go at all (it really didn't). It just happened to be perfect in mine, though. And the sofa, computer desk with hutch and chair, coffee table, and book shelves in daddy's special room (pictured below and now my unofficial blogging headquarters) were all purchased by my parents for me as house warming gifts 14 years ago after I graduated from college and got settled into my first home (pre-hubby).
(The blue chairs are hidden by the dollhouse which doesn't belong in this room.)
All that by way of saying, my husband and I are really blessed to have a house full of beautiful furniture that we mostly didn't have to buy! Even Monk's bedroom is outfitted with my dad's childhood furniture and my childhood Ethan Allen furniture is in our girls' rooms!
Practically the only furniture we have bought is in our living room. After two years of consideration we bought the sofa, love seat, and two green floral chairs that make-up the central conversation area of our living room. We've had them 5 years now, still love them as much as when we first got them, and are hoping they'll last another decade at least.
A few years ago (it actually took about 4 years) my husband added an upstairs to our house. I mean we added the stairs, the floor, everything. Now we have a wonderful playroom upstairs for the kids as well as a couple more bedrooms, bathroom, theater room, playhouse, storage closet/ babydoll room. It's been rearranged since the linked blog post. We moved the air hockey table out and a sleeper sofa in (also from my folks- this one's about 30 years old, but they don't make 'em like they used to). We also moved in a game table that used to be in the room that's now our American Boy's. You get the idea, anyway.
Be sure and check out the living areas of all the other 4 moms and everyone else who participated in the link-up.
Very cool! I loved the picture of your hubby leading worship!
ReplyDeleteHow cool that you guys were able to add and upstairs addition yourselves. We added an addition over our garage a number of years ago but had to pay someone to do. ;) What an awesome living room...so open and roomy. Wonderful!
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