One Room, Two Ways

 

Before I share anything else, I want to share this picture with you:

I got the honor of getting to volunteer for the Halloween party at Ellie’s school on Thursday, and it was so much fun.
I think there is a dirty rumor going around about how not fun these things can be, and I know why.
You need some amazing fellow parents, and this will make the party move smoothly.
Case in point, the mom who put together all the above.
All of us were in awe.
She got all the ideas on Pinterest, but she did this all by herself!
So I totally signed up for the rest of the parties through the year because I want in on this action!
Love.

It’s been a while since I have written a post about decorating.
I started this blog with my main MO as decorating, organizing, and cooking on the cheap.
But sometimes we all go through “slumps”.
I mean, how can you possibly come up with a new craft, decorating idea, and recipe EVERY SINGLE WEEK?!?!
Oh wait, that is what bloggers are supposed to do.
Never mind.

So there is this “thing” I do.
I learned it from my mom and her mom before her.
It doesn’t have a name, but I gave it a moniker here on the blog a few years ago.
Workin’ with what ya got.
I flip the furniture and rooms ALL THE TIME.
People laugh when they come into my house and see the table that was in the kitchen now in the family room.
Or the lamp that was in my bedroom in our dining room.
Or entire rooms flipped.
My family gets confused and runs into furniture all the time.
But my husband doesn’t complain.
Why?
Because I don’t have to spend a dime to create these “new” rooms.

Let’s be honest.
It is expensive to keep up with trends.
People who can do that are very lucky and are in the minority.
So why not work with what you already have and “fake it til ya make it”?

I have onebigroom in the front of my house.
No foyer, my front door empties into this onebigroom as soon as you enter.
When we bought the house eight years ago, the owners had the front room set up as a living room.
Which makes perfect sense.
And the back part of the room was a dining room.
Again, perfect sense.
So when we moved in, we set it up that way as well.
Even though we have no sense.

But a few years in, I started tiring of looking at this setup.
I even thought of moving the dining room to the family room in our home because the fireplace is there and I thought it would be cool to eat by the fireplace in the winter.
But the cable hookup was in there, and it would have been a lot of work.
That, and since there are enormous windows in the living room, I didn’t want our neighbors to see how much TV we are actually watching.

This was the most recent layout:

Which has been this way since early spring?
The only problem was that there wasn’t direct lighting over the table but since spring and summer are LIGHT, it wasn’t a problem
Now that we are coming into the soul-crushing doom that is winter, I needed to rethink this arrangement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the dining room is now much closer to the liquor.
Which makes complete sense.