Imaginary Decorating - Take Two

Alright internet peeps, I need your help.

I'm sure you'll recall I have no decorating sense.

Here's the long wall of my living room. Pardon the barrel-and-stitching distortion, my floor and ceiling aren't really curved. Here's what I've got to work with: A very long wall, two couches along it, the lamp in the middle is the one controlled by the lightswitch to the room. If you wanted, we could move it to the end of the left (flowered) couch and put another one at the far end of the right (blue futon) couch. You can imagine the left couch without the *stuff* on it - I was taking down and moving around the pix FOR these pictures and left it on the couch when I took the pic. Silly me.

Anyway. The wall is actually WHITE. The room is pretty bright and airy, but only gets indirect light from outside, the windows (far right) face North. The North wall has big windows on the left (see small pix at end) and the TV armoire in the middle. The East wall (opposite this one) has bookcases at each end, and a long fireplace/mantle wall in between with family pix on it (see small pic at end) - the south end of this room has the navy loveseat recliner and then a space to walk through between the front hall and family room, and behind that is the piano alcove and kitchen.

Still with me?

So here's a picture of that wall with no pix on it:

I had some pictures in other places, and then I bought these cute 6 little shadow boxes in a rainbow of colors. I don't know what I'll put in them. (Ideas welcome!) So I was going to move around some pictures and try to place the shadow boxes.

here's my first attempt at driving the pictures around and arranging them.

But I'm pretty sure you could do better. So ... where would you put stuff?

if you are really into this and have something that will open Photoshop files, you can grab the layered file here and drive the layers around, which is always fun. Each piece of wall art is in it's own layer. Or you can write out instructions and I'll try to do what you said. :)

http://www.andfam.net/kimblog/blogpix/lr_upload/r_whole_layers_ps.psd

Other random rambles related to trying to decorate this room ...

the other couch in here is a navy blue loveseat recliner, coming out at a right angle from the left end of the left flowery couch. The floor is wood. The room is all painted white, other than the brick fireplace across from this wall.

I tried to find a recent picture of the LR but I can't find one. I can take a few if you need to see the whole room. I don't know how this decorating works.

Anyway, can you drive around - verbally or with photoshop - those things on the wall and tell me where you would place them, if you were decorating my living room?

What else would you do to the room (here's where the seeing the whole room might help, eh?) I guess there's these pics from before we started the OrgoWork:

but we've moved furniture around since then to be more useful. The white wicker is gone. The two black chairs are still in there, they move around depending on whether we're watching videos or playing the wii. The navy loveseat recliner is in the same place as in these pictures. Some of the excess clutter is gone. :) Does that help any?

Oh, but anyway. Short of buying new furniture, what else would you do for the room? I like light, bright colors and am leaning towards a little "rainbow" focus (like the 6 shadow boxes) to try to tie in some of the warm hues in the room without *decorating* in warm browns and golds and oranges. Does that make sense? I have no real sense of how to decorate, though, so if I'm just going in the wrong direction, tell me. The worst i can do is continue to blunder and reject your advice, right? :-)

I'll quit rambling and let you get to work.

Violet Jelly

Eminoodle and Moogie saw great potential in our yard-of-not-grass. Each spring our yard turns into a violet field. Moogie mentioned to Eminoodle that they should make violet jelly with all those violets, and Noodle was off to surf up a recipe and pick a heap of violets.

Here are the results of our first small batch.

We don't know how it tastes yet, but it sure looks pretty!

There's a few more artsy fartsy jelly pix at my Flickr photostream if you want to see more.

Cabin in the Woods Dream

For the record, I started a post the other day, but forgot to finish it. So I haven't entirely forgotten to post here, just haven't had much closure.

Last night I had another of my typical "Kim Dreams" ~ no obvious meaning, just bizarre.

I dreamed we had bought a cabin in the woods. It was a two-story cabin with a walk-out back (basement) towards the road and woods, and the upstairs where the dining room was had big windows looking out towards the front where there was, perhaps, a big field or lake (I think it was a lake)... There was a HUGE snowstorm/blizzard with high winds and astounding drifts. My friend Peggy (hi Peggy!) had said she was moving back to the Pacific Northwest (in my dream) because she missed snow, and I stared out the window towards where the lake would have been, only it was so snowy blowy hazy that you couldn't see the lake. It was more like an alien landscape of deep purple hazy sky filled with driving snow and Seuss-like snow drifts and thought, "Peggy should come to Michigan!" ... it was such a wild and unusual scene, and I remember thinking I had never seen anything like it in all my years in Michigan.

M children ran out to play in the snowy woods as the storm ended, but the drifts were so high and strangely sculpted that I was concerned there would be an avalanche. Buzz was climbing up the back of a steep cliff between huge trees, and sliding down the drift on the other side, and it seemed so unsafe. So I corralled the children inside, and we said goodbye to my sister and her husband who had been, apparently, visiting. They still had his Big Tall Truck, so they could drive out of the snowy wilderness.

I had planned to go out shopping, because I'd used up all the sugar in the cabin (we had just bought it and everything in it was from the previous owners) but remembered the local store closed at 8 pm. The Grand Lunar was outside waving good bye to my sister and her husband when an SUV drove up. He stepped back near the cabin, while I was inside, and we both watched to see who it was and why they were there.

It turned out to be relatives of the former owners who had planned to stay the night, not knowing it was sold. They had come a long way and simply came in, there was no turning them away. The woman had with her about twelve children, none of whom were her own children, they belonged to other relatives. They were all between 6 and 15 or so, and didn't seem to care at all that the cabin was sold, and just made themselves at home, demanding ice cream. The boys in the bunch were immensely demanding and rude, and I told them so. One boy, who looked to be about 12, rejected his bowl of ice cream as too small, and then was amazed and upset when I didn't give him more, just gave his bowl to someone else.

The lady with them seemed polite and somewhat apologetic, as if maybe she hadn't realized until that day that the children were poorly behaved. She tried to help by setting the table with these fancy dark dark brown table settings from a dark dark brown hutch. Full table settings, like you see in decorating magazines, with the several plates, too much silverware, too many glasses, etc ... The style of the fancy place settings was not me at all, and it was making it hard to finish the children's ice cream because the new fancy place settings were just in the way. But the girls in the bunch ended up being polite and helpful and washing dishes for us, so that there were enough spoons for everyone (except the particularly rude boy!) to have ice cream.

And then ... somewhere after the ice cream, I woke up.

Turning Three

Today my youngest child turned three.
I've never been able to say that before!

We had a wonderful day with chocolate chip peanut butter muffins for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and McDonalds with the PlayPlace for dinner. Buzz had never been there as a mobile old-enough-to-play child (deprived, I know) so he was thrilled. I think he might have been intimidated, were it not for four very enthusiastic older siblings.

We wrapped up the day with gifts and ... what else? ... monkey cake for my monkey boy. Well, one of my monkey boys, they're all monkeys, really.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Buzz! We love you!

Use your imagination

okay, I need your help. Remember that skunk cabbage picture? Well we're going to use it, and that one by the famous dude with the tree thing. And those six new shelves/shadow boxes I bought in the bright colors. Help me arrange them on this wall in the living room.

What, you can't see them?

Yeah, that's because instead of taking pictures of the wall with one lamp in the middle, the wall with two lamps, one on each end, and all the individual pieces of my decorating puzzle, I ate baked cheesy potato chips and then napped.

So ... I still need some closure on the decorating problem, but I didn't yet take the time to put all the pictures in one of my many layer-based-image-editing applications and drive them around until I liked the layout or had several to ask your opinion on.

Sure, I could just hold stuff up, but it's too many pictures ... I'd need a whole herd of children each holding up one item. And then you'd need to mentally delete the children from the scene, for the sake of the arranging.

Maybe someday soon I'll have digital decor for you to help me arrange.

For now, just use your imagination.