The multi-purpose-work-in-progress living room

I'm absolutely loving the Roomspiration link party, and it's only the second day!! Today's feature is living rooms, hosted by Kelly at View Along the Way. (although I'm kinda sad 'cause a lot of the living rooms I'm seeing have a fireplace. and are bigger than mine. sigh. maybe someday...)

 

Yes that's a kitty sleeping on the loveseat. I didn't dare move her for the photo shoot. :) We have an open floor plan in our house, so the kitchen, dining area, and living room are all one big room. And you can see from these pictures that our living room also serves as a playroom and a music room... Someday we'll finish the basement and be able to move Abby's toys down there. But in the meantime, the living room is where we spend ALL of our time!

I love rich colors. FALL colors. I made the window valance when we were still in our other house, and they fit and matched perfectly here too! The green recliner was in our previous house when we arrived, and our landlords said we could take it with us when we moved. Score! A coworker of mine was moving out of his apartment about the time we moved into this house, and was selling his green couch and loveseat. For $50. For both. Score! (the couch is currently downstairs, covered in a blanket to protect it from drywall dust...)

Eventually the infamous "pink chair" will either retire or move downstairs as well. For now it provides an extra seat in the room...

Our family loves to play games, and so the one bookshelf we have upstairs is chock-full of board games and card games (although I did cram them together to make space on the bottom two shelves for some of Abby's toys...). We really don't have much wall space, by the time one "wall" of the room is the ledge by the stairs, and another is taken up by the window...

Eventually (there's that word again...) we'd love to decorate this room with more music-related items. Like these big metal music notes? Or something like this?

(that b&w picture of us was one of our engagement pictures, and we used the matte as our guestbook at the wedding! hopefully soon it'll be moved to the master bedroom -- more on that another day)

I went to Shipshewana with some friends this summer,  and we stopped in a little shop full of paintings created by local Amish artists. I fell in love with this painting/mixed media item:


It's made from an actual piece of music, and the colors are PERFECT for this room! Plus the artist was the one running the store that day, so she gave me a 10% discount. ;) Score!

We really don't have the funds to do much any decorating, so all of these ideas rattling in my head will have to wait...  or get put on my Christmas list...

Check out the other living rooms linked up at View Along the Way!