Show Us Where You Live Friday: Bonus/Family Room

Yay! Friday is here again!! Participating in Kelly's Show Us Where You Live Fridays is sure making the weeks fly by:)

This week is bonus rooms, laundry rooms or play rooms over at Kelly's Korner Blog. I'm going to sort of cheat by showing you our Family Room (I hadn't started doing these events yet when they did family rooms). It is a bonus room though...this part of the house (along with the master suite) was added on in 2003. Plus we do play here...and watch tv, eat dinner, entertain, and even sometimes fold laundry. Does that count? (Just nod your head.)

Here's a look at the empty room when we moved in. We love the high baseboards and french doors that lead out onto the front porch.

{the room up the steps is our living room and past that you can see the front door and entry way}

The first thing we did was paint. We love the new wall color, Sweet Spring by Benjamin Moore. This is kind of an outdated picture by now, but its from the same angle as the one above. We already had this smokey gray couch and matching loveseat and white coffee table from our previous condo. I know there are 2 different schools of thought on using an area rug on top of wall-to-wall carpet. I'm from the school of "if it helps define the space and pulls in colors from the rest of the room to help balance it out better than go for it!"

{we decided to switch things up and get black end tables, 2 different styles from the same line. by now we have some accessories on them!}

One of my problems in this room is this huge wall behind the long gray couch. For now I've hung 2 black ledge shelves we already had here but I think eventually I'm going to need something much large and more to scale here. But for now, I love using these ledge shelves as a seasonal decor spot. Here they are are in their various glory over the years:)

{this is how I have them set up now for spring and summer.}


{last fall}


{this past Christmas - see how that's the same weathered wood star I'm using for summer, I love when things are multi-purpose!}

This is how the room looks when you walk into it from the living room. Be careful, there's a step down there!! (Yes, people have fallen.)

{we love our entertainment center. its from JC Penney and is a total Pottery Barn knock-off for about 1/3 of the price. we really really needed this storage. I am still stuggling with how to balance decorating it to look good and storing what i need here. these pics are slightly outdated too, by now i've bought some nice matching baskets and used them to hide some of our paperback books, etc.}

This loveseat is the samestyle as the sofa and chair, we just got in a different fabric. My parents gave me these 6 framed botanical prints for my birthday this year (from Yankee Workshop). I thought they were just perfect for this space. Thanks, mom and dad!!

We tucked our comfy chair and ottoman into this corner to the left of the french doors. I love to read here.

And to the right of the french doors, we hung the signature mat from our wedding. The baskets on the glass and metal shelf hold magazines and our completely sorry collection of DVDs.

{gotta display my full hardback collection of Harry Potter! right now I'm rereading them for like the 5th time to get ready for "The Half Blood Prince" moving coming out this summer!}

We still have a bit to do in this room. We want to get new carpet and we need window treatments (we're thinking plantations shutters). And I need to figure out that big wall...any ideas?

Well, thanks for looking!!! And thanks again to Kelly for hosting! See you next week for Master Bedrooms:)