I think we finally have an arrangement that works for our awkwardly-shaped living room. It also covers the main golden rules of furniture placement:

1. Every seat needs a little side table or coffee table within comfortable arms’ reach
2. Lamps are a must, and the cords cannot stretch across a traffic area (this wasn’t working for us)
3. Need to be able to access the curtains
4. Traffic flow has to be easy
5. There should be 16-24″ between the seating and the coffee table
6. The total seating area should be within 12′x12′ for comfortable conversation (not spread all around the room like I see so often)

Getting there! The next things on my list are ARTWORK (still haven’t put any up), a console table behind the couch, and a big area rug to frame the seating area (yes, over the carpet).

But I did manage to check a few key things off my list: the chrome arc lamp ($99 at HomeSense), the aqua wire lamp ($59 at HomeSense), and the little brass side table ($109, also at–you guessed it–HomeSense). They make a huge difference in making this room feel more finished.

Flowers always help, too ;)

The other dilemma that was bugging me is that we really need a place for Caleb to spread out his toys. We didn’t want to push all the furniture to one side of the room because it might look unbalanced with the fireplace, but it actually works out pretty well. Once I have this room totally finished with artwork and shelves, I think it will be just fine.

(although, who needs toys when you have mommy’s iPhone?)

We also need to switch out our ceiling light fixtures since they totally don’t match the kitchen cabinets. Don’t look too closely. And to keep it real, this is the other side of the room that still needs some major attention:

But, after two years here, I love the progress! Once we have this house totally finished from top to bottom, we’ll sell it and build something different. That’s just the way we work. We love projects.

In the craziness of the last month, we did take a few moments to put up Christmas decorations. I generally try to prioritize by keeping in mind “what’s important/urgent, important/not urgent, urgent/not important, not urgent/not important” (did you follow that?), but sometimes it’s good to just set the urgent things aside and do something that otherwise wouldn’t get done! I’m so glad we did. When home is cozy and peaceful, it helps to make the rest of life so much more calm and peaceful as well.

Our scrawny 5′ fake tree is back. It’s pretending that it’s much bigger, thanks to the little table it’s sitting on behind the loveseat.

And it’s the sparsest thing you’ve ever seen, but I packed it so full of stuff that you can’t really tell.

Caleb adores the tree. He has a whole bunch of baby words for it. We are practicing being very “gentle.”

Although we have a fake Christmas tree, I’ve fallen in love with real cedar bough garlands. And ivory satin ribbon. It’s a match made in heaven.

Although it’s been an extremely full month (all good things, just LOTS of them), I’m really looking forward to next few weeks. Dennis has the whole week of Christmas off, and we’ll be able to spend lots of time with friends and family. (And shop for new camera gear… more on that later!)

Whether this is a fun or difficult season for you, I hope that this Christmas will overwhelm you with joy and hope. When you really think about it, it’s incredible what we’re celebrating: the Love of a Saviour who came to rescue our world.