Online Design Tools are Like Virtual Shopping.

In my quest to decide what shape my new living room furniture will be, I've been scouring the internet for product dimensions, fabric options, etc. The most helpful website I have found is Ethan Allen. They have a breezy quiz that will help you define your style, they got mine spot on! If you sign in as a user (for free), then you can make and save idea boards with clippings of products and even upload images from other stores you are considering. But the icing on the cake... they also have a very easy to use space planning page where you can customize the shape of your room to scale and place furniture pieces on your floor plan to see how things work.

Also helpful are the painting websites such as Behr, and Valspar. Both sites allow you to choose room types, or upload photos of your own room, pick paint colors or see their suggestions, and virtually paint the areas of your room, and even some accessories.

It's been really helpful for me to plan my room out in advance of making those pricey investments in furniture. Try them out, it's really fun!

52 things, I lost track of the weeks!

IDEAL (tm)

I'm giving up my sweet-n-lo(tm) for ideal(tm). Ideal is a derivative of natural plants and a few other ingredients. It claims itself to be 99% natural.

Here's my review. It is a slightly more bitter taste than I have acquired for the pink packet, but I think I can get used to it. It has more of a granular texture and I definitely prefer it over the other new natural sweetener on the market, Stevia (tm)... both in taste and dissolving quality.

The science on artificial sweeteners is not clear to me, but I figure Ideal has to be better for me than a saccharin based sweetener. And it is approved for those with diabetes, not that I am, but if you are, you might try it. It can be substituted for sugar in baking recipes, measure for measure.

Coupons are available on their web site.

The 4 Corners of My Living Room

Welcome to my living room! No, I have not invited you here for coffee, sweet tea, sherry or wine. I have asked you here today, because I am desperate for advice. My living room is a problem room, which is like a problem child in that no matter what you do, it never really behaves well. It might look okay to the casual observer, but it is a rebel.

So here is the problem, and it is largely architectural in nature. Have you ever noticed that architects of middle class homes (assuming an architect drew our house plans) do not consider furniture placement, or traffic flow, or balance or I guess much of anything. But because I don't have the time/energy/confidence in the rebounding market to knock out a few walls and remodel, I'm going to try to solve this problem with.... SHOPPING!

Corner 1

Corner number one has a staircase and a back door , so traffic flow to this corner is non-negotiable. I must be able to reach this corner.

Corner 2

Corner two of my living room is the entrance that guests use the most, our front hallway. Yes, guests enter this room by coming down that long vestibule, which by the way, you can see all the way down the full length of the house and if I place my couch against that wall with the pretty picture, you are a sitting duck to anyone who comes in the front door. . . weird fung shui thingy.

Corner 3

This corner of my living room is the pathway to the kitchen and laundry room, the corner that we most often enter from. It has a nice giant wide opening. This is also the pathway to the master suite, which will be featured in another desperate story later.

and Corner 4

The fireplace. The supposed focal point of any room. Only ours is always obstructed by the arm of a piece of furniture, not to mention it is pretty small in scale for the size of the room, which seems large enough on paper, 17 x 18. BUT, once you allow for all these access points at every corner, you realize this room is not really large enough to handle much furniture comfortably.
Now let's take a closer look at this corner. This is an experiment. I call this, let's live with this idea a couple of weeks and see if it grows on us. YES! My couch and love seat are crammed together. I am debating about getting a sectional sofa. I had this idea that maybe one problem is that my room has no corner to anchor it. So, I thought a sectional might create one. I also thought it would be nice for me and steve for tv watching. And with Daisy always on the sofa, Steve rarely gets to sit with me anymore.

Imagine if these two pieces of furniture were connected in the corner? What do you think? Do you think it would work? I measured, and I'd have to be very selective about the size of a sectional. I would have to stay at 90 inches on one side, but could go up to 120 on the other side. But I am scared. Because I am the kind of person who likes to rearrange. And what my friends say is don't! It limits your ability to rearrange. Hmm. Okay. Or maybe I just rearrange all the time because I am never really happy with it. And if a sectional gave me an anchor, I might stop rearranging? Be honest with me. What do you think?

I would also like to point out that my window is in the wrong place. I don't think I will be moving a window. But notice how my chairs under this window are not centered? nothing has ever been centered under this window. Do you have a window like this? What did you do to achieve a balanced look in an unbalanced room?

AND! Ugh! I hate this wall! It is so huge and I have never known what to do with it. I hate the tv on the sideways sitting shelf. I think the shelf is way too large for the room, and what in the world do you hang above the tv? Everything I try looks out of scale, or competes with the fireplace for attention, and really does a tv need something hanging above it? ugh! I don't have a clue what to do here.
And then there is this architectural faux-pas. A practically useless bartop that borders the kitchen. The bar is too high and too narrow to actually eat at. I used to have barstools here, but the tile is too narrow to actually set them on. AND it takes about another 2 feet out of my already shrunken living room to allow room to walk around them. I am considering having new floors put in and removing this tile area, and even having a narrower counter top installed on this bar area. I dunno? What do you think?

Now please don't say put the sofa on the tv wall, because we tried that too, and we don't like it. A. the fireplace is out of view, and B. there is no wiring for our surround sound on the stairway wall, and an estimate to put it in was astronomical, because of the stairs.

So, these are my living room issues. Advice? Buy a sectional? Or just move?