The Elephant in the Room

Or, actually, the huge jaggedy stone fireplace set at a completely frustrating angle! Lately I've been getting a little... restless. I am starting to get the itch to do something more with our house. I guess it's my new blog obsession, Young House Love. Suddenly, I want our house to reflect more of us. I have a million art projects churning in my brain, which is a wonderful change of pace. I want more than photos on our walls. I want words and traditions and tokens of our story to reflect back at us the fun we have together and the love we have for each other. However.... BUZZ KILL:

Ya. Well, that is also a buzzkill. But the real buzzkill is that we are going to have to sell our house in the next few years, for a variety of reasons (perhaps one of them is now this %$#^& fireplace)... and we are hoping and praying to break even (or run away really really fast and hope we blend in with all the other people up the creek without... a chance in heck of selling their houses). So... painting, buying accents and installing shelves and custom art? Not so exciting when we could be turning around and tearing it all down in a few months. So I guess I have to store all that inspiration in the back of my brain and address...

Mr. Buzzkill #2, alias... The Elephant Huge Rocky Fireplace in the Room.

Here is the annoying layout:

 Dress it up, you say? Buy some attractive looking fireplace tools and a couple of charming arm chairs in interesting patterns, perhaps? FAIL! I have a soon-to-be mobile, curious and quite sensitive boychild in the house. So the answer is not in the Embrace It category, but more in the Stack Things in Front of It category. So I did. I bought a huge, comfortable chair with ottoman, and moved Ben's toy box alongside, and now have this messy sort of "Oh! Gosh is that a huge fireplace back there?" type of arrangement now. Like when people tear up their carpet and realize that they have hardwood underneath. That kind of tone.

The chair is there in a light green, and the toybox in brown. And still you see the access point over there to the left of the chair. Ugh. Its really bothering me.

Anyway, we have been doing a ton of traveling and I have a lot of stuff to say on the subject of friends, teething and rude-things-people-say-to-moms in the blog cooker, but... this big, no corners in my living room problem was just weighing heavy on my mind. So glad its off my chest! Stay tuned.