Living Room: Design

One of my current goals is to make our house feel more like a home. We built this house while we were engaged in 2006 and moved  in at the end of that year when we got married. We did some basic furnishing but decorating has never been one of my strengths. I regret some of the decisions that I made early on and that has made me fearful of going any further. We unfortunately had to get rid of a lot of our belongings when we moved in 2009. We lived in a 2 bedroom apartment and rented our house out while we were gone. Now that we are back, I want to overcome my fear of decorating. I have read a few websites and blogs over the last year or so in anticipation of working on this goal.

We spent the last week rehabilitating our front landscaping. It is 95% done. I am just waiting on certain flowers to be stocked at my favorite garden store. I'll post pictures when I am completely finished (though I forgot to take "before" pictures.) Dan and I also ordered new chairs for our dining room yesterday and I should get them in a few weeks.

That brings me to the living room. It baffles me. I have no idea what to do to make it feel more like home. Let me give you a visual.

We'll pretend like my house is oriented like the floor plan image. The north and west walls are painted red and the south and east walls are painted a light tan color. The light bouncing off of the red walls makes the tan walls look pink. (That is one of the big mistakes I made a few years ago.) I really want to paint over the red walls in the living room, but Dan claims he won't assist me.

Right now, we have a wide chair on the north wall and a sofa & spin bike on the west wall facing a tv & ladder bookcase on the east wall. The southeast corner is home to Liam's jumperoo, playmat and a bin of burp cloths & toys. The chair and sofa were given to us secondhand when we got married and I'd like to replace them with a nice, fabric sectional. (We have leather furniture now. Dan doesn't like it because it gets really hot.) We could also use an ottoman, especially one with storage. We need to save up some money for the big ticket items before making those purchases though. Once Liam gets bigger, I want to put a child sized table & chairs in the southeast corner. I think a cozy reading chair in a fun pattern might be nice there, too.

New furniture is at least a year away, so I have to make due with what we have. I am having a really hard time bringing color and life into the living room. There aren't any windows to decorate with curtains and I love our carpet too much to put a rug on it. I am no longer in love with our pillow cases on the couch. We bought them while in Kuwait and they have worn out pretty quickly. I just ordered some Amy Butler fabric to sew some new pillow cases.

The south wall in the room is reserved for projecting movies, so anything that goes there has to be easy to remove. I have 3 collage picture frames hanging above the couch. Even though they are good sized, the 9' tall dwarfs them. They really aren't the right scale for the room. I want to get 2 huge picture frames for the north wall, though I'm not sure exactly what to hang in them. Maybe some of my photographs.

I could also put accessories on the plant shelf and ladder bookcase, but I am at a total loss there.

Suggestions welcome and highly appreciated!