Moving furniture around (& the holidays?)

First of all, thank you SO much for your thoughts on the veggie garden! I am so excited! It sounds like the Square Foot Gardening technique works great, so that�s what I�m going to try.

Onto the purpose of this post. I blame this one on The Nester. Darn it, I love her, but her post about moving furniture around the other day caused me to push very large and heavy sofas around our family room for hours this evening. Over and over. Large. And heavy.

Her post got me thinking � I don�t move our furniture around very often. Very often meaning never. The open layout of our home doesn�t allow for it � it�s pretty much one way for most rooms. But after The Nester�s post, I got a bug to rework our guest room and I LOVE it. (I�ll show you that soon.)

I�ve mentioned before that our family room layout kind of drives me batty. The room is BIG � about 16 by 14 feet at the smallest points � but the way the fireplace, windows, and cable/surround system outlets are laid out, there�s not much working with it.

We have always had the furniture �floating� in the room, which I do like, but it makes for very cramped cozy actual living space:

(Excuse the poor picture, it�s the only one I could find that showed the angle. I was too busy pushing furniture around to take a before pic.)

Then I read that blasted inspiring post and thought � maybe there is hope for a fresh, open look in our family room! Maybe I too can push some large and heavy stuff around and it will happen!

Well, it didn�t. Kind of. Not really. Maybe a little. I have issues.

I moved everything out of the space, and just tried all kinds of options. I�ve tried putting a sofa in front of the window before and it has just never worked. Did I mention our sofas are LARGE? I tried it again � twice. Still didn�t work. Same house Sarah, it didn�t get bigger!

Then I tried pulling a chair from the office and considered moving the loveseat into the office. I actually liked it, but hubs pointed out only one person could lay on a couch and watch TV. My hubby doesn�t dislike my changes often, so when he mentions something like that, I respect it. The loveseat stayed.

I tried it against this wall that I just showed you last week (again) and moved the hall table behind the larger sofa. Loved the table behind the sofa, didn�t love the loveseat way across the room. It was just weird. I felt like we�d be yelling at each other to have a conversation and it just felt odd.

After about 90 minutes, I moved the furniture back to the way we had the room when we moved in years ago:

Hmmm? What�s that? It doesn�t look different? I know. It doesn�t much. But it is enough of a change to tide me over until we get new furniture someday.

All I ended up doing (after ALL THAT) was switching the large sofa and the loveseat. We�ve done that before. But this time, I also turned the rug as well. So before, it was orientated towards the TV:

Now, it is placed so wider,with the large sofa:

It does make for more space where we wanted space:

There are things I still don�t love, like this expanse of �back of sofa�:

What I do love is it feels like there is SO much more room near our kitchen table now. And wow! Our floors look CLEAN! :)

Another part I�m not nuts about is that the sofa is so close to the window treatments, it makes them look smooshed, even though it�s not smooshing them:

What I do love is this drape is about an inch shorter than the other one and now no one will ever know.  :) I made them myself and they�re not perfect. The inch difference always drove me mad, but now you can�t even see it. ;)

I was trying to get rid of the fact that we have to walk around a sofa to get into this space:

But I still love how cozy it feels. And flipping the sofas puts the shorter loveseat near the walkway, which gives us more open space here:

I�m also not thrilled the printed rug isn�t perfectly centered � the loveseat covers a lot of it, but it has to.

So. many. issues.

I do like the slight change though:

What do you think? My back hurts. Be kind. I�m not moving them back. ;)

Are you a furniture mover-arounder? Sometimes it�s all for naught. (Did I just say �for naught?�) But it can make your room feel like a whole new space when it works!

In other exciting news, I�m so stinking excited to announce I�ll be contributing a project to Matthew Mead�s upcoming holiday publication. I could die. I mean, I asked if they meant to write to ME when they sent me the email. (Seriously.) I�m giddy! Giddy to be involved, and a teensy bit giddy I get to think about Christmas already.

Yeah, I said it.

Holiday with Matthew Mead is a "book-azine" celebrating and offering inspiration for the Christmas holiday season. It will be released in October of this year and it is offered via online orders only -- in limited quantities -- and will not be sold on newsstands. But, by simply following the BUY HOLIDAY MAGAZINE link below their banner, you can reserve your own copy of this beautiful magazine, with guaranteed delivery of the magazine straight to your mailbox!  Holiday with Matthew Mead will be144 pages of holiday inspiration with well-known and admired designers, bloggers and top-notch features, printed on beautiful paper and not drowning in ads! Yahoo!

Matthew is having a super fantastic giveaway that starts tomorrow. YOU TOO could be involved in this awesome project! To see more, check out Holiday with Matthew Mead to find out how you can win the opportunity to have your blog or online shop mentioned in the magazine.

Head on over for your chance to win! (Click below!):

Giveaway starts tomorrow! Have a great Monday!