Show us Where you Live-Dining Rooms

This week we are showing dining rooms. Until recently this room

was a playroom/catchall room. It resembled nothing of a dining room because really, we don't need a formal dining room. But now that the girls are getting into school and we have lots of family/friends over during the fall months (holidays and birthdays), we decided it'd be nice to not only have extra seating (for parties and such) but also to have a place where the girls can work on school work. At this age, it's really just a clean space (where we don't really ever eat, hence why it's usually clean) where they can practice writing letters and coloring. Plus, it opens up to our living room (as you can see in this photo)


That tiny sliver of a room you can see to the left of that door is our living room. Our couch sits on the back wall looking directly into this room, so I can sit there or play with the other kids in there while my big girls work.
Yeah, I can't lie. I was also tired of seeing a bunch of toy clutter in my front room (that's also right off our front door). I would much rather see a clean place with pretty pictures and decorations. And decorate I did (at least the table). This is my centerpiece (I guess this is what I'll call it) for fall. The Blessings sign was an impulse buy while at Hobby Lobby with my husband. I know that detail seems insignificant, but I just wanted the record to show that my husband came to Hobby Lobby with me one Friday evening.

This is a few from the bay windows area. To the right is an old stereo from my Mema's house. I used to listen to a bunch of old 60's music (on actual records) on this thing during my summers at Mema's! Yes, I thought I was so cool doing this. I digress...

Anyway, on either side of the two-toned beige wall you can see the real dining room--aka our breakfast nook. But this is where all the action happens. I would love to knock that beige wall down, but that is actually one of the four walls where our 1/2 bathroom is. So, that won't work!

And this is a shot of our magic place. You'll have to excuse the cowboy/picnic theme. This isn't actually anything I usually have up; it was how I decorated the table for my daughter's 5th birthday a few weeks ago. It's actually still looking like this minus the balloons and the red and white checkered table cloth.

We do actually have 8 chairs to this bad boy--that was the main selling feature for us since our family (when we bought this set) was already up to 6. Now it's up to 7. It's hard to believe that we could really only seat one extra person at our table if all kids were in real chairs and not highchairs. CRAZY!

In the years to come, I hope I can add a china closet/hutch to my formal room. I know there are some family pieces (from both sides) I'd love to put in there. Plus, I want one with tons of storage below so that I can have a place to tuck away all of my place mats (and other dining room stuff of course).

See you next week when we do kitchens (?)