The scene of many future gags

Our living room is the place where we do the most...well...living.  I think this is why it was the first room that we painted and the one that I have been tweaking the most since we moved in.  I waited for a while to take the final shot to post because I keep changing things in there, but since there is no clear point where I will be finished, I just went ahead and took these.  I like how the couch balances the very long room and provides enough seating so that we don't have to figure out how to arrange a chair in the layout.  The floors are nice enough that we only need a small rug for the coffee table, so it worked out that all of our stuff fit perfectly in the room.  I am envisioning lots of future family photos, and maybe even a full showgirl/juggler/elephant display in our 138th Show Spectacular.

As to the built-ins around the TV, I have to give pretty much all of the inspiration credit to Young House Love on these shelves.  They painted the backs of their built-ins in pretty much the same color (Martha Stewart Plumage) and it was such an amazing idea that I had to use it!  They also inspired me to make a little time capsule of mementos from our UK trip in a sealed mason jar on the right as well as a collection of business cards from all the Top Chef restaurants that we have visited in a vase on the left.

To finish out the look, I used the white objects I have been slowly accumulating to place in front of the dark color, then I grabbed all of the books in our collection that were white/cream or turquoise to get myself started placing objects.  I had to add my beautiful vase from Anthropologie with teal and coral because I just love it so much, so I pulled a couple of things with the reddish color to make it fit in the scheme.  One of my favorite arrangements is the full collection of the Series of Unfortunate Events books that I stumbled on in my local Goodwill, which made for a fun pop of color at the base of the shelves on the right.  So far I like the balance and the layout, although I'm sure it will change as time passes and new objects are found/acquired since I would love to use these highly visible shelves to display all of our favorite things over the years!