A New Place to Play

Our living room serves many purposes. Hang out place. Project station. Reading area. It also serves as Emma Grace's playroom for most of the day. I'm okay with this arrangement, but it has been kind of a pain to continually corral her toys and find new places for the larger ones to live. Slowly, the toys have been taking over the family area.

I knew we needed a better solution. Luckily, just a bit of thinking solved this problem!

Our living room is nice and big. Very spacious. However, there's a fireplace smack dab in the middle of the wall the TV goes on, so the entertainment center had to be placed to one side. This means the furniture has been arranged in a rectangle in that area, which is fine because it's plenty big. However, it left this awkward space behind our couch that we just weren't sure what to do with.

This space has been used for many things - storage, Christmas village, Goodwill pile, toys. It's too small to serve as an extra dining or seating area, but too large to be ignored. Well, Emma Grace's toy problem got me thinking, and now we've found the perfect use for that extra space:

A play area! This is just the result of one night's work with things we already had, but I'm hoping to spruce it up a little more over the next few weeks. But for now, this is a big improvement!