Toward the end of Week 3, my landing strip

I bought my landing strip about a month ago, and despite it simplicty, I really like it. It doubles as my dining table. It's set just inside the door. The one problem I encountered with it is I don't open it up as a table for dinner parties until my guests have arrived and gotten comfy. It acts as a landing strip for them, too, so before dinner, we have to relocate all their purses and such to the coffee table or floor so we can move and open the table.



I store my napkins and linens in the drawers, and use the topmost drawer closest the door to hold my dog's leash, a flashlight for night-time dog walks, some plastic baggies for her business, and my keys.

I'm also going to seriously consider getting hooks for just inside the door. I'm just wary of installing something permanent to a space that needs to remain flexible.

In the meantime, I'm also contemplating my front room.

My front room is:
A living/TV/rec room
A gym
A dining room (for sit-down dinners for up to 6 or casual lunches for 6-8)
A library

When it’s not being pushed into duty as a dining room or gym, it likes to pretend to be a living room. It offers seating, a TV, and a plethora of books. The trouble is it feels more like a waiting room instead of a sitting room; it’s as if it were just a transitional space, like people go there just before being shuffled off to somewhere else. I think part of it is that all the furniture is pushed up against the wall, leaving a void large enough for a toddler’s tumbling routine in the middle instead of inviting intimate conversation. Granted, I do my yoga, kickboxing, and free weight circuit training in the middle of the room (when I’m pretending to be healthy), but ... that’s just an hour or so of a day. I need to consider it, though. A gym membership isn't an option. So, I’ve been continuing to scoot my furniture cutouts around my grid paper floor plan for the past two weeks, and so far, nothing’s inspired a Eureka. Sweetly, Hun tried valiantly to help suggest plans, a few of which were surprisingly innovative. My creative and skilled friend W is going to swing by on Sunday to help me scoot actual furniture around the actual room in an attempt to find a working arrangement.

Speaking of arrangements, this past weekend's flower arrangements have really kept me cheery. Maya's Farm at the farmers' market didn't have any, so I picked up a sale bouquet from Safeway and split it in two, placing the soothing white flowers in my bedroom and the bright and happy yellow and orange flowers on my kitchen counter. I photographed them with my camera phone and shared the love with my phone book.