Is it still a sitting room if no one sits there?

One of my dad's gripes about our old house was that we didn't have a sitting room. You know, a place without a tv where you can read a book quietly. I don't think we have an opportunity to read quietly that much-but it's not because of lack of a space. It's more because of the two munchkins that create a less than tranquil environment...

In any case, we had the living room furniture from our house in Evanston, so we figured we throw a small formal living room in the front of the house, in the same place in the floorplan as it was in Evanston. You walk in the front door and you see the two least used spaces in the house (dining room and living room)-perfect!

When we moved into the house about 2 months ago, I threw the living room furniture in it's place and promptly decided to forget about it. There were more pressing concerns-dining room, family room, kid's rooms. Pretty much anything else.

Then last week I looked at the room and thought, "Wow. This room looks sad." But I realized that with just a little "ditzing" (as my Crate & Barrel design peeps used to say), that it could look so much better.

Here is the room before:





Here's the current state of the space after a little shopping and rearranging:







Here's what I did: I headed to West Elm and picked up a rug on sale for $199, a lamp and some silver figurines from Home Goods (total cost about $80) and hung the starburst mirror from the Evanston house. The mirror had never a found in our old Arlington house and I almost sold it, but am glad I didn't. It may not be in this place forever, but it's definitely a nice addition to the room for the time being. I also played around with the shelving to make it less "officey". I plan on filling them in a bit more, but for now I threw in some vases that I already had-the blue ones are Crate & Barrel and the little white one is a Jonathon Adler.

The room feels much warmer and more finished now and I can leave it be for another 6 months until I have the time to go back to it.