Truly a "Family" Room

I don't know how we would live without our family room. It was once our garage and we had a much smaller family room. But, we had 3 children who, along with my hubby and me, were joiners. We always had a crowd at our house be it from church, cheer leading, Anchor club, Girl Scouts or just friends and family. We were usually a large group and we needed more room.

It is kind of a funny story how the new room came about. One day my husband happened upon a build-in fireplace on sale at a DIY store going out of business. So unlike him, but he bought it-without a clue what he would do with it. He stacked ALL of the boxes in our garage and that was that...until, one day he bumped into someone he had helped with a tax problem (for free) at a gas station. He asked how he was and the guy said he was keeping busy installing a fireplace in his house. Hubby relates his story, guy offers to help install ours but when hearing we don't have a place for it, he offers to also help enclose our garage and the rest, as they say, is history!!!

It took this man and my husband many, many months of weekend work to finally get the room done. My husband really doesn't know anything about construction, but I guess he takes orders well-and must be a quick learner-because he would get "homework" on Sunday afternoons and have it done by the time work was to start again the next Saturday. The room is still standing, so I guess they did fine.

When the room was first built, it was very country with a full brick fireplace and hearth. Over the years, my taste changed and the red bricks went to white and then eventually I covered them with a Venetian stucco as they are now. This is my favorite look but I am feeling the need to change the color and possibly the mantle. Just wish I could get off the fence about a color!!

When I first decorated for late autumn, I tried putting tall, real candles in these sconces. It didn't take more than one night of trying to not only light but then blow out at bedtime and I was online ordering these from PB. They were WAY TOO expensive, but sometime you have to bite the bullet. These are a graduated orange to rusty orange color, so I think I will use them from my late summer decor through Thanksgiving. I am hoping I can find some a bit less expensive in red for Christmas and Valentine's Day and then I will go back to the light green ones I bought last year for Easter and spring. The other thing I love about them is that they are programmable. I have mine set for the 3 hour time slot we are most likely to be in this room in the evenings. I had really hoped to get the ones with the remote control but they weren't available in the color and size that I needed. 

I am still loving the new sign I made. This was totally a FREE project and I had so much fun doing it!
I am glad I like things rustic and beaten up because then there really is no right or wrong-the shabbier, the better! I got that big, ole realistic looking pumpkin at Michael's in Dade City when we were down there the other day and the large brown candle holder is from PB at the end of last season, so a bargain! Actually, the urn and the lights are from PB also-I love that place!

Wish I had waited to take this picture because there is now a big, beautiful pot of fresh mums filling that crock.

That is about it for the family room but when the lights are on, the candles are lit and there is a fire going in the fireplace, I really don't want to be any place else! More to come. Stay tuned.