The big rectangle

It's amazing how much just changing the paint color will change a room.

When we first started talking about our plans for making this house feel like ours, we prioritized by which projects would make the most impact.  In my head I knew that paint changed everything, but I didn't really know it in my heart until I actually saw it.

Our entry, dinning, and living area is basically a giant rectangle, under a cathedral ceiling, with a kitchen stuck on to the side of it.

Here's a picture of our living room before:

I'm standing in the dinning area near the kitchen.  When it's tile v. hardwood, tile will win every time.  It's just so easy to clean. When you live in the trees and the hills and the snow, you clean floors a lot.

Yes, tile is hard...and cold.  But right about the first time we got snow, I made friends with it.  Because I wasn't worried about how tile would hold up under melted snow, mud, and wood chips.  We're good now.

Here's what the living room looks like today:

I know, right?!  It looks so different!  All we did was paint.  Well, and move our stuff in.

The closed stained door in the middle is the laundry room, to the left of that is the master.  Then to the right are the stairs leading up to the loft and the girls' rooms, then the Ks are sort of in the entry way.

The wood leaning against the wall is actual barn wood left over from when my in-laws built their barn in 1978.  We don't have a mantle, so at Christmas, we hung our stockings on it.  It's been leaning against the wall in random places ever since.   

The basket on the floor by the couch is our electronics basket.  It has a power strip inside, and All The Things are plugged in there at night.  All The Cords are inside the basket and when I don't want to look down into the basket and see them, I just gently lay a pillow inside and cover it all up.  Honey drilled a hole in the side of the basket big enough to put the power strip plug through.  I LOVE IT.  When I find random electronics, cords, ear buds, charger cords laying around the house, they go directly in the basket.  LOVE.

Do you have a charging station at your house?  How do you corral All The Things when they need to be charged?