Hidden Space

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges I have with our house is a lack of wall space - which bugs me most when I want to rearrange furniture but cannot because what we have in each room will literally ONLY fit that one way. The room this is most annoying in is the living room, which is somewhat of a tight fit with the couch, ottoman, recliner and bookshelf that we've made at home in there. The couch can only fit on the wall in front of the windows, as seen in this old picture -


And since the only other full wall in the room has a fireplace on it (which does not work and never will), I quickly had to curb my dreams of styling a mantle a la Domino Magazine and let it hold the TV instead -


In an effort to pretty-up said unworking fireplace after we moved in, Mrs. Lawler gifted me this awesome candelabra -

Then, today in a fit of boredom I was thinking about ordering a magazine subscription to yet another cooking publication, and my thoughts wandered... I thought about how much I adore magazines (really, it's almost an illness), I thought about the dozen or so subscriptions I already have (remember how I said it's almost an illness?), I thought about how much Dan despises the stacks of magazines ALL over the house (hey, I read every single one cover to cover), and finally I thought about how I recently realized I either need to start getting rid of some of my beloved magazines (gasp!) or start coming up with more creative ways to keep them tidy.

Then I found this is a quick google search -


HMM. These neat little stacks of books steer completely away from cluttered and head right on over to clever, chic, and even a little quirky in my eyes. While I'm not sure 2 piles of magazines would fit side by side in our rinky-dink fireplace, I'm picturing my stack of Real Simple's with their clean thick spines, maybe topped with a picture frame or a chunky animal paperweight like the image above, and some kind of decorative item next to them... and I'm pretty sure it would look fantastic.

Oh, and for the record, the day I can convince Dan to let me wallpaper a single thing in our house, I will probably go straight for the fireplace, thanks to the outstanding simple pattern in the one above. (At least, I think that's wallpaper...?)

Also, I did not order the new magazine, even though it was only $3 and I put it in my virtual shopping cart 4 times before I finally stopped myself. You're welcome Dan.