When my parents came up a couple of weeks ago, they brought us the fruits of some of their own auctioning endeavors. Among these finds, a piece of what I like to call Furniture for Grown Ups. It’s a real china cabinet, only if you look closely you will see that we’re only a one shelf-worth of fancy kind of people:

I like it though. I don’t have enough fancy stuff to fill a whole piece of Furniture for Grown Ups. Instead I put books and pictures and other things I like on the other shelf. There are games in the drawers. And our formal dining room with museum-like window treatments? It’s still there, but here’s our amazing secret to de-formalizing a formal room in lickety-split time:

You add a coat cubbie to one side, a couple of book shelves full of school books, a few wall maps and presto: instant casualizing of the formal dining room. And that table stacked with piles and such? That’s not there because we just moved. It’s there because now, and only now, does this room feel like home. *grin*