an open house: family room

kitchen | backyard | laundry/hall | back bath & bedroom | front hall & bath | workroom | living room

Here's the current main sofa. I got the rug on my China trip, in Tibet. (I really should get that travel journal finished.)

The current home entertainment system. Xbox (actually my brother's), but no cable. Who has time anyway, especially when you have Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 to play?

The umbrella is not from Asia, but from the Chinatown in Hanford, California, where my grandma went to high school. My grandparents used to go to that Chinatown for entertainment (lottery tickets, etc.) so we stopped by during a memory-lane trip we took with them in the mid-nineties. In the little local history museum they had some of the very same lottery tickets. I need to make a travel journal for that trip, too.

The cane amongst the fireplace tools is my grandpa's; far as I know, it's stood there since he died in 1997. I like having it there; I hope my mom or aunt don't claim it as inheritance property any time soon.

A better view of the fireplace, complete with fake ivy wreath from Target. This section of the house was an add-on, built in the sixties sometime. The original house was just the two bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, and kitchen. That's it. Just as well, since my mom's family barely managed to afford it as was. It was one of the last two houses in the newly built subdivision that was still available, when my grandma's brother-in-law told them about it. His family bought the other one, down around the corner.

Anyway, this hearth/fireplace/chimney is amusingly similar to the one in my parents' house, which was also part of an add-on made about the same time. Ditto the one at my aunt's and uncle's. I kind of grew up unconsciously assuming that all fireplaces look like this.

That TV (mine, apartment vintage c2000) has component inputs, so is the one we plan to use long-term, but we haven't got things all set up yet.

My little four-foot fake tree fits quite nicely in the currently open space next to said television.

Fake plants, I'm telling you. They look great these days, and you don't have to water them or worry about them dying on you if you don't.