Are we sisters? I've always wanted a sister! My mom was a terrific secretary, used shorthand forever, and I took Gregg note hand in high school; it got me through my college lectures (and now I use it to write secret notes to myself but not in Danish LOL) and my brother does photography. My aunt will add one or two very nice seasonal ornaments to her display, not tchotchke-looking, but just to make a cohesive whole, refreshed for the season. For example, right now she replaced a bowl with a gorgeous, kind of realistic porcelain rabbit. It can be fun to use things in new places!

Ignoring the whole north-facing, dark room issue for a moment. How do you want your family room to look? Whatever you end up with, it has to be something that you like, not just what designers say you should do. All the color advice in the world is useless if you don't like the colors, shades or tones recommended. So my gut feeling is that if you mostly like creamy walls with white trim, then that's what you should do in this family room, instead of trying to embrace darker colors. Creamy, warm, white walls will certainly brighten this space, while darker walls may make you feel it is too dark. Short-term, a lighter colored area rug or two will brighten up the floor and make the room seems brighter and airier. Long-term, I'd invest in more lighting. Two chandeliers, if the room size is large enough. Wall scones, definitely. And a few floor and table lamps for task lighting. You've got dark floors. Stick to light colors on the walls and mid-tones for the furniture. I moved in to a house with one room painted a dark, navy blue. It wasn't cozy, it didn't warm up the room. The color just made the room dark. And no matter how many lamps I added to the room, the wall color just seemed to soak up all the light. It was either paint, or saw the room off the house. So my advice is that if you like light-colored walls, putting up a darker color in an already dark room will not work for you.

Hot hot hot, here!

just ended a very cold and dreary day (w/rain) in AZ. too cold to stand in the kitchen to do dishes or cook. Tomorrow I'm gonna put on a pot of spaghetti soup. I was thinking I couldn't do it w/out some ground beef, then remembered that the last time I made it with it, I didn't like the taste of it. So I'm gonna go ahead and make it without meat. I'm switching to grass fed beef and will need to try it with that (when I buy some more). We have several more days here of this really cold weather, then it'll warm up. but that doesn't mean it's over for the winter, we'll get it again in the next 2 months. I'm going to freeze soup for when that hits us again.