Assuming they hired a professional designer to do the model living room, what I see is that under the best of circumstances, that living room is awkwardly set up. In the model room, there is space for three, maybe 4 people to sit. Only one seat directly faces the TV set. Look at the furniture in that room. One small sofa or loveseat. One armchair. One TV stand. One end table. One large coffee table that was chosen to fill up the empty space in the center of the room to make it look more furnished. Imagine that room without the coffee table and it starts to look a lot like the OP�s room. There are three lamps, one of which appears to block part of the TV. And then at least 4 plants, to make the room appear more furnished and welcoming. I think they did a wonderful job making that room look open and inviting, and hiding the more obvious flaws in the design of the room. The room�s layout simply doesn�t function well. Either you have the sofa on the wall in the model room, and then you have a hard time watching TV, or you put the sofa on the window wall so you can see the TV set, and then you lose the view out the windows and have an awkward layout. OP, it�s not you. It�s the room. Working with the furniture you have, the first thing I�d do is take out the two small chairs. They don�t work with the rest of the furniture. Then I�d try to put the sofa on the wall where it is in the model room, and buy a table top TV swivel stand so that you could easily watch TV from there. Move the blue chair to the same position as the woven chair in the model picture and place an end table between the sofa and the chair. Down the line, look for a coffee table similar to the one in the model picture�glass or Lucite to keep the space looking open, and slightly oversized to fill the space better. And maybe a smaller unit to hold the TV.

wp Thank you...I love all kinds of plants - seems like mostly ones that are so hard to grow in our cold North:) While I dislike and worry about any kind of diseases and bugs like mealy, scale and so on and on and on, they will never live with me in (almost) sterile environment - and in natural habitat they don't either. I strive to be as clean as possible and vigilant enough to spot infection, if any, at the early stage. But I can't obsess about a fly, a spider, a grasshopper, or a bird hopping around and even checking if nest should be made in-around-under or next to one of my plants! I watched blue jay hiding peanuts in one of my pots - marvelous how smart those birds are, they remember where their stash is! - and worry about taking it indoors :) I curse sometimes at cute little chipmunks that like digging in any of the pots!, and find little nibbling (mostly of succulent leaves) here and there annoying - but to me, that's what the nature is all about. I enjoy the fauna as much as the flora - so it is all good. Great that you have outdoor space, definitely put your plants out there. Intensity of sun is already dropping, but they (plants) will still benefit greatly. I think we have at least 6 weeks, and hopefully much more before the "great migration". Rina

I didn't think everyone was being overly critical, I like to hear others opinions on what to do. I think it was more what was being said had me thinking this area looked way worse than I thought was the case...I knew it wasn't anything spectacular which is why I'm trying to get opinions on what are some other ideas to bring it together maybe. The rock border was put there when I first started messing with this area and everywhere I dug was another big rock..I literally dug out thousands of rocks from yard and I'm not exaggerating! And the majority of the rocks were ginormous boulders to where I had to rent a bobcat just to move them to another potion of my yard. So when the bed was very small and no forsythia bush was planted I made the little border wall with the rocks to try and do something with them to make some sort of something to make the bed look like it had its own area..now that I planted the ice plant and lillies, I agree the rocks don't really serve a purpose so I will just remove them. I do agree with that. As far as the moving bulbs and attaching ribbon per color that's a great idea! I also agree the bed is too small...you have to understand that where I love to make huge flower beds and have lots of little areas in my yard to look at, my DH is not as enthusiastic about it (it's to the point I have to hide receipts from the nursery so he doesn't give me crap about it lol "NO MORE PLANTS!!!") so I started small with this..but I agree it just looks off as far as size..which again is why I come to all of you with my questions because I know something is off and don't really know where to start to make it all come together nicely...you ALL have given me some great ideas and I will find a way to make this look better with keeping those ideas at the forefront. As far as the maple goes, I 100% think it's the reason I have so many struggles with planting remotely close to it..along with it being ugly IMO. I have a maple in my side yard you can see in my pics above, it's the giant tree to the left in the first pic. I LOVE that tree! It has so many curvy limbs and the fall colors are spectacular! But this problem tree has no esthetics to it whatsoever along with being in a stupid spot(not from me I swear! Lol, it was here when I moved here!!) and along with the money I waste when I plant things in its path and they die from this tree taking its nutrients..I had to move one of my climbing roses last year because it wasn't doing as well as its counterpart, which I thought was due to it receiving less sun than the other. But when I dug it up it had the maples roots wrapped around its own roots! I hope it bounces back in its new location..it seems to be leafing out..just a lot slower. I wanted to put a crab tree in the location but the type I wanted doesn't seem to be anywhere? So I was thinking about a pink weeping cherry, or maybe a redbud? I wanted something that flowers..I already have some dogwood trees but it doesn't flower that great as I hoped..although it is fairly young(4 years) . And my neighbors all have these pretty flowering trees that I'd love to have. But don't want too many issues...do you guys know of a tree that gets around 20-30 feet high that also gets wide as well that flowers and seems to do ok in full sun zone 5b MA climate?

jojoco, I love the colors you've chosen! About the roof, I've always thought that pieces of reed (the kind used to weave baskets) would make a cool roofing material on a small house. It would look more like cedar roofing though, so probably not for your application unless you like the look. Here are some of my scrap pieces of reed arranged so you might be able to envision what I'm talking about... I only had the single 1" piece handy, and the others are 1/2" stacked like roofing materials would be. Sorry it's sideways. :p I think sandpaper is a great idea. To make it thicker, back the sandpaper with mat board or foam board. You could even skip the sandpaper and custom-make your shingles. For architectural style, I'd choose the base material for thickness, cut to shingle size, slather on glue and sprinkle it with sand. Could use colored sand or even paint it. For texture you can use things like fiber paste, etc.