Gulliver, There are some great posters on Smaller Homes forum. Come over and visit us too. Plenty of pics and suggestions. Also a search in the decorators forum will bring up a bunch of posts here to get you started. Do you have a photo of the room?

I love having a dedicated INformal dining room! Yes, it's 'The Dining Room,' but it's not formal. Long farm table, comfortable chairs, warm lighting, flooring and surfaces that won't get damaged by kids or spills. A really warm and welcoming place to eat meals as a family or with friends. The 'breakfast nook' has just never been my favorite. Even when the space is nice, the furniture is rarely of a caliber that brings joy to the users... I'd replace that with two comfortable wingback chairs and a tall side table -- the kind of place you could have a cup of coffee and read the paper, or sit with a glass of wine while your spouse makes dinner or cleans the kitchen. The other great use for a 'breakfast nook' IMO is as a kids' homework area or auxiliary baking table. Another great use for an unused dining room is (if you can close it off) as a TV room. Get the TV out of your family room and reclaim that space as a family gathering area without the constant racket of a TV.

Essenzza ignore issues of taste and home clutter. There is not one taste or one type of good style, and home decoration should be the artful arrangement of the ideas and functions YOU want in your home. The issue I find, with family photos, is that small framed ones wash out when viewed from far away, and there is a limit to how many large family photos you want displayed prominently in your home and where. My husband, god bless him, insists on large family photos on the shelving unit across from our bed in our small bedroom. His family is constantly staring at me! He finds it comforting, I find it a little less than restful. But I can live with it. So that's an example. I'd feel the same way about a large family photo in a living room or family room over a fireplace. It's just too much like "The Smith's survey the room!" On the other hand, slightly smaller in a less prominent space surrounded by some more casual shots, it might be "Remember those happy times when we were all together!" But anyway, I think you are talking about a collection of smaller photos. The issue with those is you can't really see them unless you can get up close to them, which is why I would not put them on either side of the TV. Given that parameter, I would put up a display shelf under the "Eat" sign in the dining room. Then I would either put the stuff on the dining room credenza on the shelf and put a collection of family photos in a mixture of nice frames on the credenza, OR put the family photo mixture on the shelf. I have seen both done well in dining room inspiration photos which you could probably find by googling "dining room family photos arrangement on shelf" or some such thing or by searching Houzz photos. That way people can stand up close to the photos and look at them if they want, and yet the montage still looks good from a distance. Again, I would shoot for more casual photos, not a dominant set of people staring straight ahead. I have a two-photo frame with a picture of both my grandmothers staring straight ahead on a credenza in my dining room, along with my tea set in an arrangement. That level of personal display is not overwhelming and doesn't dominate the look of the room and they are accompanied by other decorative elements so their steely gaze is softened by that somewhat! :)

I love that colorful pop and it looks great with your furniture. Can’t tell from the photo angle if it’s centered with the wall, centered with the light fixture? Ideally both are in the center. Your hanging plant will allow you to cheat a little on the exact measurements. Nice change!