Feng shui isn't so hard, when you remember the most basic tenet: If the space makes you feel good, it's right.

We're using our Ikea furniture (and way cool paper lamps) to create a warm conversation space in our living room. Last night, we put up the Ivar (Ikea's modular pine system) bookcase and put books and stuff (including our galloping horse sculpture, a gift from my old boss, Dr. Kuo, symbolizing the way our success should go charging forward) on the shelves. The set-up uses three of the Ivar end-pieces, so it makes two sets of shelves, side by side. Like this: [—|—] The shelves on the two sides don't line up, so we don't have any harsh horizontal lines across it. Then, to make interesting space and to display our knick-knacks in a way that doesn't make them look like cluttered knick-knacks, we would fill a shelf most of the way with books, but leave a space at one end or the other for some special item (like the horse, or my little stuffed Tigger). It was very much like laying out a two-column newspaper story with pictures; both deal with flow.

We're using the Ivar-built coffee table (only way to get one low enough to sit at) to form a boundary between the living room and the now-extant hallway. That makes the living room into this cozy little space in front of the fireplace. We'll fill it with big pillows, and everybody can come over to lounge on the floor with us. ^_^