OK, FormerDoormat...now I am intensely jealous and full of admiration for your beautiful home. I live in an apartment and am strictly forbidden (as in - in the lease, bold print) from painting the walls. Your house is beautiful and oh so tidy. Decorative items are not big in my household because my kids - 10 and 7 - don't get decorative. They get functional. Especially my ADD 10 year old - they won't leave anything alone. I have tried to get them to understand to stay out of my room so I can have some small island of peace and tidyness but I am fighting hard. There are more of them than there are of me, and they have more energy....once more into the breach.....
But I decided after I bought my purple couch to start from there. The couch is the focus of the living room and I am gonna try to spiral out from there. Saturday I am gonna look for a new jazzy lamp to go next to the couch.....and maybe a nice dish full of colorful markers and colored pencils. Then, move over a few feet and invest in a nice rug. A few feet more and maybe a new/used entertainment center. The couch is the "plant" and all else will "vine" out from that in slow waves of growth....we shall see....
I have tons of books on decorating but no actual experience. My home growing up had nothing. It was bleak. I don't wanna do bleak anymore. So its gonna be a struggle.