I know you're all dying to know what we decided to do with our living room after I asked for advice! We ended up going in a direction that we said we would never do.
We made the room more about the kids, and gave them more space.
We must really really love our kids and their creative play time... that's all I have to say!
Fynn got a table and chair set from his grandparents for his birthday, so we also needed to consider where to put those in the grand scheme of things. Once we realized that we could tuck away the entertainment center perfectly into a corner... the rest kind of worked itself out. While I think the room still looks too square with every piece of furniture flat against a wall, I keep telling myself the room will look completely different with our Christmas tree where the floor lamp is in a few weeks. And then after we take the tree down we might put the couch kitty corner with the floor lamp behind it. Just a thought...
Here's how it looks now:
I'd really like to still take more of your advice and get a huge canvas and let the kids go to town on it, then hang it on this wall. Plus some fabric around the slider would make pull it together more like a few of you said.
The focus is more on the kids, and less on the missing tv, so that's a bonus! They're really enjoying the "new" space.
So, ultimately it's still a work in progress, but we're getting there. Thanks for all the comments the other day and all the input!