One possibility would be to swap the living room and the dining room. Since the current living room is larger than the current dining room you could still keep some comfortable seating (couch and upholstered chairs?) against the front wall for a keeping room/dining concept. Then your new dining areas (kitchen and dining room) and living areas (living and drawing room) would have good flow between them, which would work well both for family and entertaining. You could also add some builtin bookshelves in the drawing room or new living room to create a library area to add another fun element to the living areas. These bookshelves could be against the long walls in the drawing room, around the window with a window seat in the living room (former dining room), or built to create some separation in the open area between the drawing room and living room/stair area. Your plan seems to show some sort of builtin there, but I'm not sure what it is.

Thank you roj leather and Simon for your recommendations. I like the hanging chair and the almanda creeper on the wall. This will certainly liven up the patio.

You could also bring in some texture with bamboo sticks or decorative branches and help balance a bit the height of your room with small scale furniture. Spray paint them if you find the perfect size and shape but they aren't the color that you need. Ikea carries white decorative stalks for a very good price. the ones in the 1st picture hold well with small kids around and you don't need a vase for them. there are washi paper or crinkly paper floor lamps with a soft beautifully diffused glow For a budget friendly version check ikea or target http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80028552/

This Cabinet is $155 at Ikea. You could take the 4 items you had hung, and put them in a "shadow box", or individual deep frames to tie then together, to create I piece that looks more substantial on the wall, Then add a little ledge for photos, and you would even have room on the cabinet for the cool bottles that were on the floor, and that cool chest could definitely find a home as an end table, or entry table. You could also add a larger plant in a really nice pot in turquoise. The cut and paste renditions arent always completely accurate in scale.