Houses, houses, houses

Just exhausted from looking at 5 houses today! 4 of them were "buy" houses, 1 was a rental. It looks like we'll be going for the rental. Besides it being cheaper on a monthly basis, it was also in better shape than the other houses we looked at. My goodness, what a lot of work needed to be done to some of them! This rental house also needs work, the kitchen especially could use a big makeover, but otherwise it's in pretty good shape. A lick of paint will do miracles.
The weird thing is though, that our living room gets smaller with every move we make. We first lived in a house in Utrecht which had a nice L shaped living room with plenty of space, but only two bedrooms and with a shower in a closet. Our present house has 4 bedrooms, and a decent (but brown colored) bathroom, and a much smaller living room. And the new rental has an even smaller living room but bigger bedrooms and also a bigger garden.
So where are we supposed to stall all the company that we get so often (ok then, not that often, but still... I like to be hospitable!)?!? We'll be bulging out of the house every time we decide to celebrate someones birthday, or we'll be forced to celebrate everybodies birthday on a sunny day in july when we can fill up the garden with people as well.
I guess every house has it's advantages and disadvantages and a dream house on our budget is not very realistic. But I'm kind of having a hard time giving up the idea of having a bigger living area. Gives me a closed in feeling, despite the fact that there are fields, forests and even lakes pretty close to the house.