Hi everyone, it's a long time since you first started helping me plan and I now have 3 good plans to choose between. As before the biggest decision to whether to open the kitchen to the living room.

I don't know whether I'm being swayed by current design trends to open floor plans or by my fear of it just not fitting into the style of the house, or me not being good with change, but I am still hesitant to open the kitchen to the LR. Please help me decide by answering these questions:
1) am I destroying the little architectural design of this 1950 ranch by opening it, especially when I already have a large FR?

2) the house is quiet most of the year, as no kids are roaming its just me and DH,

3) the DR is at one end of the LR and we do use the DR for entertaining often, with large parties several times a year. Most of the prep work is done before the parties, so I want to keep the line of sight from friends feeling like they have to help with dishes, which means some separation of DR and Kitchen.

4) most of the time I like the idea of opening closest to the DR so that I can talk my DH watching tv in the FR, or working at the DR table. During parties That design would work if I could put up some kind of sliding wall to hide the counter during parties.

5)the photo is the current layout, but I've shown the 2 options for opening the wall. The plan with The box labelled A opens with the best view to the yard ( which I couldn't see while cooking). A would also close the door to the bedrooms near the front door and change the traffic flow from the garage (noted in red).

The plan withnthe opening as Box B opens closer to the DR so I wouldn't be as separate from the rest of the house.

Can you provide me with some therapy, or at least some criticism to help me decide on whether to open the existing wall?