Boys Room Swap

There are four bedrooms upstairs- two for the girls and two for the boys.  When we moved in the boys opted to share one room for sleeping and keep one room for toys.  For a variety of reasons, last week we embarked on the long and painful process of swapping rooms- their beds into the toy room and aaaaalllllll the stuff into the back room.  Funny that the great reshuffling of all the stuff is happening the week of Thanksgiving- we've been here before. 

Here are the before pictures- the back room has carpet which is preferred for sitting on the floor playing with LEGOs, but it is a bit smaller and because of the window and door placement, doesn't really have a great configuration for two beds on the ground.  Adam, who is nearly 5'10" recently admitted that he doesn't really love having to maneuver his limbs out of the top bunk anymore, and Noah, who we recently read about having his own sleep issues, would really love to be able to see someone in the room with him at night.  Just knowing his roommate is there above him is no longer enough, apparently. 

In the toy room, the floors are wood.  Not great for keeping toes warm in the wintertime, but this room is huge, quite possibly the biggest of the four upstairs, with several options for bed configuration.  We just had to haul out all of the books and toys and LEGOs and desks and tables and chairs first. 

We didn't have any intention of completing this swap quickly, and good thing because it took us almost all of Thanksgiving break to finish the job. In part because I wanted to actually go through all of the boys stuff- something we haven't done since we moved here- and really asses which toys/knickknacks/origami/books we wanted to keep and which ones we were ready to pass on (teardrop- when did my babies get so old that they no longer want to sleep in bunkbeds or play with Rocket??) 

Poor Laney couldn't figure out what was going on!

So far the swap has been a success!  The boys like the extra room, cleaning up is a cinch, and there is a blank slate for creativity in the new toy room!

And a mandate that piles of dusty LEGO on the floor is a thing of the past, or else. 

Now if I can just convince myself to purge the untouched basement storage with the same enthusiasm... 

Happy at Home

A rainy weekend, 

a Sunday jam session, 

a throwback to our favorite preschool days activity, 

a funny sign...

 A day off from school and a chance to relax over the weekend is always welcome around here!

Staging A House

I don't know that I'd actually call it staging, because all I really did was take down our personal pictures, box up about a dozen boxes worth of stuff that no one wanted to see, change up the sunroom and clean the dickens out of the entire house. And it all paid off because our house sold in two days, but that will be another post.  For this post I just want to point out some of my favorite parts of this beautiful first house that we made our own.  

Starting in the front with the double columns on the porch that are joined by the arch and frame the happiest blue front door you've ever seen.  I never did get tired of seeing that shade of blue! 

When we built this house just seven years ago our builder did not understand why we wanted white trim and dark stain.  Now it's everywhere!

Ah, the board and batten wall.  A great project to remember the importance of measuring twice, cutting once, and caulking with care!

 My beloved built-ins!  And windows!  And my very favorite woodworking project of the entire house, the shiplap TV cover.  Brilliant idea thanks to me, brilliant execution thanks to Jason!

This wide angle.  

And this one!

This shot of the kitchen when showcases my second favorite woodworking project done in this house- the rectangles Jason added to the island.  Just as they should have been all along!  Also, the lovely pendents and the crown molding and the faucet and the back splash, all updated by us.

As well as that extra trim above the sink!

My hardworking first mudroom, designed by us for all the function and all the beauty!

And this happy, happy place.  The sunroom that gave us years of play and work and sun!

 Our bedroom!  With the beautiful crown molding and tray ceiling and the perfect trim work and paint around the bed.  I've always felt like this room was a sanctuary.

 The girls room with their fancy chandelier and and cornice boxes and drapery!  Fit for two princesses.  The boys room and the library looked tip-top too, just nothing overly personal about them to note here. 

The laundry room of love.  Those shelves and that shiplap still make me smile.

And the basement!! 

So much to love in this beautiful, bright basement. 

Jason will say that this wall of built-ins and shiplap was his favorite project of the whole house. 

And the backyard, with it's carpet of grass and trees that are finally reaching their potential. 

 When we restained the deck last summer Jason said he would never stain this deck again.  And he was right!

 And one more shot of blue, this time on the deck that has been our midsummer relaxation station for seven happy years.  

Boy is it going to be hard to leave this all behind.  I look at these pictures and want to buy this house all over again!  Thankfully the best parts of the house aren't in these pictures, but they're the people that are going to make our next house just as much of a home as this one ever was!

Not A Box

The kids have been having loads of fun in a washing machine box (pun intended) after I shamelessly snagged it from an appliance delivery man a few weeks ago.  It's finally past it's prime, and when I broke it down tonight I found this inside- a picture of each member of our family, and what looks like a wagon and a floating head.  

I'm not entirely sure who drew these pictures (I'm guessing it was Emma), but I do know that an old lesson learned has proven true once again.  There is nothing as fun and full of possibilities as a great big, empty box.  It's been a costume, a blank art canvas, a house, a dungeon, a castle, an animal shelter, and a secret hideout over the last few weeks.  And I've been reminded once again how less is more when it comes to fostering creativity in children. 

And not entirely unrelated, we were talking around the dinner table last week about how I had been selling unneeded items from our home and building up a small cash pile as a result.  Someone asked why I am always getting rid of stuff, to which I answered, as I always do, "because I like throwing things away, and I like getting rid of things we don't need or use because then I don't have to take care of or clean them."

And Jason said, "Mommy loves getting rid of stuff.  If there were 100 people in a room, Mommy would be better at getting rid of stuff than 98 of those people."  And did I take that as a compliment?  

Yes I did!

That's not to say that I don't enjoy having things- we aren't so minimalist that our kids don't have any toys or that we don't buy needful things when, well, needed.  But I have learned a lot about my feelings toward stuff over the years, and I've learned that it makes me happy and less anxious about my job as a homekeeper to keep the amount of stuff that is around to a reasonable minimum.  

And that's one more reason that cardboard boxes are the best!

Just Stuff

One major first step of finishing the basement has been cleaning it out.  Combining that task (which rests mostly on me since Jason is doing the hard work of actually framing and such) with the intrinsic need to spring clean (even if it feels nothing like spring around here just yet) and the even more deeply rooted desire of mine to pack up all of our belongings and move across the country (that's what happens when the Army moves you nine times in the first 18 years of your life), and there has been a whole lot of decluttering around here lately.  

I shouldn't be surprised, after five years in this house, but I have been surprised at the sheer volume of STUFF that has sneakily found it's way into our home.  I have uncovered pockets of clutter in closets, dressers, desks, baskets, benches, and bookshelves in the last few weeks.  

In general I have started turning more of a blind eye to my kids rooms.  Some of them are organizers, others are hoarders, all of them are allowed to have their own stuff in their own space in our home. But after one particularly frustrating night of finding their rooms a hot mess (granted, it was the second night in a row that we had friends over, and that never helps anything), I gave the girls a stern talking to about taking care of their things and showing respect and why they should want to have a clean room.  (I"m one of those weird kids that always wanted to have a clean room, so far as my memory serves me).  And, bottom line, if they didn't want to take care of their stuff, I would take of it for them.  In our house that means it's disappearing for good.

Tearfully one of them asked me, "If it's just stuff, then why do you care about it so much?"

Oh, such a good question.  I thought about it for 24 hours before I had some good solid reasons to share.

1. In my childhood, we constantly sorted, boxed, packed, and moved all of our things.  Those moves always represented bigger and better things- a move in the Army generally meant a promotion, and new adventures for our family.  In some subconscious way, I must believe that sorting and purging, even if we're not packing up and moving out, represents bigger and better things headed our way.  I still grapple with the reality of living here in Iowa for the sum total of my children's childhood, and perhaps in some small way I'm trying to recreate a bit of my childhood for them.  

2.  The thought of having piles of stuff that haven't been touched or used or loved or needed for years sitting around the house makes me bristle.  Our home is not a storage facility, and the things in it should not be a distraction from the love and fun and work and living that we are doing here.  The peace of our home doesn't depending entirely on the cleanliness of it, but it sure helps. 

3. I'd guess that 95% of the things that my kids own was given to them by their parents.  4% came from grandparents, birthday parties, classroom parties, Sunday School lessons, and the final 1% came from their own hard earned and thoughtfully spent money.  If we gave them most of their stuff, and they can't take care of it, either we've given them too much stuff or we haven't taught them to care for their blessings.  Either way, less is more when figuring out what matters most.

4. I get tired of taking care of stuff.  Bending down, picking up, sorting, cleaning, dusting- I don't like doing it anymore than the kids do!  They're not slobs by any means, but less stuff means less work for all of us.

5. Sometimes the frustration of stuff comes from a system that isn't working as well as it could be.  That was apparent to me in the girls closet.  Sharing a room is mostly a great arrangement for all of the kids- none of them like sleeping alone, their rooms are "cooler" than they would be otherwise, and the burden and work of clean up is shared between two people, rather than resting on one person's shoulders alone.  But little tweaks to the functionality of any space can make all the difference in the world.  More on that below.

5. The most important fact- it really is just stuff.  And we're not taking one bit of it with us when we leave this life. If we have so much stuff that we can't regularly part with some of it, we need to examine our priorities.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.  One of the kids once commented that I never had to clean my room, then quickly realized that that is because there is hardly anything in it.

I'm not sure that the kids understood all of these ideas as I tried to explain to them why stuff really does matter so much to me, but I'm putting it here on the blog in the hopes that someday they'll look back and remember a clean and tidy, functioning home that wasn't focused on the stuff nearly as much as the love. 

And now for a look at the closet reform.  This beautiful dresser has been with us since Leah was a baby.  It was Jason's family's when he was growing up, and we have loved using it for each of our babies as they've grown.  Only now, they've grown up enough that the drawers and the sweet little closet are too small for their big clothes.  Recognizing this problem was the first step in figuring out why it was so hard for them to get their clothes off the floor and back in place.  

Step two was emptying out the closet altogether. 

 It really didn't take long since neither of them have that much stuff. 

 It just seems like plenty once it's multiplied by two.

Then Jason took the leftover shelving from our laundry room makeover, cut it down and put it in place. 

 Yep, it still looks like a closet, but now it's a much more functional one.  As soon as Jason finished putting up the shelves, the girls set to work with decorating their shelves, sorting their clothes, hanging up the new and discarding the rest.  They've gained twice the floor space for their shoes now that the dresser is out, they each have a shelf that they are responsible for decorating and caring for, and they each have two bins up top, that are mostly empty right now. 

But their room is neater and their smiles are brighter.  Less mess, greater ownership of their things, and just the things that they really love.  So I'm calling this round of spring cleaning a success!

A Happy Place

Our fourth bedroom became the family library back during the big bedroom switch earlier this year.

  And now I can usually find at least one person in it at any given time who is exploring another world, and we all pile in here every night to read scriptures and pray and debate over who's turn it is to sit in the big pink chair because Mom always gets the rocker and Dad always gets the floor.  And we occasionally dissolve into fits of giggles and (let's be honest) sometimes just give up on the effort and just shoo everyone into bed.

 "N is for Noah" still needs to be updated...  

 But it's a light and bright room that serves our family well and brings lots of happiness when we are in there together.

Even the view out the window is a colorful one!

Fluffing

Final nest tweaks for now- fresh flowers to help me through these last few weeks of winter-

 The ladder blanket Jason gave me for my birthday (made by some talented friends) fills this space nicely- 

 And the last item on my honey-do-with-wood list- molding above the kitchen window.  

 Which has been surprisingly difficult to take a good picture of with my phone camera.  There is a lot of light coming into this eastside window for most of the day.  But I love it!  And, of course, I would love to have a light above the sink... and new pendent shades...  But that's the last item on the wood-working list for now... until I finally figure out what kind of wall treatment I want to do on this beastly wall-

The house floorplan originally included columns and an arch on the right side, but that's not quite the style we were going for.  It makes for a big open wall though, and it will continue to sit bare and fingerprint covered until I can figure it out- a chair rail?  Picture molding?  More board and batten?  Shiplap... some day I'll figure it out.

And finally, a new inspirational quote in my command cupboard- 

I used to have a quote by Benjamin Franklin that read, "Less talking, more doing.  Well done is better than well said."  Which I loved.  And now I have a scripture that reads,

Organize yourselves. 

Prepare every needful thing. 

And establish a house, even 

a house of prayer, 

a house of fasting, 

a house of faith, 

a house of learning, 

a house of order, 

a house of glory

a House of God. 

Which I also love, because that is exactly what we are striving for around here.

Our Bedroom

Our room has been a big question mark in my mind pretty much since we moved in, but since we were on a roll with bedrooms, I decided to give it another try and figure out some way to define this space a little better.  

Very plain before, although that bench is fairly new, and we just bought the headboard last year.  Imagine what this room looked like before that! 

We have a king sized bed with enough room on either side for a nightstand, but not much else.  The shape of our headboard has always stumped me as to what should go above the bed.  It seems like a sunburst mirror was about our only choice- and there are already so many squares in the room, I didn't want to add anything else square.  Because of the tray ceiling, which already has two layers of crown molding, I didn't want to do a wall treatment that would take away from the style of the ceiling, like a shiplap wall or even board and batten.  So, after literally two years of looking for ideas on Pinterest and in other people's homes, I finally found something that I knew would work- panels that are framed out and painted a few shades darker than the rest of the room.  

So lovely!

I love light and bright in all the rooms in our house, but this room really needed some dimension, plus we already have paint that is two shades darker than most of the house from the music room.  All we needed to do was slap up some molding, paint, and call it good!

Adam has his daddy's happy-helper heart, and he helped me tape up the panels one evening.  

And once the weekend came, Jason and I got to work.

The weather was nice that Saturday, so we had lots of neighborhood kids popping in and out of the house.  We just put them to work, too.  

 The younger the child, the happier they are to help, it seems.  

 After the panels were all painted, it seemed a lot easier to envision what would go above the bed.  And not too long later, I found it!  

 The mirror is a really cool stamped foil and glass tile piece, and it was on clearance.  I like decorating spaces, but I really, really like a good deal.  I love it when I get both!  The curtains (that I bought three years ago) have the same silver circle pattern in them.  Serendipity!

All in all, the room is feeling much more complete these days.  

Before- 

And after- those painted panels make such a nice difference, and Jason admires his handy work every time he walks into the room.  It's so nice to walk into a room and feel like it's complete, rather than walking in and wondering when you're ever going to get around to it.

A panoramic view of the room today- 

 The view from the door- 

It's really hard to get the angles and dimensions right in these pictures.  There is definitely room for a plant or basket on either side of the bed (I found the most beautiful live fiddle fig the other day but left it behind due to the price tag), and another plant on the dresser, and possibly a rug, or some bigger night stands, but for now, I'm calling this room done.  Because it's never really enough, right cupcake?