Family room and boys' room updates

It has been such a long time since I have done any home updates...I have been too busy to even keep it clean over the past year and without the time to actually make it pretty! This summer started out with me having surgery, but once I had recovered, I was ready to do some much needed updating of our basement. I feel like the clock starts ticking the moment we are done with school for the summer, and I feel like there's a race to get everything I want to get done until school starts again in the fall. It's the only time mama has any time for her personal projects around here.
First up is the family room/school room. I really wanted to lose the school-ish look to our family room and reclaim a little of the family room area for relaxing, watching movies and spending time together as a family. Here is my office area where I do all of my editing and school-related work. I found the desk on the curb during spring clean-up. I painted it and did a little fixing on it, and it's (almost) as good as new.

I love my canvases above my desk. The vintage camera and "smile" sign is a little nod to my love for photography.

Here is the half of our family room that serves as our homeschool area. It is complete with a new worklight for Isaac's school table, which I love.

Here is the half of our family room which is the true "family" room portion. Love how cozy it is! We love hanging out down here now. The new paint color really brightened up the room. We moved the big cupboard out of Isaac's room and it serves as a great storage area for all of our homeschool stuff. The big basket on top of it houses a giant collection of lincoln logs for building together.

I LOVE that my Christmas present from Dave last year, my popcorn machine, has a permanent home now. This cupboard ALSO houses homeschool stuff. Gosh, you have alot of stuff when you homeschool.

Isaac's room went from "big boy" to "bigger boy". Along with a darker and more sophisticated paint color...

He got a more "user friendly" LEGO play area...

as well as a desk (my old desk painted white) with his laptop ready to go. The only problem is, now he doesn't ever want to leave his room.

Graham didn't want to be left out with all of the changes to big brother's room, so we rearranged his room and gave him a new LEGO area...

and just did some freshening up to his room in general...

I love his mason jars which house his bottle cap collection and his rock collection. He loves that they are proudly on display now and not hidden in a drawer.