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.

My Christmas tree 2012

I remember posting about my tree last year (click here to see last year's post) when I was about 3,495 months pregnant and talking about how it was a subdued year for Christmas decor because of my enlarged state. This year was even worse! Having an almost-toddler in the house again does not lend itself to doing what you want for Christmas decorating. On top of that, I just have been SO busy and decorating has not been on the top of my priority list. Someday, I will go back to my love for all things decorating, but right now I am in a season of life where I am lucky if I can just get my house moderately picked up! Anyway, I wanted to post some quick pics of my tree before I dismantle it for another year. I was halfway done assembling our tree when I realized it was the teeny tiny tree from when we were first married.  I think it was $15 at Kmart 14 years ago.  If I put this tree up now, it is usually somewhere other than our main living space.  I was too tired and lazy to try to find the other tree and take this one down or move it, so I just went with it.  I don't like the bottom of the tree, so I found a nice big basket to put it in.  I like it, and it really helped to protect it a little bit from tiny, chubby, exploring hands.

We made salt-dough ornaments for the tree this year as part of our Advent activities (thank you Pinterest!).  I think they turned out so cute and I will love putting them up every year (as long as they don't break!)

This year, I put up the nativity I made when I was little.  She just found it stashed away and gave it to me.  I put it up in our school room and I think it is super cute!

more decorating updates

OK, I have finished a few of my home projects (in between all sorts of kid's summer activities, trips to the farm, a vacation with friends, Graham's major injury and ensuing hospitalization, my own health issues, and a major marketing campaign for my business...whew!).
I have just finished my master bedroom re-do, and will be posting photos soon.
When I checked back to my previous blog post about everything I wanted to get done, I felt pretty good--most of what I wanted to do has been accomplished, or else I have changed my mind about what I wanted to do.  Here's what I have left to do on my house before the start of the school year:

*Paint downstairs bathroom Wyeth blue, get a new lamp or a few new accessories.
*Get two new shelves for LEGO display in Isaac's room.  Move bookshelf above couch or above new shelving in Homeschool room.  Maybe move large black photos somewhere else? 
*Put up IKEA shelf and re-organize school supplies.
*re-paint top of Homeschool table and look into getting glass to cover it?
*Paint my desk white??
*Relocate dog kennel to laundry room?

Smelling Summer

Summer is looming just around the corner, I can smell it! I am SO excited to have a break from homeschooling to work on some home projects that have gotten pushed to the backburner. Here is a list of things I would love to tackle, hopefully there is time to do them all!

*Re-paint master bedroom. Find different side tables/dressers at thrift or garage sales and paint black. Get new lamps. Move three huge photos from downstairs to above the bed. Possibly put decorative shelves on blank wall. Paint chandelier and replace ceiling fan. Wash curtains, completely clean entire room. Possibly move black and white photos from the downstairs bathroom into master bedroom. Here's some inspiration pics via Pinterest:
I love these side tables. They are simple and clean. I seriously need some side tables with drawers for books I am reading, etc.

I love this shelf above the bed and all the accessories.

I adore mercury glass lamps and burlap lampshades, but they are so expensive. Wondering if I can replicate somehow?



*Paint upstairs bathroom a bluish/grayish/turquise-ish color. Move black and white toile shower curtain up from the basement.

*Move Brown and monogram shower curtain downstairs. Incorporate chocolate brown and white color scheme with new towels, etc.

*Overhaul basement school room. Get carpets cleaned. Paint hutch black, possibly chalkboard paint the top doors. Paint desk black and get beveled glass to put over the top. Paint table and chairs black, possibly finish the top of the table in chalkboard paint. Possibly paint dresser in laundry room black and replace bottom drawers with baskets. Move out couch. Bring back denim chair if there is room (probably won't be). Think about re-locating fireplace. Put up shelving from IKEA. Re-organize all supplies. Here's some inspiration pics via Pinterest!
I want to chalkboard paint our school table like this!

Shelving inspiration:

More shelving inspiration...

I have a crappy old dresser I want to do this with. I am thinking of using it in our school room somewhere, or I could move it upstairs and move one of my tables into our master bedroom as a side table.

Our tree and sneak peek of baby's room (double click pics to see bigger)

My Christmas decorating has been a little low-key this year due to being about 12 months pregnant, but thought I would post at least a few pics. Here is our main tree this year:

I have other stuff up this year, but it looks pretty much like last year (you can browse thru my decorating archives to see...), so I am not wasting my precious energy taking photos and posting them (also not wasting my energy dragging out one of my "good" cameras to take decorating pics right now...sorry for the bad quality pics!)
I do like my urns by the front door this year:




OK, here is a quick sneaky of the baby's room. This room has been a major challenge for me for some reason.

I think one reason it's been difficult to decorate is that I had it all decorated in my head for a girl, and when it turned out to be a boy, I was thrown off kilter a bit. It's hard to be creative for the third time. Eventually, I decided on a crisp blue, white and silver theme. Do you know how hard it is to find SIMPLE, classic bedding and accesories for little boys in this color theme? You wouldn't think it would be difficult...boys have claimed blue and white since the beginning of time. However, nowdays, all the stuff for boys is dark colors, safari themes, dark wood tones, etc. Not what I wanted for this room. Anyway, it is still a work in progress, but I like where it's going. I have lots of empty frames just awaiting the first few photo shoots I get to do with my very own newborn! Can't wait!

Changes: Graham and Isaac's rooms (Double click photos to enlarge)

Because baby is on his or her way, we have done some moving around in our house. Graham's new room is the old homeschool room (you can see how it used to look here). I moved a lot of the vintage cowboy stuff from Isaac's room into Graham's room. Kept his signature star above his bed.


I painted this dresser and gave it new hardware, it used to be Dave's.


Isaac's room pretty much stayed the same, but I gave him the bedroom set that Graham had on his bed.

Love that linen lamp shade I got at a garage sale.



I bought this bulletin board at a thrift store and spray painted it white, distressed it and covered it with burlap.

Plate wall/Gallery wall

(double click photos and then back arrow to return to posting)I have wanted to do an all-white plate wall for a long time. I finally got all of my white plates together from various places throughout my house, and did it. I love how it turned out!! It makes me happy to look at! Do you have places in your home you like to look at when you pass by? This would be one of mine:

The middle two plates I just got at Tuesday morning on clearance for $3.99. The rest are garage sale finds from the past ten years.

I made a couple of changes to my gallery wall too. Thanks to Mirabella Photography for the great family picture I had turned into a gallery wrap (and also a few of my boys on this wall too). Shannon and I are friends, and last fall we swapped sessions for each other. Hoping to make this a yearly event!!! :) Both of my gallery wraps are from The Canvas People. They seem to be a bit more affordable than a lot of places and do a pretty good job. The only thing I don't like is the brownish cast to their black and white gallery wraps. They are true black and white prints and end up looking like a sepia-toned print. Oh well. I guess you have to take what you can get when trying to save money...:)

my new acquisition

I had seen this little kitchen cupboard at a thrift store many, many times, and always loved it. I love the style of it--the curves at the bottom and the drawer and cupboard placement. I loved the large farmhouse-style knobs (not on the before picture because I was getting ready to paint when I snapped this). A couple of weeks ago, I went in and they had marked it down, and it became my early birthday gift!
Here's the before...

And the after. I will eventually paint the top plate rack part too, but left it off for now because I like my stars.
(Double click to enlarge)




I am totally in the mood for spring here, even though there is NOTHING to indicate that it is anywhere in the near future.
I re-did my shelf in the entry way and added a little spring to it.

I sure hope NOONE who browses these photos of my home ever thinks I have it totally "together." Allow me to dispell this myth (any of my friends or family who drop into my house from time to time with verify this to be truth). My house is an absolute, blazing mess about 90 percent of the time. I detest this to be true, because I would LOVE for it to look picture perfect all the time (or even 50% of the time!). But, that is not my reality. My reality is that we are home all day, every day, and there isn't an inch of our house that doesn't get used and by used, I mean abused. It is the home of two very busy little boys, and a mom who is always in the middle of some sort of project. This does not make for a perfectly organized space. But, I like to look at these photos and dream that it's like this most of the time...

Shelf-scaping & LEGO organization

Upon a decision to change up an area of my home, I go through a process of tweaking until it "feels" right. Here are three different options for a shelf in my bathroom that needed some love.
Option one: Simple. Three seagrass boxes I got at pottery barn years ago:

Option two: seagrass balls, some beachy looking grass, a frame I have always loved (I obviously would put a photo in there or maybe print out a word or initial on cardstock).

Option three: A little more.

which one do you like?

Isaac and I took the better part of two days to organize his LEGOS. A great LEGO organization system is like the search for the holy grail....it is pretty much unattainable. Here is what I came up with, and I hope it works:

LEGOS were sorted by color and put into a plastic drawer storage system. The small plastic tote on top is for the teeny-tiny LEGOS that get lost in the mix. The yellow LEGO head was a Christmas gift from mom and dad.

It has three removeable trays in it, with a grid of graduated sizes. You throw all of your unsorted LEGOS into the top portion, give it a shake, and the LEGOS are sorted by size. I would like to kiss the person who invented this.

We didn't have enough room for the black and grey LEGOS, so they go under a moving bin under his bed. Yes, I know he has an insane amount of LEGOS.

He has been playing LEGOS even more than he did before, and the creations he is coming up with are more inventive because he can now find all of the really "cool" LEGO pieces that got lost before. His little buddies also have fun playing LEGOS when they come over.