Time for a Change

I think my favorite words of TJ's are when he says, honey I've got an idea.....

He said them last weekend, which got me excited!! He has such a gift for visualizing. He has always enjoyed moving things around in our houses and he's good at it. I think it's one of my favorite things that we do together, rearrange our house. We both have ideas, and we both listen to one another. He is so patient and will usually try whatever I ask him to! And he doesn't yell when I ask him to take down the pictures we've just hung, fill the holes, paint and then make new holes in the walls......

It all started because he was feeling like we needed more places to sit in our family room. He started big with the idea of knocking out a wall and putting in hard wood floor....but instead of jumping into a HUGE project, he decided we could move things around first. Our table was taking up a lot of space, space that would be better used for comfy chairs instead of a table, especially since we're eating most of our meals at our center island in the kitchen. So, we moved our office desk downstairs to what was the toy room, and then moved our table into what used to be the office.

The best part of this whole rearrange thing was that I got to clean places that hadn't been cleaned in years. You know the areas that can never be reached, corners behind the desk, all the computer parts, under toy boxes, inside cabinets, on top of mirrors and pictures. That makes me happy. I dusted EVERYTHING. I went through all the toys and kept only what we use or that has sentimental value.

It's a fun challenge to use the objects that you already have in your home to decorate with. Simply by taking things off walls and moving them or putting a piece of furniture in a different room can make you feel like you have something new, when really you've had it all along. We were able to buy a few things like a couple rugs, a mirror, a new duvet cover, and a beautiful Last Supper picture.

What used to be the toy room, is now the computer room/guest bedroom for Laura and Jarod and Andrew.

I'm very grateful for all that we have. I'm even more grateful for a husband who is willing to change things up a bit and give me fun things to look forward to, like rearranging the furniture.

And on another note, poor Evie has had a bad cough this week and hasn't felt very well which means she gets candy canes for breakfast!

And I found these on the table. Stacked just like this. I shouldn't have left the bag out.....at least he only eats the middle or that would have been a lot of cookies for a three year old to eat.

oh joy!

After weeks of buying glass jars.....


At last! My fancy pantry! Full of these lovely glass jars. I told TJ last weekend that these jars make me happy. They do. They really make me happy. It's kind of like having a newborn....let me explain. When I bring a new baby home, I find myself purposely walking in front of the mirrors in our home so that I may glance at me holding the new squished up baby high on my shoulder....just to make sure they still look new. So with that said, I find myself wandering over to the kitchen, many times a day, and taking a quick glance at my jars. Yep, still there, still looking lovely.

We've been saving our wine corks ever since we've been married. That's a lot of bottles of wine, good thing its been nine years......

I've got....are you ready?

white flour, oats, white sugar, basmati rice, brown sugar, pancake mix, table salt, sea salt, baking powder, cinnamon, bread crumbs, seasoning salt, cajun spice, popcorn, dried beans, coffee beans, coffee grounds, wine corks, and pasta. Twenty-two jars in all.

I love my kitchen, I really do. I love my granite counter top and I smile when I think of how many pies, bread, and meals have been made and eaten at that counter. I have a pantry, a small closet really, that is FULL of food. That got me thinking....

One of the many characteristics I love about TJ is his willingness to take on pretty much any project, any time. So when I came to him last year asking for him to build me some shelves for the kitchen, and bookshelves for the family room....this is what he came up with.

He found CD shelves at ShopKo. They were that nasty orange color. So he sanded them all down, spray painted them black, cut some of them, and stacked two shelves on top of one another to make floor to ceiling shelves.....for me. I was thoroughly impressed.

So, until now, I had put mostly decorative things on the kitchen shelf, while my pantry was stuffed to the brim and overflowing. Then, an idea! Take some things out of the pantry and put them into jars on the shelf. Brilliant.

I have always admired kitchens where the cabinets are open and you can see the dishes inside. I'm also drawn to old farm kitchens from the 1800's. I took this picture from the Living History Farms in Des Monies, Iowa last summer. We got to go through a replica of a farm kitchen from long ago. I fell in love with it.

Thus, my inspiration for my open pantry shelves in my kitchen! Oh joy!

because you asked...

Because my dear friend Jillian asked me a while back if my house was ever messy........

There you go. Messy. Messy. Messy. I'm off to go pick up while everyone naps....well, maybe after I make a stop on the couch first. Yes, a nap is definately needed.

room by room.......the bathrooms

Today, on this room by room ordering adventure, I began the daunting task of our bathrooms. I clean them once a week, (I'm too scared to see what they would look like if I didn't clean that often.) I know that children are messy, it's a fact, but I think my children are the messiest bathroom users.....ever.




Please tell me that your children do this to the toothpaste too???

I made a list last night of things to get for our bathrooms. Let me explain that there is practically nothing in any of our bathrooms. No fluffy toilet covers (they would get peed on). No floor rugs (all the hair that my family sheds to the floor just grosses me out when it gets stuck in a rug). No pictures on the walls (they would have gotten ruined by the monsoon of water that gets splashed on the walls every bath time). No shower curtain in their bathroom (simply because I have never bought one). No towel bars in our bathroom (they were never there when we bought the house.....but the other bathrooms had them?)

According to Mark Hampton, an interior decorator, "Our bathrooms provide a place for private pampering. Hidden from the scrutiny of others, these rooms are secret havens of self-absorption."

Let me say that again. Secret havens of self-absorption.

Not the bathrooms in our house.

I've stayed at few bed and breakfasts before and I'm always so drawn to the coziness, quaintness, and loveliness, of them all. I wanted to create that same feeling for my bathroom. First off, I cleaned those puppies like they had never been cleaned before. All products came out from the drawers, I wiped them out, threw out old lotions, toothpaste containers, empty makeup, old bottles of hair gel.....you get the idea. We never had a towel bar in there, and so dirty, wet, towels would get thrown onto the floor or counter and stay there. TJ has no problem using them again from off the floor. (excuse me while I vomit.) I cannot bring myself to use a soggy towel that has been lying on the floor collecting hair. Sorry. So, I go through lots of towels in our home. Then.....brilliant idea!

Get a towel rack to hang up the soggy, dirty, wet towels so they can dry and then be used a second or, heaven forbid, a third time!!!

I made my daily trip to TJ Maxx and found a towel hanger to go over our door, a shower caddy, a towel holder for the downstairs bathroom and a shower curtain for the kids bathroom. I also stopped at Bath and Body Works, where to my surprise they were having their big June sale. Thanks God! I spent the next 30 minutes opening, smelling, and rubbing on fabulous scents. And I was by myself! My mom had offered to watch George and Evie while I went to the store. This is vacation to me! Getting to wander around stores filled with delights for my senses....quietly and slowly. I came home and started putting everything together.

This past February, I began taking baths. We have a nice big tub that until then, had only been used twice. I think since we had such a long, cold winter all of a sudden a warm soak in the tub began sounding very nice. I made up this basket of goodies and began to take nightly baths. I love the bath now!

I had read before on a friends blog about hanging up empty picture frames. I thought it looked pretty awesome. As I was rummaging through the storage room trying to find what I could reuse, I found a big box of my old picture frames. Two actually already had the glass broken out of them and I found a few more. These had been hidden away and all it took was finding them, and hanging them and.....walla! A beautiful wall of emptiness.....kinda!

Now, when I walk into our bathroom I truly feel like it is a secret haven of self-absorption! I'll find myself wandering upstairs to stand there and look at it!! I was talking with a friend last night about life. Recently there was a little 18 month girl who drown in a pool. Her little life is over on earth. That made me so very sad to think of the parents and siblings having to deal with her sudden death. I thought about them all day as I was enjoying this simple pleasure of redecorating. I thought about how silly my day was in the scheme of life. Why is one mother weeping in anguish over her child she no longer has, while another mother is wandering through a store smelling soaps....and loving it? I was feeling guilty about enjoying my day so much.

All I could come up with is that seasons of life change. I remember being so very sad those few months after losing Joseph. Everything was just sad. And now, only a few short months later, I'm truly enjoying life and finding days filled with joy. Suffering will always be with me. Some days will be much harder in life than others. So, I decided that I would offer up my joy for this mother. I offered up every pleasure I felt today for her. It's not always just the suffering or hard things we can offer up.

room by room.....the bedrooms

I had a fun day. A ridiculously fun day. Guess what I did?

I cleaned, organized, and rearranged. Yup. And I loved every second of it! It was almost like I was on vacation. I knew that this week was coming, the week of Totus Tuus at our church. It's a full week of Thomas and Annie being gone from 9-3. I knew that I wanted to "get as much done as possible" while they were going to be gone all day.

It couldn't have been any more perfect that I'm at the section in my Simple Abundance book, where she walks though her house room by room. Organizing, cleaning, decluttering.....making each room a simple haven of comfort and joy! She first began with the bedroom. Perfect. The bedrooms in our house have been weighing on my mind lately. I've really done nothing with them. We've lived in our house for three years and just haven't gotten around yet to fixing them up.

Sarah Ban Breathnach says, "As far as I'm concerned, bedrooms were created for only two reasons: comfort and joy. Keeping that in mind, are you happy with your bedroom? You will know if you rarely want to leave. Your bedding should be as inviting to look at as it is comfortable to lie on. I'm convinced that a woman should love her bed covers with a mad passion."

And that was my motivation to create a beautiful bedroom for us. My goal was to see what I could use that I already had and change things around so that it felt different.

So, with the kids gone for the day, and the littlest one napping, and the perfectly content child who just wanders around the house playing with his cars.......I thought I would get started!

This is what is looked like this morning.

I should start by saying that I love our bed. It's not comfortable, really, but it's the fact that it was my grandparents bed that they got in the 1950's. When my Grandma Becky passed away, we were given their bed, and two dressers. They are beautiful and are exactly what I would pick out if given the choice. The only problem is that the bed is just a full. Thank goodness TJ and I are relatively short people or it wouldn't work. Our trouble with it is that we get night visitors who crawl into bed with us. Four bodies in a full size bed doesn't work.

I love the detail.....

I wiped cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. I took out all the dresser drawers and refolded, or threw out smelly old t-shirts, I dusted places where I have never dusted before, and when I moved our bed, I found.....

Annie's long lost ring she had gotten from nama Joyce! How did it get under the bedpost? hmmm....

By the end of the day, I had moved our bed over, moved one dresser, found a perfectly matching lamp that I had stored away downstairs, found an old stand to use as a night stand, and brought up one of our extra chairs to sit in the corner. TJ painted two old white shelves and turned them brown, I found the flowers that I have always loved but had to be put in storage because there was no room for them downstairs anymore. I set them on my dresser and presto! I love looking at them! The only thing I ended up buying was two king size blue pillow covers, and a few decorations from Hobby Lobby (which were all 50 percent off!)

While the kids were still gone, I started on their room. I emptied out everything. I found little lego pieces under Thomas' mattress and between the wall and his bed, broken crayons, fish food pellets, you name it. The kids have never really had a comforter set, so I found two greenish comforters, light blue sheets and bought four new pillows. Nice squishy down alternative pillows! TJ came home for lunch and was looking at the room and said, "why don't I paint one wall blue since we have the paint left over from the kitchen?" I so love how my husband gets involved in my projects. He's always ready and willing to help in some way. Rarely do I have to convince him to, he just enjoys it.

After dinner, TJ and Thomas went upstairs to paint. It turned out awesome!

I bought a large print of the world and were going to frame it and hang it. TJ is also going to put together a large wall cork board......

And darling Evelyn must have known that I was deep cleaning the bedrooms today. She wanted to make sure that I washed her sheets, and bumper pad, and blankets......

Thanks Evie!

How does your room look? Do you experience a sense of delight when you walk in? -SBB

Absolutely. Delight is the right word. It's amazing what a little cleaning, paint, and moving of objects can do to change the surroundings we look at every day.