Today: Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Outside My Window: sunny, windy
Today’s Goal: Exercise and drink more water
Today’s Plan: School; install the new side view mirror on the van; take the kids for a play date and dinner at Debbie’s house.
Today’s Tea: Cinnamon Delight Rooibos. This is so good hot or iced! It’s one of my favorites for hot summer days.
Today’s Tidbits: The Master bedroom is starting to look nice again – I moved my writing desk against a different wall and Ian hung a fabric wall pocket I made on the wall above it so I can keep clutter off the desk. I can now reach the curtains to open and close them.
Archives
Room Transformations III: Girls' Bedroom
Our next Project is cleaning up the former Master Bedroom to make it into the new Girls’ Room!
This is what it looks like right now because we put everything from the former “Back Room” into it to paint the other rooms. Once we empty this room, we’ll paint it “Olive Grove” on the bottom and “Budding Green” on top, with a “White Light” chair rail between.
This is where the girls live now. You can see that it’s a little tight for four of them, and soon Maria will be joining them, so they need a bit more space.
This room will become the new “Back Room,” but it won’t have a bed in it. It’ll be a play room for the kids. We plan on removing the carpet and installing Pergo or some type of hard floor so they can build things with Lego or blocks, and have a place to roll their trucks besides the kitchen when I am making dinner. We hope to line the walls with book cases and cabinets so everything can be put away out of sight and still be found when needed. I’ll post pictures in the years to come as we accomplish these things.
Room Transformations II: Master Bedroom
Next, we changed the boys’ old room into the Master Bedroom.
This is what it looked like when Andrew & Peter occupied it.
Ian painted it in one day (“Spring Fawn”).
We moved in that evening.
Forget the Poinsettias this Christmas!
I recently came across this post over at O Night Divine. It seems that 70% of the nation’s poinsettias, those beautiful red plants used to decorate our homes and churches throughout December, are provided by the Ecke family in California. Sounds great – support a family business and decorate to celebrate the birth of our Savior!
BUT this family, unfortunately, uses the money they get from the sales of these poinsettias to renovate abortion mills and support Planned Parenthood’s agenda of more abortions!
So, can anyone think of a better alternative to buying poinsettias this year? Get the word out to your pastors about this!
Musings from A Catholic Bookstore has more on this.
Please post any church and home decorating ideas!
Home Decorating: Guest/Play Room
This room is white, but I’d like to paint it green or tan. I wish that it could be strictly a guest bedroom, but we don’t have any other room for sewing supplies, toys with small parts that would be dangerous for the little kids to find, or boxes of things I need to go through and get rid of or find a home for. Eventually, if we don’t sell our house, this will have to become a bedroom, probably for girls. Right now, it would be best to make it a play room/sewing/seasonal storage room. So, I need to go through those boxes of things that didn’t sell on eBay and give them away. Next, go through the shelves holding school things and see what can be thrown or given away. Put the kids’ toys on the shelves in bins so they can find what they want without everything falling off the shelves. Move the coffee table in here so they have a place to build their creations. Take the things stuffed into the closet out and go through them. Acquire some cabinets with doors so I can bring in the boxes of fabric & patterns that we took out to the garage “because we won’t need them before we move in a month or so” almost two years ago. Maybe I can move the folding table from my bedroom in here so I can sew. Guests can sleep on the floor on an air mattress. Maybe we can make room for their clothes in the closet.
Home Decorating: Hall Bath
This room is between the girls’ & boys’ rooms, and the space between the three doors is fondly referred to as “the hall” (it measures about 4 X5 feet). The walls of the bathroom are currently white, but I would like to paint them a shade of tan to go with the various other tan rooms. I would like to put a frame around the mirror which is glued to the wall (so we can’t replace it easily). There are 5 bright “vanity globe lights” above the mirror. There is a toilet, and tub with a green/ burgundy/ gold plaid curtain around it. I might like to replace it with something like this. The counter which holds the sink has 3 cabinet doors under it, and lots of storage room. There’s also an attached linen cabinet between the door and the sink. I would like to put a framed picture over the towel rack across from the toilet. The one that’s there is a hand-painted water color of the cathedral in Florence. Ian & I bought it from a street vendor on our honeymoon. It may stay there. I like it. Maybe add a nice bath set.
Home Decorating: Boys' Room
This room is currently white, and one boy & one girl sleep in here. There is one small dresser that holds the boy’s clothes (but he’s getting bigger and his clothes are too). The toy box is also in here, along with a couple of larger toy vehicles. I would like to move the girl into the girls’ room and the baby into this room. The walls I would paint two shades of blue: one above a chair rail, the other below. I would put the older boy’s bed along another wall where it would not be in the way of the closet door, and I would put the crib where the bed is now, eventually replacing it with the toddler bed that one of the girls is using (and later just one set of bunk beds and no toddler bed). I’d like to put up shelves in here too, for some special collectibles or boy memorabilia.
Of course, if the baby I am now carrying turns out to be a girl, we might be in trouble. If he’s boy, we’ll just add another bed or set of bunks to the boys’ room.
Home Decorating: Girls' Room
As I mentioned, I painted a mural on 3 walls in here. It is unfinished and I doubt that I’ll ever finish it. I am thinking of painting the walls two shades of pink – one above a chair rail and one below. We currently have four girls, three of whom sleep in this room. We have one set of bunk beds in here, and a toddler bed. I would like to bring in another set of bunks and get all four girls in here. If I do that, I will need to figure out where to store all their clothes. Currently we have two dressers, two closets, and two very big drawers under the lower bunk holding all of their clothes, but I may need to remove one of the dressers to fit the other bunks in here. I’d like to put shelves on the walls to hold special things away from the reach of the littlest ones. This room will basically be only for sleeping and dressing, as there will be no room for desks or lamps, unless the lamps are wall-mounted next to the beds. The biggest problem I foresee is that both younger girls will be in the same room at nap time, which is not a good idea.
Home Decorating: Master Bedroom
This is a big room. We have a Queen size bed, a side table with drawers, a tall chest of drawers, a Jacobean table that is in use as a computer table for when Ian works from home, a folding table with my sewing machine on it, and a large, green recliner that I sleep on in the last trimester of my pregnancies. We recently moved the furniture around in here and it actually doesn’t look too bad (except that the folding table is old and the top is torn and stained, and I have boxes and piles of books and things to “get to” one of these days around the recliner and by the windows – ok it looks pretty bad). The walls are currently white. I have been wanting to paint them a deep red, but with the red already so prominent in the kitchen and dining room, I may want to choose a more soothing color in here. I found a picture in a magazine once (which I kept – maybe I can scan it in sometime) that showed a very nice bedroom. The walls were a cool, light teal, and the bedding was a mix of pale teal with peach and soft gold, I think. I’ll have to find it again. I actually bought some upholstery remnants with the colors so I could make some pillow shams if I painted the walls that color.
If I could, I would replace the Jacobean table with a roll-top or some other kind of desk that would hide any trace of technology (Ian’s computer, etc). It would take up less room than the table, and could be put in the corner. I would then replace the card table with the Jacobean for my sewing (and while I was at it I would replace my Brother sewing machine with a new Bernina heehee – I might as well dream big! If I REALLY dream big I will dream up a sewing room with a clean, neat place for all the supplies I need. I want and get it out of my bedroom altogether – but that will be another post). I would like to get the big green recliner out too, but there isn’t another place to put it, and it seems to be the only place I can sleep (or at least rest) during those last months. I wish I could at least replace it with something smaller and more feminine (but just as comfortable). Next to it I have a small side table with attached lamp. It doesn’t really “go” but I need light when I work on hand sewing, reading etc. It is in a “country” style, so maybe with a new coat of paint it would work somewhere else in the house.
Home Decorating: Living Room
This room faces southwest, and has a gorgeous view of Pikes Peak from the windows. The walls, as mentioned earlier, are painted a warm “Roasted Cashew” which I love. There is a wood burning fireplace in one corner near the windows, and on the other side of the windows is the “front” door (which leads to the back yard) and the door to the coat closet. The opposite side of the room opens to the kitchen, with a pass-through between the two rooms. It is a long, narrow room, which I find difficult to decorate to my satisfaction. There aren’t any “corners” that can be used for furniture placement. One corner has the fireplace in it, one has the door and the closet, one is open and leads to the kitchen and dining room, and the last has a door to the Master bedroom in it.
We currently have two large sofas, a love seat (that matches one of the sofas – both quite faded), a coffee table, a matching side table that has at least one broken leg, a hand-me-down piano that is badly in need of tuning on the inside and refinishing on the outside, a sofa table that is in use as an altar, and an old fiberboard cabinet with a TV on it. The kids keep all their kitchen toys in it and “cook” and have picnics in the living room. The doors do not close all the way & I am always afraid the very heavy TV is gong to fall on the baby, who likes to climb!
What I would like to do is throw everything out and start over. However, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I like having enough comfortable seating for everyone, but I just can’t get it to look nice, even with sofa covers, and I don’t find this room a peaceful place to be. There’s just too much in it and none of it seems to “go” with anything else. I really want to get a nice TV armoire so that I can hide the TV away when it’s not in use. I would put it in front of the wall between the closet door and the opening to the dining/kitchen area, perhaps flanked by matching (or at least coordinating) book cases. On the book cases I would put potted plants, a matching buffet lamp on each one, and nothing else. I don’t think I would put anything on the wall above them. I’d throw away the old fiberboard cabinet, and find another place for the kitchen toys.
If I could, I would get rid of all of the seating and get one pretty love seat and two upholstered chairs to go in the middle of the room, centered around the windows. I’d like one of those small coffee tables with a glass-topped cabinet for display in it so I could put some decorative items in it without danger of little hands breaking them (things like Russian lacquer boxes, silver bouquet holders, little porcelain figurines, the displays changed with the seasons). As it is, I don’t have the budget to do this, and will probably just give away one of the sofas and save up to buy some nicer slip covers for the matching sofa & love seat. I would like to move the coffee table to the guest room (which is a play room for the older kids to play with things that the littler ones might swallow). It is the perfect height for the kids to build things on with Lego.
The upright piano I would like to have fixed and restained one color (it currently has brown on most of the body and orangish paint streaked on the lid and front. I don’t know how it ended up this way). I do not know where I would put it at the moment besides its current location between the fireplace and the door to the Master bedroom. I would not put anything on it, but on the wall above it I would put a framed picture (I don’t know what yet). The cover on the bench I would replace with something other than brown velveteen with orange flowers on it. It isn’t hideous, but it doesn’t “go.” Above the fireplace I would like to hang a large framed mirror, (or one like this) with nothing but a couple of seasonal items on the mantel (pillar candles for winter, white tapers in tall silver or crystal candlesticks (or these) for summer, a couple of ball topiaries for spring, etc.)
The altar I would like to put in a place where it is prominent and usable, but I really don’t know where. It is currently against the wall between the Master bedroom door and the opening to the kitchen. I wish I could center it on the wall opposite the windows, but there is no wall there – just the open space to the kitchen with the pass-through in it. Even if there were no other furniture in this room, there would be no prominent place to put it. maybe it can be transfered to the buffet in the dining room. The Guadalupe picture will already be there. I don’t know where we would put our Sacred Heart wall statue (He’s 3 -dimensional, except that his back is flat, to hang on a wall). I’ll try to post pictures later so you can give me ideas.
