Slow Changes...

Although I am not really back to myself yet, and unable to do much, we have begun working on some of the changes we felt were necessary to make before the baby arrives. When we first found out about this new little one, both Matt and I felt a bit pressed as to how we were going to physically make the room for another little body in our tiny house. 6 kids in two small bedrooms meant getting VERY creative with space. And although we have a basement, it is not really accommodating for a bedroom. Adding on, moving, and remodeling is completely out of the question-so we were a bit stretched. All of the sudden, with just one more child, we were beyond maxed out in house and vehicle! But, of course, it didn't take long for the Lord to send His peace our way and His wisdom, reminding us, SPACE, is not the all important ingredient in raising the gifts He has given us! So, with all of the changes to choose from, we decided to begin on the girl's room. The 3 girls seem to have a never ending struggle with how to make their room function and there was one feature we have known we could change to help make space a bit more functional in their room. There has been a door from their room to the kitchen since we purchased the house over 7 years ago. We believe they must have actually used the room as their dining room since we have no dining space anywhere else in the house. But, while the door was nice the first few years as a fun pass through their room, once all 3 of them were in regular beds, it proved to be a real challenge to keep it in use. About a year ago or so we finally decided to shut it off to use and use that door as wall space, but it looked so completely awkward. With just that little extra nudge, we decided to make it permanent, the door had to go completely! So a few weeks ago, when Dad and Mom were out to help me, Dad ripped out the door and put up the drywall in it's place. But the mudding, sanding and painting has been left unfinished for a few weeks. Matt and I finally began tackling the girl's side of the new wall-with a BIG emphasis on MATT. The work of clearing out the girl's "stuff" began weeks ago with my direction. Let's just say "crates" are my best friend! After sorting, cleaning, and trashing was done. Matt began to dismantle the beds which will not be going back in exactly the same, but instead be rebuilt in a more space efficient way(hopefully);) Matt and the girls have worked together to mud the drywall and holes in the walls, and I have slowly painted the base boards (5 minutes here, 5 minutes there-and 5 days later-remember I told you projects take a whole lot longer now for me). The last 2 days have been extremely unproductive for me though because of a migraine which left me in bed the majority of the 2 days. The girls are fortunately enjoying their mini camp out in the basement this week-it is like one big slumber party down there. Matt has also gotten the ceiling tackled as well-amazing the difference that makes. Here are the pics from our project so far.

Hopefully this weekend, we will be able to get the walls painted and put together some plans for their beds. We figure they will be on platform beds for awhile so that we can get a sensible design put together. The girls have not had dressers for years and we would really like to see that added back into the design hopefully. I am praying for those perfect fit ideas and furniture to find it's way into our not so perfect budget;).

Adding a Little Light....

I have been looking for an old drum shade for over 6 months now off and on. Well...I finally found one! Wahoo! Here it is...

I paid under $2 for it. I knew I want to cover it in a red of some sort(my favorite color). So , on a trip to the thrift store yesterday, I found a pillow sham in just the right print.

I cut the sham up and pieced it in one long strip.

I used a spray adhesive to attach the fabric to the shade. I did a little at a time smoothing it as I went.

After the fabric was in place I folded the edged down twice like a hem, using the spray adhesive to attach it to the inside of the shade.

I still hadn't found a hanging plug in socket, but i figured a quick trip aroun the corner to Menards would fix that. But guess what-the man working the lighting area looked stumped when I asked if they had any and what he showed me would not work. So, I left Menards after looking at all the "electrical lighting" stuff to help me brainstorm how i could make my own. But I decided to make a quick stop on the way home to Goodwill. I made a bee line to the lamps and found the ugliest, cheapest ceramic lamp base and grabbed a few other things and headed home determined to make this lamp happen.

Next came the fun part...

I took that ugly peachy lamp straight out to the garage, put it in a plastic bag and grabbed the hammer. I had a good time taking a few wacks at it until all that was left was broken plaster and a socket on a cord!!!

I still need to do a little more work on it when my love gets home tomorrow and can lend some advice on rewiring a bit, but I have it up over our dining table and Love it!!

Cost of this project....

drum shade-$1.60

pillowcase for fabric-$1.00

ugly lamp needed for wiring-$2.00

spray adhesive-already had;)==$4.60!!!!!!

What We Have Been up To Around Here...

We had something monumental occur in our family this past month....for the first time in almost 13 years, we took down the crib and put it into storage. Sniff..sniff...it is quite bittersweet. It would be neat to say that all 5 kiddos slept in the same crib and now the grandkids will sleep in it too...but that just isn't the case here. Most of the time our kiddos ovelapped and we had two cribs up at once, and one of those original cribs didn't survive our Josie girl's trampoline routine in it! But none the less, taking down the crib was very strange! And yet the stage our family is in is exciting. Taking down the crib should be easy right? Take the crib down and put up a new bed, simple right?! Well, we like to do it the Looongggg way-let's play musical beds and see just how many changes we can make. But, in all honesty, we had held off on some projects until the crib came down so that we could address all of the issues in the bedrooms that the kids share all at once.

Our two boys share one bedroom that is approx 9x10 feet, and our 3 girls share a bedroom that is approx 10x12 feet. We really had to make a choice a long time ago to not be frustrated by the space issues, but take it as a challenge to be creative. I really prefer that they share and if given a chance to split them up, would not. But I honestly would not mind a bit more space to fit them;)- I know that most of the time bunk beds are the answer, and we have had one in the girls room, but I am no longer a fan of them and felt we needed to find another solution to the space crunch. It is really important to me to be able to tuck the kids in each night and bunk beds just do not allow that, so many important conversations happen at bedtime or through out the day simply by sitting down at the edge of a bed together-I just did not want to miss that anymore with the current resident of the "penthouse" in the girl's room.

So this is what we did in the great exchange.

First the crib came down with Cole's help as Matt and I worked on deconstructing the bunk bed in the girls' room.

We used the top bunk of the bunkbed for Noah's new bed. It works like a dream since it had the rails already on it. We did quite a bit of rearranging of dressers and shelves in here as well, but I will show that another time. We still need to do some painting since it hasn't been painted for 6 years-Cole now has some ideas of what he likes and i am looking forward to working on that for him.

We did not even keep the bottom of the bunk in the girls room because it is a full size bed and takes up too much space. So we moved that to the basement, got rid of the old couch down there and will now have a nice bed for guests to sleep in when visiting. I will be working on making that bed into more of a daybed style since it is functioning as the couch in our family room. Yet another post for another time;)

So now we are down to one twin bed for 3 girls, just kidding! Last week we purchased 2 new twin mattresses and the girls just slept on them on the floor until we could build the bases to their beds this weekend. Here are some pictures of our progress.

The girls have been wanting to do their room with vintage bed linens-I just can't imagine how they thought of that-haha. So as far as the bedding, and decorations, we just needed to do a little fabric shopping in the studio downstairs! So nice! Well, alright, maybe we did buy a few things from some of my favorite bed linen friends on etsy!

This picture is a bit dark, we still have lighting to deal with in there. But this gives the best shot of all three of the girls beds. We lofted Joslyn's and Bell's for storage(or more affectionately known as "fort" space). Madison's bed was given to us by my folks, it is from IKEA and has wonderful rolling drawers underneath which act as her dresser-LOVE! I am just giddy about how everything fit! It is like one big couch- and I think movie night needs to be in the girl's room from now on! The seven of us would fit better in there than in our living room! LOL.

These are one of the God sends. We had to find a better alternative to the dressers we had for the younger girls, they no longer fit in the room with the change. We had one wall spot that we had to reinvent for the both of them. When I was out hunting last week, I found these tall cabinets-2 of them for $9.00 a piece! They are over 6 feet tall and together they are just as wide as only one dresser! They had all of their shelves perfectly intact-and a lot of them at that!! An amazing blessing! They have this funky grated metal front to the doors, so each of the girls had fun picking out their favorite print to attach behind it for some color.

I still have curtains to make, furniture to paint, and minor changes to make in each of the rooms, but the crazy build and rearrange is done-whew!

It has been fun to do little touches like quilted throw pillows...

A framed map for Joslyn(she collects maps and loves to study them)

And yes, of course some fabric hoops! They are beginning to multiply in this house-yikes!!

An Afternoon Redo and a Thrifted Treasure

Summertime always brings a bunch of weeks single -Momming- it because of being married to a youth pastor:) It brings trips for both the Jr High Ministry and the Sr High ministry. I have to say though, this has been the most mild summer for trips. Early on in our ministry life, I really struggled with all the time Matt was away, and my heart certainly took some time to soften to it and not be frustrated by the responsibilies of his job. It was also due to being a new mom and not being quite confident in my "new position" as well. I was a pretty weepy mama a lot of the time when he was gone, but the Lord has helped to bring a peace, a strength, and actually a joy or anticipation to these times 12 years later! Not a joy that Matt is gone:)-I still deeply miss my husband when he is away ,and, there is nothing that can replace him being home at the end of the day, but I have come to appreciate elements of the solitude when he is not home, that help to get through those times. The kids an I lay pretty low when he is gone, although as they are getting older, there are still things on the schedule for the older kids, it is a bit different from having all babes that need no outside activity nessasarily to nuture their own growth during these weeks. But when dad is gone for awhile, I usually take the time to dig into some projects that cannot be done during a regular week with deadlines and the precious time OF Matt being home, that I do not want to sacrifice. It is a great time to pull things out that will not need to be put away until they are done.

So this week, I had one BIG surprise project for my husband that I still cannot reveal because the little stinker may be reading my blog and facebook while he is away but I will share that on Saturday when he gets home!! But I do have a project I can share. I was able to work on and finish this afternoon while the kids swam in the pool(or lake more accurately-the summer has been so wet that our pool looks more like a mudhole than a pool-no matter how hard I work to keep it clean). I have talked about the small space issues in our house before. I am learning to appreciate the challenges it brings in function and decorating-darn-I am just going to have to be creative! One of the best solutions for us has been to "hutch" many many of our dressers, adding space for organization and decoration where we may have not been able to do so before. Well -I have had one dresser in our kitchen that sits by the back door in a small nook. It is a very narrow dresser though so it has taken me years to find a hutch that fit it. But finally, a few weeks ago, I did!!! And again-it was a thrifted treasure with a fabulous price tag!! $5.00! So here is the before and after-I am very happy!

I will really enjoy having my cookbooks out and accessible as well as some of my favorite blue dishes. I just love how it fit so snug in the little nook that otherwise would be useless!

Painting and Planting

Awhile back I had shared about the redo of our bedroom. We went from a cave of darkness to the bright lights of summertime. I have gradually been moving out of the dark colors into the lighter sides. I think a lot of that began in my last pregnancy when I was in bed for the first 5 months staring at the same walls day in and day out. As soon as I was on my feet again, the deep reds, golds, and greens began to disappear and be replaced with light yellows, blues, and cottage greens. I think I needed to feel I was outside amongst life. Just a theory, who knows, maybe it was just time for change:)-but our bedroom finally got painted a few months ago and I have been slowly redoing the furniture in it as well. How strange it was to actually wake up to walls of sunlight instead of opening my eyes and not knowing if it was day or night!

So, it is the holiday weekend-yeah!! And after getting through some of the kiddos activities we have some TIME! I have been "patiently" waiting-not really, to plant our gardens. And this is the weekend!! But-I still have to be patient as my husband gets up the new fencing for them. Our first year here I planted the garden with no fence and the next day, my lovely veggies were gone! So, being ever so intelligent, I ran out to the store and bought some more and planted them-yes, you guessed it-they grew into beautiful yummy veggies-NOT! They got eaten again-so I was not the smartest cookie-but I finally learned my lesson. We put of a fence BEFORE planting again. So, while my husband is getting that fence put up, I have another fun project for my room! I know you were wondering how I could go from painting to gardening in the same paragraph, that is how. See, don't they totally go together?! Painting and planting-humh-who would have thought. So , have I confused you yet?

Well, here are some pictures of my painting project this weekend. It is a dresser for my husband. It is about time, considering half of his drawers have no pulls on them, the drawers are falling apart and, let's just be honest here...it is a great way to get him to finally clean out his stuff! The dresser was picked up for 23.00. It has the retro gold thing going, but what I love is the details and curves and the FEET! ahhh, such pretty feet. So after spending the last 4 years cleaning out my garage(haha) I finally have some room to work in the fresh air while the kids play outside and Matt -YES-puts up the gardens fences. I will post updates as long as my plans actually play through!