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!!