Home Tour: The Blue Room

I'm finally getting started on my house pictures! In part, truthfully, these room tours will also be my catalogue of things not yet done. Sigh. Such is life with kids :)

I must also start with two confession and one caveat:
Confession: Over the past three years, I have come to love decorating my house. I love design blogs, DIY blogs, mommy-craft blogs--all of it. While I try to limit the amount of time that I spend reading such blogs, it has been fun over the past few years to get lots of new ideas, learn new things I can put into practice, and start transforming my house. I have been thinking about how I wanted to decorate this house for the past 5 months--ever since we made the offer on it. I have had to learn in the past month, though, that putting it all together the way I want it is going to take more time than I thought. So, some rooms are more finished, and some rooms are more works-in-progress.

Caveat: My house never actually looks like this. I have staged these pictures while my big kids were watching TV in an attempt to get some of the cool design-blog-type pictures you see out there. But seriously? Never looks like this. Ever. Maybe for 2 seconds after I've cleaned it. But then I leave the room and it's back to chaos. (You can partially see this in the last picture here--the train that is supposed to be neatly in line on top of the bookcases is jauntily awry. Now the question is--who did it? I honestly don't think Carver could reach up there to mess with it, but I'm also pretty sure David doesn't go around the house messing things up just to see how long it takes me to notice...) But, it's also true that I'm a bit of a neat-nik. We do have set clutter-control times around here (before lunch, before dinner, and before bed) because when it gets too crazy I get crazy, but it still never really looks like this. Only when I've been the one doing all the cleaning, and that's very rarely the case.

So, on to the blue room!

As you can see, the room is very, um, blue. We did no painting in this house. While there are a few rooms that I would prefer to be a different color (including this one), the paint color in those rooms is not bad enough to justify the work needed to paint them. This is our homeschool/playroom. Rosie is my child-model. If this were a BHG shoot, she'd be my only child :)

I did the silhouettes of the kids several years ago. I need to buy another silver frame and actually do one of Rose and Hope. And, I haven't quite figured out how to hang pictures on plaster walls. This attempt involved some spackle and paint. They're almost straight.


The wall behind the couches will be our bulletin board wall. I have three boards, which I still need to figure out how to get on the wall (see above problem).

These are cheap-o Wal Mart bulletin boards. I painted the frames white, used spray adhesive to glue some cool fabric on, and then lined the edges with ribbon to hide my not-so-straight fabric edges. They really are cool looking, and they'll help break up that wall.


Next is the toy corner. The pictures above the kid's kitchen are pages from a used copy of "One Morning In Maine." I cut up the book, saved the best pictures, glued them to cheap mat board with spray adhesive, and put them on the wall. Very fun.



And last but not least is our wall-o-books. These are Ikea expedit shelves, which David and his dad and BIL spent a week putting together (along with the Billy shelves in our room). They also help break up the blue walls, and each shelf is deep enough and tall enough that I can put puzzles and games and other random stuff on the shelves. Homeschooling stuff is closer to the top, and along the bottom row are baskets hiding coloring stuff, crafting materials, musical instruments, and our bird-watching items. The step-stool is also Ikea (I've never been this close to an Ikea--they really are wonderful) that I painted a fun color. As you can see, Rose has figured out that the big kids are not the only ones who can climb it to get to what they want.


The one area I did not show you is the little closet in the corner, which houses bins of toys. I like to rotate toys--only have two or three things out at a time that the kids can play with, and every month or so, switch them up for something else. The keeps the toys fresh, and makes rainy mornings super fun when we go switch them out.

30 years and 4 months

I turned 30 last week. Somehow, with all the other things we've had going on in our lives this year, that just does not seem like a big deal. In more exciting news, Hope turned 4 months, and she's still doing splendidly!

For my birthday, David took us all into the city. We left the kids with the officers (all girls) of the house that David will be advising* (one of whom we had on good authority that she's a great babysitter!), and went out to dinner by ourselves. Well, with Hope. That's by ourselves, right? After we picked up the kids, we ran around the 15th floor of the Empire State Building a little, then took the kids over to his office to let them burn off some more steam there. Before heading home, we went to Greenwich Village and found some cannoli. It was a fun evening, and I'm thankful for a husband who can navigate Manhattan!

*To help its students bond, King's has a house system. This looks very similar to a frat/sorority system, except that every student is assigned to a house as a freshman. David will be advising the Queen Elizabeth I house this year.*

In other news, we have had a little bit of a rough start to figuring out Hope's doctors here. While we love the neurosurgeon that Dr. Young referred us to, our insurance situation it not ironed out yet, making the process of seeing more doctors and getting her head ultrasounds done very messy. I did go see a pediatrician with her on Friday for a 4 month check up and immunizations. Unfortunately, this doctor is not somebody that I will get along well with, and I left the office feeling very discouraged. It didn't help that I had all the other kids with me, and Laura had an accident in her pants close to the beginning of the visit. Once we got home, I gave Laura a bath, made a couple phone calls, did some online research, and found a doctor who will let me interview her before becoming an official patient. I will be doing that Tuesday morning, so please pray that she and I will hit it off, or, if not, that I will find a doctor that I am comfortable with. After that, we will be waiting until our insurance sorts itself out a little bit more before seeing any more doctors.

So, what's coming up next? We will be starting school on Monday. Carver doesn't start until a week from Monday, but the girls are pretty bored, so we're going to go ahead and start. We have not found a church home yet, so please pray that God will show us where He wants us here. We are having ClearNote friends come visit over Labor Day, and I'm sure I will be making more trips down to Philadelphia to spend time with the C's. We are getting settled in, figuring out grocery stores and shopping malls and indoor playplaces for rainy days. Slowly it's starting to feel more like home.

Hope has been doing a little better with sitting up and holding her head up, so I'm hoping to capture that with my camera over the next few days to show you. And I am working on a house tour--it's coming, I promise!

Pictoral fly-by of the last month...

On July 4th, Carver turned 8:





Our last week in Indiana, we took a day and visited Conner Prairie. It was super fun.


Carver got to try out his tomahawk-throwing skills:








Rose turned 2 on the day moving chaos started (Friday):


Packing-up-the-truck day (Sunday afternoon and evening). We think we had over 30 people from church show up to help us pack the truck. Except for the circumstances, it was a blast, and I got one last (staged--can you tell?) picture of representatives from our small group, which we have had in our house on Sunday nights for the last 4 years:


Filling up the cul-de-sac with cars and trucks and things that go:

Little house on Fridley Ct, we will miss you!

Grandpa Talcott and Grandpa Bray (who flew out to surprise us with Grandma Bray!) discuss fitting all of my possessions in the moving truck:

As an aside, we are so, so thankful for all the help we had moving. We had no idea how much help we needed until it was too late and we were in the thick of things, up to our necks in mess, excitement, children, and stuff. Talcotts and Brays both came to help, and Grandma Bray spent most of the weekend holding Hope, which was such a huge help, freeing me up. We had people dear to us show up on Monday morning before the closing to help us clean, and to sit and chat with me one last time in our house. We love all of you, and miss you all terribly.

Hope hanging out with Dad:


Laura turned 4:


Rose reads to Hope:


Hope listening to Dad sing hymns, in the absence of our piano (which we believe is still sitting in storage in Bloomington, hopefully coming to us soon!):


Sisters.


Bob, Ben and Thomas came to visit us this week. In all fairness, they did the hosting, taking David and Carver into Mozart at the Met and feeding them dinner in the city. We had them over for dinner Friday night, and then went to church with them on Sunday morning. Before Hope was born, we were told that she had a very high chance of having cerebral palsy, which is what Bob has. Bob has been a huge encouragement to me as we have thought about what life with a handicapped child could look like.

Today, we drove down to Philadelphia to spend the day with the C's. What a fun day, and so refreshing to me to be able to spend the entire day talking with Delene. Thank you, Lord, for friends.


I know, I know--there are no pictures of our new house. But they will be coming, as I finish getting rooms set up. I can't wait to show you our house, in the hopes that you'll come visit!