An Award and a Bedroom Re-do

This week, Sarah from Nesting in Pleasant View gave me these awards:

She and her sister, Christy, started their blogs because they moved away from each other and wanted to share their lives with each other through blogging. I started my blog for the same reason, when I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast. I, like them, was surprised when Internets started reading my blog, too, and they were actually nice, and shared my values, and they weren't freaky people from the internet, but really great people I call friends. That totally shocked me. They remind me about what's important, make me laugh, help me decorate my house, and inspire me. Honestly, I've never had one rude comment or had any obnoxious people cross my path. (Before blogging, I used to have a mom's group message board, and that group had people with no filters at all).

So Thank You for the nice awards Sarah, and I will bestow them on the following people:

Debbie at This is the Life, who is one funny mom, and we could all use a good laugh every day. It actually turns out that we are kinda' neighbors, and she spotted me at the store the other day! Wow, really small world.

Beautiful, amazing Sandy at For Reluctant Entertainers, who is the epitome of a generous hostess, and is teaching me what is important about entertaining and about being a mom and a homemaker.

Martha at Elizabeth Hill Cottage who is perhaps one of the funniest people I know, was my first blogging friend, she gives great house tours, and she picks out a mean dollhouse furniture ensemble.

One of my new favorite bloggers is Chris at Just a Girl. This will probably be a big surprise to her since I've just been blurking on her blog because I have been so busy this past week with vacation bible school. She has inspired me to get my picture frames on the wall, and I laughed hysterically when I saw her husband's contribution to decor because the EXACT same item has been added to my house. She's got great style and has done some really neat projects.

Melissa at The Inspired Room, not because she daily posts great photos of homes that I drool over and have no idea where she digs up all this stuff, but because she is an awesome chick. You'd think she'd be all snobby and everything because she has such a great blog, but nooooo, she is a really nice person!

And Kimba at A Soft Place to Land who shares my illness for painting furniture. My husband and my neighbors are always laughing at me because my hands and arms look like this:

But this is actually a picture of Kimba's hand, and when I saw it on her blog I knew we were soul sisters. I just love to see what this girlie is going to paint next.

And with that, I think I will just tag you all with these awards because you are all really cool, and I just wish I had an extra 24 hours in each day to read every blog and write to you all because you are all so nice, and your visits to my little blog are truly appreciated.

Your "official instructions" follow: Now go forth and share the love! To the recipients of the award... pick 5 blogs you consider deserving of this award, whether for creativity, design, interesting material, or contributions to the blogging community, no matter what language. Name each nominee and link to his/her blog. Show the award and include the name (and link to his/her blog) of whoever presented you with this award. Link to the Arte Y Pico blog so everyone knows the origin of this award. Post these rules

And now, some before and after pictures of my bedroom. I should be arrested for doing this to it:

And then, as evidenced by the paint splotches if you look closely, I tried to find the right neutral paint color to fix my mistake, with absolutely no success. Until one day, I read this post about Tobacco Road. And I actually printed the photo she took of the paint can and I marched down to Lowe's, and then I did this:

A little bit better? Oh, yeah. Then I took down those AWFUL curtains and mistreated the windows with some trusty toile. Toile is always good. And why do I have a love affair with fabric that has silly pictures of people on it? I have no clue. But I do.

I'm not finished, but I'm finished enough for the time being. I still need to paint the trim, as evidenced by the next photo:

I've also had piles of frames in my bedroom from when I moved 2 1/2 years ago. I couldn't quite bring myself to do anything with them, because the paint was dated and they had old studio photos of my kids. I wrestled with the guilt of not wanting to put dated pictures of my precious babies up. Then I realized ... I'm not throwing the kids away. I'm not even throwing the photos away. I'm just putting up different photos. So get over it. Out came the spray paint cans and a few photos downloaded to Target photo center later, we have some decorated walls in our house and one less pile.

I just love everyday photos of my kiddos. Some I did in black/white and others in sepia.

My next project in the room is to paint the furniture, but I just can't figure out what color to paint everything. This is cheap pine that we've had for a long time, and it is very scratched up. I love black, but I feel like I might have reached the legal limit of black furniture in my house. I just don't know. What do you think? Black, white, cream, some other color? I need your opinions.

I do love this color, and thanks to the Nester, my house is starting to shape up. So I think if anyone deserves those awards, she certainly does. Not only does she share all her fabulous ideas with us, but I'm so relieved that getting something done imperfectly is better than spending too much time making it perfect.

My little desk

Do you remember this little desk, that no one wanted,
and I took it home, and painted it, and loved it, and it loved me?

Well it was feeling worn out and tired again, and needed to be freshened up a bit. I repurposed it to be a computer desk for the black computer that the kids use. So before I put the computer on it, I took it outside and spray painted it. On a whim, really. Sometimes I just decide to paint something, and I go shopping for paint in my basement, and within minutes the deed is done. Sometimes I'm too lazy and impatient to use gloves, and this time the spray paint can had something wrong with it so I ended up with black paint all over my hand and arm. But it was worth it.

I found the gingham chair pad at Walmart just an hour before. I feel so much better now. I am the kind of person that needs to rearrange things, and change colors once in a while. When I was a kid, I remember changing the furniture placement in my room when I got bored with it.

And here's a picture of my new haircut ...

Not a lot different than before as far as the style, but MUCH shorter. I do love it, but I had long hair for years, so I was in shock for a few days. I think I'm going to grow it out again. But it's fun for now.

I Did a Double-Take

"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world."

~Author Unknown

One of the nicest things about having a teenager is that I can leave the kids at home! So I went out the other day to do an errand. I came back in less than an hour, walked into the house, through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Then I stopped in my tracks and backed up. Something caught my eye.

It was this:

I knew right away ... my youngest child had pulled the chair out and was watching out the window, waiting for me to get home. That may not be a big deal to some people, but it was HUGE to me. Sometimes I underestimate my importance in their lives.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the things I want to do (decorating, reading, talking to my friends, blogging, and the list goes on), that I forget my most important job in the world. Sometimes I get tired at the end of the day, tired of managing people, tired of hearing them bicker, that I lose sight of the big picture. Sometimes I sign up for too many things because I feel obligated to help the teachers, the PTO, the church, that I forget about the biggest job I volunteered for. Is my fear of letting everyone else down causing me to let these guys down?

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." ~Proverbs 22:6

God loaned these beautiful creatures to me and gave me the job of raising them to be Christians, to be good people, to be his light in the world.

My window to do this is closing fast. They are growing so fast my head spins. They were just babies yesterday, and now one of them will be driving in a few years. And when they are ready to go out on their own, will I be able to look back and say that I made the most of the time I had?

I think I need to print this picture of the chair and hang it in my kitchen so I can remember that most important goal every day.

Deceptive ... and Delicious?

A while back, I bought this book

and I've slowly been testing the recipes. In case you haven't seen it, Jessica Seinfeld wrote this book on how to sneak pureed veggies into food. Some recipes have been good, some not so good. I'll get back to you on those recipes, but today I tried the recipe for donuts, and this is what I ended up with:

They were really good, and very easy to make. I did get lucky a couple months ago, and I found a donut pan at a yard sale, but the recipe says you can use muffin tins instead. They have sweet potato and pumpkin in them, and they are pretty low fat because they have egg white and just a table spoon of low fat margarine. Ok, they are not going to taste like real donuts, but my super picky kids ate them and liked them. I can't stop eating them.

Pottery Barn Knockoff

I'm workin' hard today trying to clean out our garage so I can put all the kids art supplies/play dough and a table in there. So before I run off to work, I thought I would show you a picture of the memo board Mr. Jones made for our daughter. I saw one at PB Teen but it was much more money than I could spend. So my honey got to work, and this is what he came up with:




He cut up a peg board from The Home Depot, got some cork board, dry erase board, and the striped panels are just plain boards covered with an extra pillow case from her bedding. He put some trim around the whole thing, and it was finished! I think it passes with flying colors.