Bedroom Makeover/Organization

I mentioned in an earlier post that Rich and I gave each other a new bedroom for Valentine's Day this year.

A little history: About 7 years ago, we bought our first nice bedroom set, along with an expensive bedding set.  A few years later, our finances crumbled, and we sold our beautiful bedroom furniture, out of desperation.  We kept the bedding though.  My dad had an extra dresser and nightstand that he wasn't using, so we've been using that, which is so nice of him!  Anyway, for years now, our bedroom has been our least favorite room in the house.  No headboard, dated bedding, borrowed furniture.  Just blah.

Also, I've been on a mission since Christmas to get my STUFF under control.  I was reading this list, one day, written by an awesome Herbalist about how to have a healthy life.  One thing he said was, "Get rid of 1/3 of your possessions.  Your stuff can drowned you."  It was an ah-ha moment for me.  It made me realize that I AM drowning in stuff.   We already do have a pretty organized house, but we just have too much stuff!  So I've been striving to declutter, throw out, give away, sell (which funded a lot of this), and organize what we do want to keep.  And I started with the master bedroom, closet and bathroom.  Part of feeling orderly, (in my opinion), your surroundings need to be pleasing to the eye, as well.  So, to jump to the point here,  Rich and I decided it was time to give our room a makeover.  He was going to make us a headboard, and I was going to create a peaceful haven that was orderly, new, and pleasing to the eye!

Unfortunately, new furniture was not in the budget, but holy cow, Rich sure pulled off that headboard!

This is the back of the headboard, before it was stained.

Rich designed and built the whole headboard.  I just told him what color I wanted him to stain it. He built it in what seemed like half a day.  Then each night after work, he did a little staining, and finishing coats.  I think it took him about 5 days??  Then we let it sit in the garage to air out for a couple of weeks.  (We probably should have waited longer because it still smells like polyurethane).  I love how it turned out and seriously, he never ceases to amaze me with his little hidden talents.  I'll show ya the finished project, but first, we need to see some before pictures:

That rinkadink nightstand below, is just some thing I found in the clearance section of Target one day.  But the far nightstand and dresser, that you can barely see, are my dad's, so please know, I realize they totally don't match the new headboard.

For quite some time now, I've been dreaming of a neutral colored bedroom and white bedding.  So that's what we did.  I ran everything by Rich to make sure he liked what I was doing.  Luckily, he trusts my decorating ideas and likes my taste!

So here is the After:

We'd love to eventually get a chair in that corner by the window.  

The ottoman was brought in from our family room.

If I can figure out how to put some window panels up with this bay window, I probably will.  

You can see here, the nightstand and headboard don't go so well together, but we can deal with it for now.  

I now keep my make up/beauty supplies on my dresser.  I realize it might be a bit of an eye sore, but it is so functional and I always put my makeup away now.  So that's a win for me (and Rich).  And this is the spot I do my makeup, so here it stays. 

(There's that "stick plant" again that I have mentioned in other posts, Christmas/Valentines).  I'm liking it in our room!

A view from Rich's side:

The view from our bathroom (below).  Yes, I love white:).   We were really trying to achieve a clean, airy, even hotel-like feel in the room.  White to me, means order, and cleanliness.  

This is not a great picture, due to the lack of sunlight (the unnatural light didn't look good in the pic).  But, my closet has been reorganized and cleaned as well.  Feels so good!  I love these shoe shelves, because our shoes don't fall through the cracks (like those metal rod ones we used to have).  The top of the shelf serves as a place to keep our perfume and cologne, as well as a place to put our wedding rings and pocket things.  Not pictured, we added more shoe shelves up above for Rich's golf shoe obsession collection.  Behind the mirrored door are shelves with a ton of white bins that organize other things like under garments, under shirts, socks, tights/leggings, and other things that need to be stored there.  Everything has a home.  

I made this jewelry holder a couple of months ago, and it has kept my jewelry organized and it's easy to be reminded of what I have because I can see it all at once.  I already had the frame.  I just added cork board and fabric.

I also found this little dish to corral my earrings.  I keep it on my dresser.  I'm sure it's probably used to dip bread in oil, or something like that, but I liked that is was white, and unique looking.  

 Every drawer/basket/bin/cabinet in our room, closet, and bathroom has been cleaned out and organized. We are loving it and our room has never stayed more clean.  It's motivating to make our bed and keep it kept up because it's pretty and everything has a designated spot.  

One last before and after:

Before:

After:

Star Wars Lego Party

Jonah wanted a Star Wars Lego party this year.  I try to keep things simple, but sometimes if the theme is fun and easy, I do a little extra than planned.  It's hard when Pinterest is flooded with fun and creative ideas, and I'm not afraid to steal them.  No stressing though!  I'm not a fan of stressing out for a party.  I've learned that:).  So this time, I did what sounded fun and I did the prep work necessary to avoid the stress, and it worked!

 These little guys went in the goody bags  (those are glow sticks coming out of the paper if you couldn't tell), along with some homemade candied popcorn. Pinterest inspired, of course.

The most time consuming of the the prep work was this drawing of Yoda I made for "pin the light saber on Yoda." I did see this idea on Pinterest, but I wasn't interested in spending much money on the game, so I decided to draw Yoda.  I haven't sketched since high school, so I wasn't sure if it would even turn out, but I was content with the results.  The kids loved it, that's all that matters!

 And here's the birthday boy!  So excited!

 That little utensil holder made out of Lego, totally Pinterest!

 As people showed up, they had to guess how many Legos were in the jar.  Their guesses were too cute.  There were 237, and most of their guesses ranged from 7-100.  Most guessed in the 40's though:).  Our winner was actually this guy below (my nephew, Jordan) with a guess of 135.

Cooper, taking a moment to think, mid party.

 The next game we played was "pin the light saber on Yoda," like I mentioned.  It was a little loud and crazy containing all of those kids.

 This was the end result. :)

My attempt at getting a group shot.  Pretty much all of my pics didn't come out from that day.  I still haven't taken the time to master my camera, and I'm trying to shy away from auto, and just use the manual setting, but as you can see, I have a long way to go.  

 Boo for blurred pictures.

Jonah's request was white cake, white frosting, and vanilla ice cream.  Easy enough!

 After cake, we sent the kids out for an "asteroid hunt."  Rich hid foil balls all over the backyard and we gave them all bags to gather them.  We didn't tell them their was candy inside.

 That was a lot of fun for them.  They went nuts.  We had them count all of their "asteroids" when they got in, and then we told them there were little treasures inside, which they were pretty stoked about.

Again, sorry for the crumby pics!

Last, we did presents.

That ate up the rest of the time, and Rich and I took a big sigh of relief that we survived all of those energetic kids!!  Wahoo!

Another Birthday Boy!

Jonah turned 7!

I'm not a morning person, but I did make him some hash browns (which he loves) before school that day.

And on a side note: It's was "Twisted Tuesday" (or something like that-don't think I got that right) at school, so Julien dressed a little silly.  He wore a shirt over a nice sweater, and threw on some goggles.

That night we told Jonah he could go wherever he wanted for dinner, so he chose Golden Corral.  It's a buffet.  We invited Rich's mom and step dad to come with us, and we brought Jonah's presents.

Money from Grandma and Grandpa!

His brother's each got him a present.  (Cooper-a Star Wars yo-yo, and Julien- Star Wars trading cards).  Julien even spent his own money.

My sister sent a gift, and this (below) is one of the things she got Jonah.  I think he liked it!

She also got him some Star Wars legos, which is what he wanted sooo badly, but my pictures didn't come out.
Our gift to him was a Lego Star Wars Encyclopedia (are you noticing a theme here?), which he also loved, and a birthday party (can you guess the theme for the party?).

7 things I love about Jonah:
1.) He gets a kick out of the littlest things and laughs so hard.
2.) He is super smart and figures things out very quickly.
3.) He has the softest skin in the whole world, like a baby.
4.) Every time I get the camera out, he makes his biggest smile ever and gets goofy (kind of like the picture above).
5.)  He writes me little love notes and sticks them in my mailbox.  (We have little mailboxes at home with our names on them, specifically for love notes).  Jonah puts the most notes in them.
6.)  He makes funny faces at himself in the mirror when I do his hair, and makes me laugh.
7.)  He bursts into tears when we talk about how he and his brothers have to move out when they are 18 so they can become adults.  So, I know that's sad, and it breaks my heart that is makes him so sad and scared, but it's the cutest thing ever, and at least I know he loves being home.  I reassure him that he will want to move out when he is that old, but he tells me otherwise:).

Happy Birthday Jonah!  It's so fun to see you grow up and learn new things.  We love you!

Valentine's Day

I really like Valentine's day, other than the boat loads of candy that my kids come home with.  Rich and I decided that our gift to each other this Valentine's day was a bedroom makeover (sort of).  I'll post about that later.  We did plan to go out to dinner sometime that week, but it never happened due to sickness, and that ended up being okay, because we could put that money towards our room.  On Valentine's day, I knew I wanted to show my family some love, by making a nice dinner, along with some festive decorations.  I like how it turned out, and so did they!

I wrote everyone a little love letter.  

I love tulips!  They were a bit droopy, but by the next day, they were completely perked up.  Someone please explain that to me?!

Hope you all had a happy Love Day too!