Here’s Eva’s corner in my room– full of things that could each be a blog post in and of themselves.

There’s the new Moses basket I designed that will be my next baby gear sewing pattern (the SweetPod Sleep Spot maybe?), new handknit booties and hat for a fresh head and toes…

the newborn diapers all freshly washed and waiting…

a newly slip-covered rocking chair and a hexagon stripe quilt…

On Monday I had contractions every 10 minutes ALL DAY LONG– from about 7:30 in the morning until 9:30 or so at night.  While I could tell that it wasn’t quite the real thing yet I also felt like it could turn very real any second.  I was on a roller coaster of thought and emotion.  I wasn’t ready!  I need this one last week!  My shelves and refrigerator were empty– so a major grocery shopping trip was accomplished and eased some of the unready feelings.  We braved the new Ikea to buy that new dresser we really needed when the last baby was born so we could have a place to keep clothes and blankies.  I think my body was just trying to tell me to get with it, stop dilly-dallying.  There will be a baby coming next week, or the next.  My days with Hunter as the baby are numbered– as are my days of needing help rolling over in bed.

Last night, as the sky looked like this:

I relished in the wonderful day I had swimming with my kids and stocked my freezer with 3 pans of Chicken Enchiladas.  Today is Lasagna day.

And I’m feeling ready– with each day a little more.

Welcome to Brenna’s room!  11 year old girl heaven complete with a (recently shingled) dollhouse, a non-pink quilt, and lots of dragon pictures and keep-out signs on the door.

Yep, I’m finally posting about Brenna’s new bed.  I’ve referenced it several times– that it was in the plans, that it was in the works, that it was in her room… The thing is, I have been blessed with a daughter with the same room-keeping-tidy skills as I have (next to none) and so getting good pictures of her new bed in her room has been a little tricky.  We accomplished the mission today– and I learned that I’m not fun when I just nag and point out every last little thing on the carpet.  (Note to self– I really need to work on that and cut her some slack.  She knows just as well as I do that I’m just as messy as she is.  The thing is, there isn’t anyone living here to boss me around.  I just need to remember that no matter who you are it’s not fun to be bossed around.)

Anyway, we got the free plans for this bed from Ana White.  Her website is a pretty amazing and extensive resource for building your own furniture.  The plans we used are right here.  Barry did about 99% of the work with a little help from Brenna reading over the cut list, holding pieces steady as he drilled, and sanding.  Brenna picked the paint color and the two of us did most of the priming and painting.

You can see that the end near the ladder is missing the bottom brace to keep the legs square because the original plan was to build the big book case, but once we got it up in her room and were figuring out exactly how furniture needed to be arranged we realized that it would be either the book case or the doll house, we couldn’t fit both.  Quite naturally, the doll house won.  It is plenty sturdy and stable as it is– and so convenient to wheel the doll house table in and out the open legs.

She already had a desk, so we didn’t need to build one.  It fits just perfectly under her bed and she loves to hang out there and draw, sort sea shells, read, type…  Her desk has actually gotten a lot more use.  I think it must be that everything seems more fun when it’s in a fort.

We made a couple of pillow cases that match her quilt and some cute throw pillows.  I was having fun making yo-yos from scraps, so there’s the rectangular pillow with lots of yo-yos and the round one (which I made using this pattern from Cluck-Cluck Sew) with little yo-yos in the center.

Now here’s how she really made her bed–

with all her loves– her baby blanket, the monster Jonah designed and helped make her this past Christmas, Julie (the doll I made a couple of years ago), and Buttercup (the teddy I made her a LONG time ago).

Now to get a crib and dresser and rocking chair crammed into that little room.

Did I tell you IKEA is opening here this week?

A while back I told you I’d show you the new art work and rearranging I’ve done in our family room.  I did show you my new pillows, framed quotes, and my mantel.  Here’s the rest of it.

You can see what it used to look like here.   We moved the piano into this room and moved the big kid drawing table into my art room.  This has worked much better for the flow of our days.  Every morning we gather after breakfast with some singing and a prayer.  With the piano in near my desk, sewing machine, and spinning chair it was often a tradition that caused me more stress than pleasure.  Someone (read Logan) was always spinning in my chair, turning on my sewing machine, crashing into things, climbing on furniture not intended to be climbed on, being completely distracted by a book.  We haven’t eliminated the book distraction with this set-up, but there is no spinning chair or sewing machine.  Much better.

I splurged on some new alphabet art I’ve long been wanting.  I love Ida Pearle’s paper cut illustrations and thought the alphabet cards would fit well in our learning space.

I also gifted myself this wooden laser cut alphabet from bookhou.

Inspired by this homeschool space I found some fun field guide posters.  We use the bird one quite a lot.  Ian has been really interested in the human body, so I thought the skeletal system poster would be fitting for us now too.  Someday I think I’d like to add a small one with some more color — leaves or mushrooms or backyard bugs.  Or maybe a colorful embroidered alphabet sampler.  Something colorful, anyway.

I spruced up the curtains that hide the deep shelves crammed with extra school stuff and a couple of toy baskets with some patchwork stripes.  They make me happy.

Here’s another view of the old piano.  Every time we’ve moved the movers are incredulous.  It is in pretty sad shape, but it works pretty well, I think it’s pretty, and it’s ours.  Barry wants to paint it this summer.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  It could be fun, but I also like that it is big and dark to balance our big and dark couch on the other side of the room.   I don’t know what color I’d want either.  I think maybe I’ll paint the bench and see what I think from there.

So, there you have it– our everything room.  Always a work in progress.

Today my plan was to post about our super-duper-nature-journal-making-and-using home school group activity that I was scheduled to host, but it had to be canceled because poor Ian threw up 4 times last night (in the toilet! hooray!) and it was 40 degrees with thunder and hail outside.  So on to plan B.

Since I posted about our new magnet board I’ve actually had quite a few people e-mail me with questions about our job chart.  You must understand that I am not a very good housekeeper.  I am completely organizationally challenged, inconsistent, and naturally a slob.  I love things to be neat and organized, to be clean and sparkly, but making myself do actual cleaning and organizing has been one of my life long struggles.  Fortunately I married a saint who has self discipline in spades.  I have improved on my house keeping skills a lot since we got married and I’ve matured and realized how much I really do like order, but I’ve certainly got a long way to go.

First off– it’s just a magnetic dry-erase board.  I used printable magnet sheets I found at Office Max to print the words on which I designed with Pages, our desktop publishing program on our Mac.

Any system we have to keep our house in order around here has to be really simple.  There are a few things the kids are expected to do every morning– get dressed, make beds, and pick up clothes and toys off of their floors.  I have to reiterate these expectations on a near daily basis.  That and the rule NO READING BEFORE BREAKFAST.  Every morning the 3 big kids work together to unload the dishwasher and then as the day goes on everyone rinses and loads their own dishes.  The dishwasher, not the sink or counter, is the dirty dish receptacle.

A couple of times a day (at roughly 12 and 4) we do a “clean up” where everyone works as hard as they can for 10 minutes to pick up and tidy the main floor rooms of the house.  This helps me relax a bit about the inevitable mess of having 5 kids home all day because I know they’ll help get it under control.

Then evening rolls around and that is where the job chart comes in.  The kids rotate helping with dinner clean-up on weekdays.  The dinner chores are the only ones on the chart that consistently get done.  Laundry is on there, but it is just one of those battles I haven’t figured out how to fight quite yet.  (I did try Jessica’s once a week laundry day thing for about 4 weeks, but I just couldn’t do ALL the laundry a family of 7 produces, do school, and make meals in one day.  I have yet to find something I can really stay on top of.)

On Saturdays Barry helps the kids really clean their rooms before anyone can go downstairs in morning and the bathroom chores rotate between kids each week.  So, whoever has mirrors cleans all the mirrors in all the bathrooms, whoever has toilets cleans all 3 toilets (and the surrounding floor), and the counters person does all the sinks and counters in all 3 bathrooms.  Sometimes I’ll make a list of chores that REALLY need to be done in addition to those and we all work on those too.  Vacuuming just gets done when it looks like we need to (which is a few times a week in the main rooms because we have a big dog who SHEDS).  Our sliding glass door is covered in fingerprints and dog-nose prints more often than not.  We’re lucky if dusting gets done once a month.

This helps us get all the necessities done for health and basic decluttering, but our house is by no means spic and span.  I seriously could spend hours everyday cleaning, but I don’t want to, and I really don’t think I need to.  There will be a season when I’ll miss all the mess makers and won’t even remember the mess.  Right now I’m just striving for peace and order, with as little effort as possible.

And I try really, really hard not to compare myself and my home to my friend’s who are obsessively neat and clean with perfectly arranged living rooms and decorated walls.

I usually feel pretty good about where I’m at.

So, I did my mantle re-do research last week and found ideas I loved at a new-to-me decorating blog called The Lettered Cottage.  This spring mantel arrangement was my favorite thing I saw on the whole internet– totally school room friendly and clean and fresh.  My interpretation is not quite as pretty or involved, but the only thing I had to buy was an ugly thrift store flowery painting.  It had no glass and the picture was printed on stiff board, so all I just painted over the painting with chalkboard paint and turned the gold frame white.  That was easily done in a morning.  I think it will be fun to change up the words and draw pictures every now and then.

If you remember my mantel-cubby thing used to be mauve.  SHHHH!  Don’t tell my landlords, but one of the walls in the living room is painted a tannish color.  Barry found the left over down in the basement so I used it to cover the mauve.  Technically, that’s not changing the paint colors in the house right, since this color is used in the house?  I don’t think they’ll notice.  It certainly makes me feel better.

I know my candles would look better if they were pure white instead of cream colored, but they’re what I have.  I think some apple green pottery would be a fun addition, as well as something white and small on the walls on either side of the black board.  I’m on the look out for something that I love.  I don’t want to buy things just to fill spaces– but because I think they’re beautiful and they make me happy.  And I prefer artist made things rather than China made things, of course.  I’ll keep an eye on etsy for things that fit the bill.

In the meantime– happy spring!!

So, here’s that magnet board I’ve been dreaming up for the kids’ side of the art room.  We got a big 3′ x 4′ piece of sheet metal from Home Depot, some inexpensive base board molding, some things to hold the corners of the frame together, and a box full of thumb tacks.

Barry made a frame from the molding and we painted it white, then used thumb tacks to hold the sheet metal to the back of the frame.  (If you try this be VERY careful with the metal.  My poor husband really gashed his finger at Home Depot just trying to slide the stack of metal back into place after he got the piece he wanted.  Before he even took it out of the car at home he taped all the edges to prevent another cut.)

When we first lifted the whole thing up with the metal on the back a couple of the corners of the frame came unglued and we were afraid that the whole thing was going to be an unsturdy failure, but we put some more glue in the corners, wrapped a band clamp around the whole thing, and let it dry for a day.  That did the trick!  It turned out great!

We just screwed picture hanging wire to the back and used 2 of those crazy picture hangers that can hold 50 lbs. to hang it on the wall.  This was a good solution for us because we’re renting this house and don’t want to have big screw holes in the walls.

A couple of my boys and I used fabric scraps to make some covered buttons, then hot glued round magnets to the back of them.  They turned out really cute.

And while I was taking pictures of it I thought I’d show you a view from the kitchen with my pretty calendar (from Paper Source) and our chore chart.  It makes me happy that everything looks so neat and pretty.

Anyway, that’s the magnet board story.  My art room spring cleaning is complete.  (And it’s a good thing that I documented it since it’s a little messy now.  I’m helping Brenna make a quilt…)

I’ve been having fun redecorating the family room walls, but I’m not quite ready to take pictures of it all and say I’m done.   I decided today that I need to do something different in my fireplace mantel/ cubby thing so I’ve been looking for inspiring mantel arrangements and dreaming up what I could do with what I already have instead of the family photos that have been there for a year and a half.  (And, to be honest taking photos of just one corner of the room is much easier because I can keep the baskets of unfolded laundry and explosion of k-nex behind me.)

What I can say is done is the sewing of these pillows and some quotes to hang on the wall.  I have a friend who had a pretty quote printed as a photo at Costco, framed it, and gave it to me for Christmas– and I thought it was genius!  So, I took some sayings I’ve wanted displayed in my house somehow, made them into big images using Inkscape (which is kind of like Adobe Illustrator, but free), printed them as photos at Costco, and framed them.  They’ve been done for a while.  I just decided they should go here.

The top one is from Doctrine and Covenants 29:34 where the Lord says “All things unto me are spiritual.”  It’s a good reminder when I’m cooking dinner, picking up toys, helping with math, ignoring laundry that even all the mundane things that need my attention have a purpose–  they’re spiritual.  The second is a quote from Charlotte Mason that says “Education is the atmosphere we breathe, the envelope of wonder that surrounds us, held by the gravity of our daily habits.”

The 2 colorful pillows were so fun for me to make.  They’re basically 4 little quilts, pieced and quilted and turned into pillows.  Here’s one side of the first one:

I used the Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow fat quarters I had been saving to make another quilt like this.  I never was really going to get around to making that quilt, and I decided this is a much better way to enjoy the fabric anyway.

This is the other side.

I got a little crazier with the second pillow.

This one is just quilted with straight lines.

I loved making these because I got to do everything involved in making a quilt, but on a much more immediate, instant gratification scale– and I can see and enjoy them every day.

I also used some home decorator weight fabric I had in my stash to add one plain pillow.  It took all of 20 minutes (invisible zipper and all).

Here’s all 3 again in a different corner:

Obviously these are usually on the floor being jumped on or laid on, but they looked pretty here for a little while.   I’m hoping at some point this year I can get a few Rollie Pollies made for jumping and rolling and reading.  We’ll see.  I probably really should be replenishing my supply of baby girl things– and will probably be more excited about doing that as the days go on.

So, anyone have some favorite mantel photos they want to send me links too?  Feel free to leave them in the comments!

Want to see into my art room?  I tidied it last Saturday and it’s stayed in pretty good shape for a whole week!  I am certainly organizationally challenged and always have been.  In high school, my best friend always bought me some containers and went through and decluttered and cleaned up my bedroom for my birthday.  Now I live with a different best friend and he generally has a big hand in helping me keep my space under control (like throwing a quilt-in-progress over my drafting table to cover the mess).

But this time I did it all by myself!  This is huge!

This is the view from the front room of our house.  Our creative space is what would normally be a formal dining room, but I need to be able to work on making things right in the heart of our home throughout the day, so this is the perfect place to have my craft space.

I’ve got a big Expedit shelf from Ikea with a desk attached.  There’s plenty of room for bins of fabric, boxes of precious metal clay stuff, printmaking supplies, knitting stuff, other crafty odds and ends, our little Tivoli stereo, and some pretty things too.

I’ve got some other Ikea cup things to hold pencils, markers, scissors, pliers– you know, all that stuff that needs to be right there for the taking.

In the big window is my drafting table.  It was a dumpster find of Barry’s when we were in college and I seriously could not imagine life without it.  It is easily one of my very favorite pieces of furniture in our house.  My gecko lives in the corner over my Gocco and block printing stuff.  Underneath my drafting table are rolls of paper, interfacing, contact paper, and baskets of mending, batting and foam.  Oh, and a couple of quilts destined for Humanitarian Services.

Look up, and there are the birds!

Opposite the window wall is the kids’ drawing table.  One of these weekends we’ll make a big magnet board so that Ian won’t need to tape his paintings to the wall.

Here are a few more pictures for good measure.

I love the old Singer from Barry’s aunt.  It needs rewiring to work, but it’s really fun to look at anyway.

A shelf of pretty stuff.  I spun thread and then needle punched the fabric for that little bear years ago.  I still really like him.

I love these under-shelf wire baskets I found at the Container Store.

And here’s a sneak peek to another room I’ve been rearranging and hanging new artwork in.  I think I’ll be ready to show it to you next week.

So, if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that often when I show you a finished project I say something like, “I’ve been making this in my mind for a long, long time,” or “I’ve been dreaming this up for a couple of years,” or something like that.

Well, this is no exception.

We were living in a tiny apartment in Alabama in the beginning of our summer of transition to Denver when a good friend sent me this link with exclamation points and excitement that I HAD to make one– it made her think of me.  And I completely agreed that I NEEDED one somewhere in my new house, whenever it would be that I got settled.  Since we’ve been here (for 2 1/2 years) I’ve been imagining those little birds in corners and bedrooms and had settled on just the place– a corner of the front room above the love seat that needed a little color.

But now that it’s made it is a little big and I’m afraid it would swing into the blinds or the bookshelf and be too much of a temptation for the climbing 2 year old to bat at.  At the moment it is hanging in the doorway between the front room and my art room, but I’m thinking today I’ll put up a hook over my drafting table and let the birdies live there.

I’ve been on a bit of a spring-cleaning/ redecorating kick lately with a long mental list of things I want to do around the house and this was one of those things on the list.  In a burst of spontaneity the other morning Jonah and I went through my scrap bin with bird pattern in hand and found pieces that were the right size, cut them out, matched them up, and whipped up some birds.  That went really fast– especially with his help stuffing them.  With all that built up momentum I gathered some sticks at the park the next day and started sewing birds to branches– only to have them hang upside down like bats.  I discovered I needed to put some weight in the bottom of the birds so they weren’t top heavy and to use screw eyes to secure string to the branches so they wouldn’t twist.  I dedicated the next day to ripping out tail seams and spooning in rice, then attempting  to hang and balance it all again– to no avail.

Finally, when Barry had a free night we tried it all again.  We found a few helpful things:

-Attach the birds to the branch with wire instead of sewing them on so they are easy to reposition.

-Thicker branches twist and roll less than skinny ones.

-We ended up using thin picture wire instead of invisible thread to hang the branches because it was more stable.

-Once we found the perfect bird positions we squeezed a little hot glue in to keep them there.

So, now it’s done and so fun to look at!  When my art room is all decluttered and organized I’ll need some photo documentation, so I’ll show you its permanent home then.

Barry had been dreaming of getting a GoPro for Christmas– but I don’t think he thought he’d really get one.  I gathered up some of my SweetPod money and splurged on one for him.  He’s made videos of himself uni-cycling, jumping on the trampoline, and sledding.  He also had the bright idea as he was leaving the house one day to set it up in time lapse mode in the living room just to see what really goes on when we’re not at home.

Ellie is NOT allowed on the furniture and never is on it when we’re in sight.  I guess when we’re gone she rules the roost.