In My Room

I don't have any before photos for this post, but I'm guessing you can imagine. Perhaps you even have a similar space in your house somewhere. You know, that room/corner/basement that is stuffed full of boxes, strewn with unwanted decorations, unheated and saturated with dust?

That one.

A couple of strands of lights never made it back into the Christmas box. A rare trip to the city yielded *the perfect* fabric. And I remembered. A room can make you happy just by being in it. 

Bright colors. Whimsy. Treasures only I care about. I piled them in and sat back to soak it in. Well, after I cleaned (how fun was it to clean those blinds? Not very. But so worth it.) 

The day before the city trip I began Amish Grace and a phrase they use resonated with me: 

JOY: Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last. 

Irony in putting that up in a room all for me? Why yes, there is. I'll go meditate upon that. In my room. 

Home makeover: Office edition

Before: 

After:

Here is the curtain fabric. It makes the green shag carpet seem purposeful instead of inherited.

Spontaneous combustion

When we went to bed, there was a glass sitting on the counter next to the sink. When we woke up, we found this:

No noise, no movement, nothing. A mystery.

Before and after: the kitchen

Island dreams

Well, yes, I do fantasize about blue seas, warm white sand and brightly colored fish. But the island in question today is the big rectangle in the middle of our kitchen. When we moved here, it was a protrusion between the living room and the pathway to the bedrooms. It had apparently been constructed specifically to disguise the hole that had been the basement stairs prior to the addition.

Jack envisioned it elsewhere. On wheels, to be precise. He sawed it away from the wall, hoisted it up, put heavy-duty casters under it and declared it ready to chase me around. The end that was connected to the wall made perfect bookshelves for my cookbooks. Voila! We suddenly had storage in the kitchen. He drilled a hole into the wall and reran some kind of hose thing (I paid close attention at the time, I swear) so the refrigerator could move over and replace the protrusion.

Instant kitchen expansion! No one who knew this house before can believe the difference. Apparently we are kitchen people. We like 'em big. None of this kitchen/dining room combo for us. All kitchen all the time. We prefer our dining room in our living room.

The island has been the center of the house ever since. But tonight - 18 months later - is the first time he's chased me around it. The cookie dough didn't have a chance!