Miscellaneous Updates

Oh dear, I am so delinquent on blogging.  I don't mean to be.  I love to write to you, but somehow it has fallen a bit by the wayside since my return home from Europe.

So this post is a miscellaneous bit of updates to keep us connected while I pull myself together enough to get back to being regular.

Update One:

I got to do a gallery wall at Tanya's gorgeous house.  You may have already seen it on Facebook but here are the before and afters again with the middle process added in.

Before:

Tanya wanted to fill up her wall space above the living room sofa.

Her home has a very beautiful and distinct style
so it was easy to help her make a list of what to look for.

Once she shopped I came by and we set it all out on the
floor and moved things around until we were happy.

 Next we traced each piece on paper including the exact 

position of the nail hole and hung them all up.

Once a nail was in each spot and the papers were removed, we could hang the art.

The finished look is lovely. Tanya is a super seasonal decorator (MY FAVOURITE) so we included options that could be changed up to create holiday looks...the metal bins can hold anything from Christmas balls to fern sprigs, different photos can clip to the birdcage and the door handle can also provide a spot to hang something seasonal...mistletoe ball anyone??

Update Two:

 My pen pal was here!
Michelle came to see winter in Winnipeg and unfortunately what she saw was an unseasonably warm fall.  The day she left we got the blizzard.  Go figure.
But we had fun all the same.  We saw a few sights and I dragged her around to many stores.
We seem to be blocking his face a bit but we're posing here with a bison.

Update Three:
Buddy returned!
No one here is really interested in him except Cate, but she adores him.  It's been fun to hide him for her...she is pretty easy to please so I haven't had to conjure up any major naughtiness on his behalf.
Here he is eating cheesies.
(Can someone please fix my strip of dead lights???)

Update Four:
I got BUGS!
I did not notice any Italian or Irish ivy crawling with millions of grossy little spidery creatures!
Hmf.
I was gonna just throw it out but then I caught a streak of stubborn and I marched it into my shower and dishsoaped those little stinkers off of there.  I don't know if it's a done deal yet.  I'll keep you posted.

Update Five:
Heated seats. Are. Amazing.
I love them I love them I love them I love them.

Update Six:
We started a new tradition this year.  When I was little my mom would have straw sitting beside our nativity scene.  If I did something kind without being told, I was allowed to take a piece of straw and secretly put it on Jesus' manger.  It is a tradition I've always remembered so this year I adapted it a bit and decided to offer it to my kids.  Whenever they add value to someone they can put an ornament on this little tree.
They seem to be into it!

Update Seven:
I am loving using this advent book with the kids.  We've read it in past years as well but a few days last week I added silence to our devotional time.  We did this during our trip last summer and it was so fantastic.  I hadn't realized how much I missed it.  Even 30 seconds of silence brings everyone into such a peaceful and more open posture.
It is a beautiful spiritual discipline that we practice far too little.




Update Eight:
I've been visiting some scissors.

Update Ten:
I still have not done a thing with our trip pictures.  I have wanted to but other things just keep getting in the way.  It will be first priority as soon as the wrapping is done!  I'll leave you with a pic that I haven't ever posted cause I was keeping it as a possible Christmas shot...it didn't make the cut though.

I hope your next few days leading up to Christmas will be full of fun and rest and peace!!

Finished Office

It has been a long haul but I'm finally done.

Organizing an office has got to be one of the most challenging spaces...so many items end up in there and it can be difficult to decide what should stay and what should go.  By the end, when you get down to the last piles like this,

and this, 

it's just not as much fun as it was in the beginning.

But the finished result is so worth it.

Before

After

I am loving my new look. 
I like the colour and the feel of more space.  

I love that there's less stuff but it's still cozy.
I love that pretty rug!  Bless you sweet Ikea!!
I am enjoying the new floor plan which took some time to achieve, but is working well.

I really wanted to have my chair by the window so I could sit in the sun.

I also wanted some empty spots for those piles that inevitably end up in here.

I wanted to have more wood in my space and I hoped to use that black metal shelf that I got at the Red Barn last year.

After my time in Italy and Ireland, I wanted more ivy in my life.

I wanted to keep my little keepsake notes but I switched them from a bulletin board to this cute window frame and I edited them down to a more manageable amount.

I also wanted to have the things I love around my work space but again I had to do some careful editing to keep it to an amount that feels homey but not overwhelming.  This won't be the same amount for everyone so you have to decide what feels right for you.

I so wish I could not have this gigantor printer in here but the thing is, 

we do need to print stuff! 

I got an unexpected addition to the room just before I'd finished.  

My friend Jen brought me this fabulous guy! 

I love him and he is so perfect for the space.

My experiment with keeping most items the same colour does make the space feel less busy and more spacious.  I like that feeling of being enveloped.

It is a fantastic feeling to have a room organized and decorated in a way that makes you feel at home. I hope you'll be inspired to try something new in one of your spaces! It can be a lot of work but you just have to take it one small task at a time.
In the end it is so worth it!

Office Progress

So I picked the paint and then...what?

Where do you start when a project feels completely overwhelming?  

I always like to choose a task I know I can complete easily, and quickly.  If I'm staging a house, I start in a kid's room or a bathroom...small spaces where I know I can have speedy success.  That way when you've accomplished the first task, you feel more motivated to complete something a little larger.

In my office I decided to tackle the shelves, and the first thing I sorted was fabric.

I have lots of piles of fabric but I rarely use it so I grabbed it all off the shelves, 

got my coffee and turned on the t.v..

When you are starting a task that is overwhelming, like emptying an entire office so you can paint it, you want it to be fun!  So if there's something you can do while you listen to a radio program or watch a show on t.v., go for it! 

My fabric got purged and sorted into two metal baskets I had kicking around.

Next I emptied all my books off the shelves.  I plan to keep them in my bedroom from now on so it was another easy, quick job to just carry them in.  I'll do the book sorting after the office is done.

It's hard to be patient when you want to start painting and the room isn't empty yet, so I satisfied my need for colour by beginning the furniture painting.

He looks so cute!

I hired my son to build my new shelf.

Anytime you can enlist a little assistance, do it!  It cost me $10.  

He was happy for a little bit of cash and I was very thrilled not to have to build!

Of course eventually you run out of quick, easy jobs and you have to tackle the hard ones, but having those early successes in your pocket 

helps you feel more capable of moving to the bigger stuff.

Like painting.

Yuck.  I hate it so much.  

And right around this point I was wondering WHAT DID I DO???

But soon after I LOVED it and now the room is painted. 

(Did I mention this office is one big experiment?  

I had this vision of painting out a whole room in one colour...trim and all...along with some of the furniture so that the accessories would pop more.  So I'm experimenting.  Thus the dark trim.)

Currently we are living like this in the bedroom.

  

But soon enough I'll have it all back into the office.  

I'll show you the end result next time!

New Office Plan

Awhile back I talked about my office and how it was, like, 

the opposite of minimal and how I was okay with that.

Yah, so it's still pretty maximal and it's not so much that I want a minimal look, it's just that I'm running out of space.  I have piles of stuff...sample books or mission collection stuff or gifts or projects or whatever and I need some space for the temporary piles.

ALSO.

I want a new colour.

I am quite badly dying to have some green.

So - step one - I'm choosing a colour.  One of the 3 dark greens up there.  

The metal vintage filing cabinet is my inspiration.

I really hope I'll have some progress to share next week!

Back To Reality - Eli's Room

Well, we've been home from our summer adventure for nearly two months, 

and everyone's been quite happy to get back into the swing of things. 

Except, me. 

I have found the return to reality to be quite difficult. 

Like, they expect me to cook again here people. 

Bleck. 

What has been hardest is mourning the loss of time together with no distraction. Everyone says wow, that was a once in a life time trip...which is true. It's very unlikely I'll ever have 8 weeks of uninterrupted time with my family again. Which is lovely during the planning and executions stages, but frankly a bit depressing when the "once in a lifetime" trip is over.  Cause I've got quite a bit of lifetime left, you know?

So, obviously to get over my sadness I went to work on Eli's room. 

He had been hoarding all kinds of junk by keeping it well hidden for quite some time. 

And then it overflowed. 

Look what was under his dresser.

Yup.  Time for a clean out, purge and sort.  

He was not really on board at first but once he got into it he enjoyed having everything organized and having less to worry about tidying.  

The trick of organization is that it makes cleaning that much quicker.  

So we moved things around a bit and got rid of the lego table.

I gave him a bigger shelf for his books.

And a smaller dresser for his clothes.  Cause what we learned carrying around a backpack for 8 weeks is you really don't need many clothes!

I used these drawers on wheels that Cate no longer needs due to her loft bed to give

 Eli some easily accessible storage.

I took away his desk with four drawers because every one of those four drawers was FULL of junk.  Sometimes having the space to hoard, just allows you to hoard.

Now he has a table, no drawers and two boxes to keep paper and writing stuff.

 His closet is much better after purging many toys he wasn't using and if the remaining bins get a bit out of hand, we can just close the curtain.  

It feels so great to get a space that was in chaos back under control!!