We've lived here in Texas for over a year. For someone with as much wanderlust as me that means its either time to move or start rearranging the furniture. We're not moving anytime soon so I've spent the last several weeks rearranging things in the house. I haven't done anything too drastic, but the little things I've changed have made improvements to the "flow" of my life.
Brandon told me he wants to see the things I've been changing so this post will show a lot of the details of my house.
Outside
This picture should look familiar to the long time readers of this blog. I love to garden, but thanks to a combination of being pregnant and living in north facing apartments for the past 4 years I haven't been able to grow any plants. Now that we have a south facing backyard, and I'm not growing a person in my body, I am trying to garden again. I took the kids to Lowes and we bought stuff to plant a little garden. Tomato plants were on the top of my list.
We also planted vegetables in the existing garden plot in our backyard.
And I planted some flowers in my window boxes. I worry that the rabbits will eat everything, but I'm also willing to try to grow stuff anyway. Curios George is always planting stuff on his show so the girls are really excited to try to grow their own things.
Another thing we bought at Lowes was this squirrel proof bird feeder. I figured that keeping a bird feeder full of seed will be good practice for when we inevitably get a pet. I can't believe how happy this little thing makes me. I put it in the corner of our yard that I can see from the living room, kitchen, and my room. I love looking out the window and seeing cardinals, finches, and sparrows eating. I don't know when I turned into a bird lover, but it happened.
We also have a hummingbird feeder. We put it up last year and were visited by 2 humming birds and a whole hive of bees. This year I moved it to a tree outside our yard. Hopefully that keeps the bees from finding our yard.
Here is a view of my back yard. It's so nice out there right now. Yesterday Lydia wanted to go outside right when she woke up. I went out there with her and we watched birds and talked about them for a little while.
The Storage Room
The weather was kind of cold all week so I've been working on a lot of inside things too. One thing has been to move stuff from the office/Veronica's room to the storage room. That room was really underutilized. Here's what I mean. When you walked into the storage room you would see nothing but a few empty boxes.
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| Before |
Thanks to a free bookshelf this is what you see now. Lots and lots of food storage.
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| After |
This is what another part of the storage room looked like. As cool as it was to have this much empty space, I realized it could be put to use.
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| Before |
So I moved all the stuff from Veronica's closet into the space. That freed up space in Veronica's closet for the boxes of clothes that she will grow into. And that freed up the space in the older kids' closet for the boxes of clothes that they will grow into. And that freed up the space in the toy room closet for the art supplies and games. I think it's cool how you can change one little thing and see ways to improve other things.
I originally had all our food storage on the existing shelves in the storage room. But they are located pretty much behind the door. It was awkward to go in there to find food. That isn't as much of a problem now that the food is on the book case. I also had a bunch of random stuff shoved on the shelves.
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| Before |
Now I'm in the process of moving a lot of the craft supplies from the shelves in the office into the storage room. This project isn't finished because Veronica's crib is in front of the shelves that need to be emptied. and she's always sleeping when I remember that I'm trying to get the storage room finished.
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| After |
Toy Room
There are plenty of other rooms to keep me occupied. I call the toy room the "cancer room" because when it gets really messy the messiness spreads throughout the whole house. A few weeks ago I ended up bringing home a large coffee table when I went to get the bookcase. (I'm a sucker for free furniture.) I put it in the toy room to be an art table for the kids, but it always seemed to be in the way.
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| Before |
So I rearranged the furniture and now the room is functioning again.
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| After |
The table is still in there, it's just in the corner.
I had to slide the window seat over to make room for the table. I didn't know if I would like it only half under the window, but I am actually just fine with it this way. (Oh and the room still gets messy, but it's not as annoying this way.)
Laundry Room
I don't have a before picture of the laundry room because I really didn't plan on changing anything in there. One day I looked at the selves and just kind of thought, "what is all this junk?" There were things on those shelves that we hadn't moved since we first moved in, and yet they didn't really belong there. So I cleaned off the shelves and only left the essential things. The room felt so much more efficient.
One of my favorite changes was the laundry basket that I put on the top shelf. Derrick loves to empty laundry baskets and then push them around the house. So I always seemed to have dirty laundry strewn around the house. Now I just put the kids' dirty clothes into this basket. I've also put a laundry basket for my clothes on the shelf in my closet.
The laundry room is also the entry room from the garage. About 6 months ago I finally put up hooks for the kids coats. A few weeks ago I put up the little shelf for my hat and keys. I rearranged a lot of the pictures in the house and so I moved my "Lead Kindly Light" cross stitch into this room. It nice to look at when I walk in the door.
This is probably the most mis-leading picture I will ever post. This is the table where I put all the clean clothes. Usually it is a giant monster pile. Knowing that I would take this picture was the only thing that motivated me to put all the laundry away yesterday.
I used to keep the shoe holder in the front closet, but the shoes never seemed to be put away. Plus we are all usually barefoot when we go out the front door. We pretty much only wear shoes when we go somewhere that we have to drive to. So I moved it to the closet door by the door that leads to the garage. Now it's so easy to sit on the laundry room bench and help the kids put on their shoes.
Kitchen Cupboard
One of the things that I moved from the laundry room shelves was a box of all our paper and plastic dinnerware. It was one of those things that when I stopped to think about it I couldn't figure out why we went all the way into the laundry room to get stuff for the kitchen. So I move the box into the cupboard in the kitchen.
I also designated on of the shelves as an "office supply" shelf. This is where I now store things like pens, tape, glue, paper for writing lists, stickers, paper clips, envelopes, and pretty much anything else that I used to have to sneak into Veronica's room to get. This alone has made my life a hundred times easier.
Hall Shelf
The shelf in the hall can get pretty cluttered. I took this picture to remind myself how nice it can look when I take the time to throw away all the empty diaper and wipes packaging. This picture also is important in that there are not any cloth diapers in this hall right now. Cloth diapers are great, but right now I'm choosing saving my sanity over saving money.
Other New Things
I actually made this around Christmas Time, but I never took a picture of it. My sister Lindsey made these for her ward's Super Saturday activity and she gave me the supplies to make my own. It's an embroidery hoop with clothes pins glued too it. The hoop is painted and the clothes pins have scrapbook paper modge-podged to them. I have it up by my front door. It's a great place to display Christmas cards and other special things.
Here are two other things that have been around since before Christmas, but I haven't mentioned yet. My neighbor Ange babysat the kids for me when Brandon and I went to pick out the kids' toys from Santa's Workshop. Derrick and Veronica napped the whole time while Charlotte and Lydia played with Ange's paint. They painted and painted and painted. Ange was so sweet to let them use up as much paint as they did. Charlotte's is the one on the left. She says it is a jungle. She likes to point out where the giraffe and other animals are. Lydia did the one on the right. She says it's a rainbow. We've hung these two pictures up in a place of honor above the piano.
Here is my latest pride and joy. A brand new HP Pavilion. My chromebook's screen quit working over Christmas. (It might have been dropped a few too many times.) Brandon wanted me to have a real computer anyway. So he picked this one out for me and we bought it with some tax return money. I love it. I have been using our old laptop that is hooked up to the TV. That worked, but this is so much better. I've been transferring files and programs over this week. I've also vowed to not drop this computer.
Obligatory Pictures of Children
Veronica is such a good baby. I gave her a quick bath with all the other kids. After I got her dressed I laid her on the floor so I could help the other kids into their pajamas. She fell asleep in the hall without fussing at all. Once all the kids were dressed she perked right back up again.
She's always sucking on her two middle fingers. It's so cute.
Lydia loves to go outside and play on our
beach patio. She likes to build "sandcastles for Wanica."
And lest you think the weather is always 75 degrees, here is a picture of ice on the garbage cans. I actually couldn't get the lid to my garbage open there was so much ice. This was at about 7 am. By the time the garbage truck came around at 11:30 the ice was all gone.
On Friday I had an impromptu brownie party. I wanted to make brownies but I didn't want to be responsible for eating them. A lot of the neighbor kids came over disposed of them for me.
I decided to take a risk and take the kids with me to the thrift store to search for some birthday presents for Derrick. We found some great stuff for him as well as these two toys for the girls.
The girls also talked me into buying some little dishes for their play kitchen. They've wanted those forever so it was more of a "we finally remembered" rather than an impulse buy.
In case you haven't noticed, Lydia is pretty much always dressed her pink "Princess Pea Dress." I decided it might be a good idea to invest in some more pink dresses. So we found two more pink dresses at the thrift store. The girls were so excited to get ready for church this morning.
Derrick also has new clothes. I feel bad because I never seem to have any stories about Derrick. Maybe that will change as he learns how to talk. He is learning more sounds. He can now say Uh Oh and he walks around saying AAAA EEEEE AAAAA EEEEEE IIIIII. The other day I asked him to say Mama and he said Ma Ma and then laughed. He didn't say it again though. He also can say buh buh buh, Veronica actually made that sound first though. I think they will learn how to talk together. He's a sweet boy and loves Veronica, eating cheerios, stuffed animals, books, throwing dirt, helicopters, TV, and laughing mischievously.
Well that's basically it for us this week. Thanks for reading.
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