House Projects

One of the intimidating blessings in having a new house is knowing how you want to decorate, organize, and set everything up.  It has taken me a good long time to figure out what on earth we want to do with the house, especially because I want to do it once and do it right.  Thank goodness Roy is patient with me while I explore different ideas, over-analyze our options, and do comparison shopping!  

With Nora's due date swiftly approaching and my nesting instinct increasing, I was spurred into action the last few months.  We decided over the summer to set aside a piece of our budget each month to doing the things we wanted to for the house.  The first two month's budget paid for the stain we needed for the fence (so much stain it isn't even funny...I'm pretty sure we bought 17 gallons of it!) and our 35+ hours of manual labor saved us thousands.  It was a big project, but it looks so good and we learned a lot about what we are capable of doing and how well the kids can entertain themselves when our hands are busy elsewhere.

One high priority for the kids was hanging things up in their rooms.  It had been on my list for over a year (embarrassing!), but I just hadn't tackled it.  Over Christmas Break, they each made a wooden display board to hang above their beds.  It was really fun to see each of their unique and creative personalities come out as they picked paint, scrapbook paper, shapes, and ways to glue down the clothespins.  

After the kid rooms were done, I really wanted to hang up my Danish Mother's plates and Christmas plates.  Notice the gap in the middle?  That's for Nora's plate!

One of my big projects was installing shelves in a few closets.  It's a time commitment to do these shelves, but I'm grateful to have them done and grateful that we have been able to keep them organized so far.  Installing these shelves was also a great project to do while Roy went to China and hung out at the Disney Institute.

And my most recent project was (finally) hanging curtains in our front room window.  Putting in blinds in all the other windows was one of our first projects last fall, but this window just kept getting pushed aside.  Andrew was my awesome entertainer as I hung them and even clapped for me at the end.  I've always felt at home with our family, but these changes have been a fun way for me to make our home into our home.