Bedroom Ideas

So I haven't started decluttering yet. Monday I had some running around to do, as in a lot! Yesterday I spent the day trying to get things in order for school. Today is supposed to be rainy and stormy, which is nice because the weather is cooling off!!! But, going to the store is more difficult.

However, last night I did some looking around at bedroom ideas. In all our 12 years of marriage, I've never really 'done' our bedroom. Though we are planning to sell this house, the bedroom needs some paint anyways, and any new furniture I get will go with us in a move, so why not? My bedding I purchased four years ago no is coming apart at the seams, literally, even though it's been dry cleaned ONCE! My husband doesn't care at all what I choose, so I am thinking of going with my inner girl and choose a romantic look. The main thing is paint walls, new window coverings and new bedding. I'm not planning on getting other new furniture unless it's really cheap or free. In fact most furniture in there now is coming out and going into storage! Anyways, some ideas that I liked:

I am really liking pink, beige and cream/white. Very soft and vintage-y.

Really pretty!!! However the living room is blue, so I'm not sure I want to do a blue master bedroom too. But I like the decor a lot.

Rose theme!


I would prefer to have white or cream bedding, scary I know, but I really like how it looks. Then use other items to bring color in, this way, knowing how I like to change things up, the bedding works with whatever changes I want!

 I like this green too, green and pink roses.

I would actually consider a pink room, only more of a deeper rose color, I have a picture in a magazine with a bedroom in a darker pink that I really like. I don't know...pink is very, pink and to someone looking to buy our home pink might be the worst color! Neutral is probably best.

Fun things to think about!

The Great Purge

When we bought this house, four years ago now!!!, we bought it quickly. We needed to move to this town before I had the baby and before school started. So, we picked a double wide mobile home that was in great condition, like new, and it had about an acre of land in a nice quiet neighborhood. It was also well within our means financially. God worked miracles, we got in and got pretty settled before we had the baby and before my two girls started school. It was a lot of stress and work, but we did it!

The place we are in has been a blessing and it has been good, but we are outgrowing the house. Our living room is a big square and we haven rearranged it like 10 times over the past 4 years and it helps for awhile, then it's getting cramped again. The bedrooms aren't tiny, but they get tiny when there are two twin size beds in each room, even with bunkbeds. Our kitchen is large, but very dark and the tile is an odd color that annoys me, yet I don't want to replace tile myself. One of the biggest complaints is the fact that our soil is sand and the grasshoppers love it. They feast on our garden every year and we are done with that!

So we've been talking about selling and moving for over a year now. Ever so often I get online and look at the housing market and sometimes we go visit one we like. Well, my husband is getting serious about it, which thrills me. In the years that we've spent here, the house has gotten very lived in. We need new carpet, to repaint some areas, replace some damaged areas and clean/paint the outside of the house. We are planning to have a yard sale in a few weeks, and it just so happened that this past Saturday I happened on this plan at this site, called Life as Mom:

You start with your personal space (bedroom and bathroom etc.) and move to the kitchen and throughout the rest of the house. I got three weeks till our yard sale day, two of which are still summer and not school yet, so, I will be doing some heavy decluttering. I'll be praying a lot. Maybe, maybe, maybe if I feel motivated, I'll take some pictures of the process. We'll see....

Ideals and Reality

Probably like a lot of homeschooling moms, or moms in general, I have an ideal picture in my head of what our days will be like. The days will mostly be calm and slow paced, with plenty of time and patience to do all that we wish to. I found out last year that the days sometimes went that way and sometimes didn't.

Even before homeschooling, each summer I would work hard on getting organized and doing any painting etc. I would be well prepared way in advance by shopping early for school supplies, clothes, shoes, backpacks and all that.

This year hasn't been that way at all. For one, the summer has literally flown by. There has been a lot of fun and good things going on, and I really just wanted to enjoy summer and not be thinking about school too much. And two, we changed our school plans early in the summer, and went  from an extremely tight budget, to shifting funds for homeschool and other things. And three, I got sick for two weeks and it really really took a toll on me and the house!
    So now, here we are in August, only a few weeks before school has started. I have purchased the majority of our curriculum, done a little bit of cleaning out and organizing, but now we have two birthdays coming up. I am NOT going overboard like I did before, but there are several homemade gifts in the works, plus a homemade cake to make. Though it's simple, I can't tear the kitchen apart and clean it good :)

PLUS, it is HOT!!! No way can we clean out our shed and have the yard sale now! That will wait until at the very least September when it only gets in the 90s, ha ha. Last night I was feeling so overwhelmed. It was a struggle to get the girls in  bed at 9:30!!! The living room and kitchen were somewhat cluttered, bedrooms the same, the bathroom littered with wet towels and swimsuits like always, the trash overflowing, the laundry way backed up, the cupboards getting empty because I didn't make it to the grocery store yet, my knitting and sewing projects sitting out looking messy, my plants on the porch looking thirsty and me- very wore out.

But, instead of all those things, I had picked my mom up from the car place while her car was being worked on, gone to a doctor appointment for myself, ran some errands and picked up lunch for everyone, looked through the homeschool books that arrived, and then took her to my grandmother's and visited there for an hour. By the time I got home, I was hot, tired, feeling crampy and bloated (sorry TMI) and just done. I changed into comfier clothes, took some pain meds, got a glass of tea, and parked it in the recliner until 6pm!! Right when my husband gets home. But he is so easy going, he just jumped right in and helped me cook a great, simple and delicious dinner. By then I was feeling better and able to at least clean up the kitchen, while the girls went for a swim.

All that to say, I know that it's not how things are on the outside that is most important. I would prefer for things to be clean and neat and orderly, and I do my best to get there, but ultimately it's the unseen things that are eternal. Serving and spend quality time with grandmas and great-grandmas is much more priceless than getting all the laundry done. Indulging a craving for farm fresh peaches and stopping to buy 5lbs of them is important too, even if it adds to the errands and stops I needed to make.

I bought a homeschooling/life planner from Confessions of a Homeschooler the other day for $5. In it she has this page comparing a 'Super Mom' vs. a Mom Abiding in the Vine-Jesus. It really spoke to me and I put it as the first page of in my homeschooling notebook to remind me of what I'm doing and Who is my Help.






 I put this in the front of my homeschool notebook to keep me focused on the right thing-God! I struggle to remind myself of what the greater purpose is, it's so easy to get sidetracked on many things- the constant messes, meals, laundry, cleaning up, going to classes and church, and now we are undertaking lots of home improvements as we get ready to sell this house. Thanks so much Erica for this awesome reminder!