On nesting

A woman's life is full of opportunities to nest.  They are as varied as our lives.  Throughout my married life, I have had 11 homes to nest.  I have also welcomed 6 new babies into these homes, and nested each of those times as well.  Now that my baby days are through and our three crazy years of (FIVE) moves are over, I hope that this will be our last nest, for a very very long while.  I love the layout of our home (all 6 kids upstairs/Clint and I downstairs...I would kiss the architect if I had the chance) and yard (a little bit of grass to play on, plenty of driveway for skating/scooting/biking/balling, and a large fenced-in pasture for farm animals out back).  One of the first rooms I wanted to situate was the bonus room upstairs, as we were in the middle of the school year and would be using it as our school room. 

Here is an idea of what it looked like when we saw it for the first time:

And now:

Looking at the other side of the room, then:

 And now (just from a few steps over):

Here's a view from the other side of the room:

 

 Again, now:

 

This is the back wall, which isn't exactly glorious with my cardboard box holding up the printer:

 

 A favorite new tip I learned this year is to hang kids' art with black masking tape, making it look like it's matted.  I used the tape around my children's yearly self-portraits.  We currently have a few visitors in our school room, including six painted lady butterflies that are hanging out in their habitat in front of our alphabet cards.  It's actually still unfinished; I am planning to put in a long desk area and hanging bookshelves where these computers now sit.  Maybe those pictures will be up in a year or two (big maybe!). 

We all pitched in to nest this room, starting with Clint and our big boys who removed twenty year-old carpet to make way for some new (discounted) shag.  Like the rest of our home, it is a mix of secondhand furnishings, hand-me-down heirlooms, stuff that has been with us through several moves and homes, a new piece or two.  Yes, it's just material stuff.  It's not coming with me when I die.  But it's where I spend most of my days with the most important people on the planet, and creating a warm, colorful environment for us all is really enjoyable to me.  

Happy nesting!!  :)