Let the Little Ones Come

Front Hall

I have been feeling the need to freshen up the house a bit.  My front hall was depressing me with its dark taupe color...So, I headed to Home Depot and got some paint...I tried a rose color but it ended up looking too salmon-y...So, back I went and got this gold/yellow color called Pollen Grains....  So here is before:

 And here is after:  

 

I am still working on a few more decorative touches and hope to add some more gold/yellow tones to the family room and living room area to draw the three rooms together a bit and "spring-ify" the house.   At least the front hall is very cheery now and boy, do I need cheery!  :)  

 

Same house nine years later

When we purchased our home, we were in our early thirties and had two children. Nine years later, we are in our early forties and have six children. Times have changed. ;)

There have been various reorganizations over the years. When we first moved in, the two kids didn't even have a bedroom; they slept with us! We had three bedrooms to furnish as we saw fit. One became a playroom, one an office and another a school room. The playroom became the big girls' room about four years ago. Then, the office became my oldest daughter's bedroom. Flash forward to today--the last remaining room without a bed is the learning room and it has got to go. Sniff. Sniff. Time to dismantle shelves and clear it out. It must become a bedroom for our two middle children. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong!

What in the world am I supposed to do with an eMac, an iMac, a printer, an IKEA Expedit shelf, a guinea pig, oodles and oodles of books, manipulatives, puzzles, school supplies, arts and craft supplies and learning toys? Can you hear my voice rising in hysteria??

Well, the solution is clear but it's going to be a heckuva lot of work. :(

I am clearing out closets (we do have two extra smallish closets to store some of these items) and miracles of miracles, I actually cleaned out the built-in unit in our family room (three cabinets, three shelves and six drawers that were full of junk rarely used items). I am going to attempt to convert this to storage for our everyday learning materials. A LOT of books will be boxed and moved into the garage if they will not be used this coming school year. I plan on labeling everything very well so I can access them easily in the disaster that is my garage! :S

So, all this said, can you guess why the blog has been quiet? :)

Prayers for perseverance for me would be appreciated. God has given me a great gift recently. He made me feel quite content to stay in this house FOREVER--all 1,978 square feet of it. It will be fine. I can do this and with God's help, my house will continue to be a haven and a faith-filled refuge for our family and oh yes, a place to get a bit of learning done as well!

Pictures forthcoming as soon as our camera is fixed or replaced!

Learning Room Update: Kids' School Baskets

Each of the kids have an individual basket. They store their math workbooks (Math-U-See), Handwriting Books (Handwriting Without Tears), and Grammar (Language of God/Easy Grammar), artwork, copywork and other loose papers in these baskets . They also have a zippered pencil pouch where their own pens and pencils are supposed to be kept. That way, we don't have the ten minute search for a certain pencil or pen...The baskets had really piled up with a lot of extra junk (Marie's had about $2.00 in coins, and at the bottom of Meg's were all the extra pencils in the house--about 50 or so!)

Here is the before picture:

Here is the after:

Better! :) I wish I could have tackled a bit more today but I was waaaay behind on laundry and got a lot of that done along with a library trip to pick up a few books and a trip to be fitted for a new jumper for Rose to dance in at the Irish Fest! Both Rose and Grace are looking forward to Green Week--their first as Irish Dancers! :)

Now, tomorrow I hope to continue working on boxing up school books that we are not currently using and relocating a lot of other books to other bookshelves in the kids' rooms. :)

Good night! Rose is ready to read-aloud from Mummies in the Morning--gotta go!

Learning Room Closet--10 pm Sunday

Well, I didn't get any uninterrupted kid-free time to work but I still managed a little bit. I got the closet mostly cleared out and the top shelves reorganized.

Tomorrow is not a good day to continue working on it as we will be gone most of the day at band and dance. BUT, I should be able to work a bit tomorrow evening on the cubby holes and I hope to clear out the children's school baskets.

Well, baby Joseph is still awake and needs to nurse to sleep. :)

Blogging and Accountability--the Learning Room

My parish priest gave me some good direction yesterday after Confession. He said, "It sounds like 12 days into the new year, it might be time to make a few resolutions that will draw you closer to God and family." Hmmm...he is right and I try not to question any words of wisdom that come from my priest! :)

Lately (like for the past two years!) I have been feeling a bit lackluster about our learning room. It is a room that serves too many functions. I have been reading about organizing and decluttering a little bit here and there on other homeschooling moms' blogs and feeling encouraged!

The problem with our learning room is that it is more than that--it is a computer room, a playroom, a place to do our school work, an office, a home to Tricki Woo and it really needs to be a bedroom for Paul. So, it is time to reorganize and purge and box up and get organized so that the room can better serve the the family's needs and thus help me to fulfill a few of those new resolutions--one being a more organized approach to learning. We have too many books and resources filling our shelves and overwhelming me daily. Many days I get bogged down trying to wade through so many books and toys to find a missing math book or read-aloud...No more!

I commit to spending a few hours (no more, since it IS Sunday!) today purging and packing. I'll post some pictures to show my progress over the next week. First update this evening. I know the 5 people who read my blog will be waiting to see how much I accomplished with baited breath! ;)

Before Pictures:

My computer desk--it is not a good desk for this room--we originally bought it for another room and it was a good use of space there because it is a corner desk--in this room it is too big and bulky. We are going to get a new desk at Fry's that is just big enough to hold the the kids eMac safely. This iMac will be moved to a small computer desk in our bedroom.

Our guinea pig lives in this room and her cage takes up a lot of floor space--anyone want a really sweet guinea pig? I'm not joking....

This dresser was mine growing up (hard to tell, right? ;) My mom doesn't have room for it and it has too much sentimental value to be donated, so we are going to try and repaint it this spring. Then, maybe one of the girls will want it in their room. Right now, it holds Marie and Joseph's clothes. This eMac is the one the kids play games on. This will be the only computer in the room, eventually and will be moved to the aforementioned desk that will be purchased in the next few weeks.

Waaahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look at these cubbies full of stuff!

The blue bins have toys for the baby and Marie to play with during school. I am going to purge a lot of these, store some in the closet and whittle down to one nice-sized wicker basket that I will use to rotate toys in and out...

The closet--I need to pack up a lot of these books and materials that I do not plan on using for a while. I hope to make enough room to store many of the little ones' toys in here (right now they are in Grace's closet much to her dismay!)...

Okay, off I go to work....(if baby Joseph will let me!)...:)