Before and After

I love those designing shows, you know, the ones where they show the before and after and the place is totally transformed, neat, and oh-so-trendy. Unfortunately I don't have a shred of design know-how in my brain, and I very much admire my friends who do- Jerusalem at My Little Life and Jeanetta at Splendid Things.

When we moved into this house, we placed our desk in the living room. It just felt wrong from the beginning, but there wasn't a better alternative at the time. I'm also a recovering pack-rat and fight the "clutter fires" (ala FlyLady) on a constant basis, so you can imagine how the desk looked more often than not. To add insult to injury both our TV cabinet and desk (located side by side in a prominent area of our living room) were not "quality" furniture and had not fared well in our moves. I happened to come across a fabulous must-have desk in a parenting magazine. It looked like a wardrobe and had doors on it, so when it wasn't in use you could close it up and not see the stacks of papers. I wanted that for some time (along with a replacement for our decrepit TV cabinet, and long story short, after some shopping around we found some good quality replacements for both the TV cabinet and desk.

This is my before...
Here is the after...Now you see it, now you don't.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Today was an "official" pajama day. We woke up to cloudy/rainy weather, and with the "hecticness" of the last few weeks, I felt it was high time I had a "do-nothing" day. Actually, I did do stuff around the house, nothing spectacular, just the basics, BUT I did not change out of my pj's all day and enjoyed time in the house without having to run errands with grumpy kids (having 3 kids basically guarantees that one of them will be grumpy at any given moment). The weather stayed grey and chilly until early evening when we got a glimpse of some sunshine although it continued to rain. Upon further inspection we noticed a brilliant, beautiful rainbow right across the street. Although the picture does not do it justice, this was actually a double rainbow. It was an encouraging reminder of God's promises.

SIGH!!!

My home is way, way too quiet. For the last three weeks we have been blessed with a revolving door of visitors. They were all so very special to us, but the last was my most anticipated, though. My sister, her husband, and precious 9 month old daughter (my only niece!!) came for a visit. They live out of country in a place very, very far away. I had never met my niece and it had been three years since I had seen my sister! We had a wonderful time and thankfully they will be in the states a bit longer. We'll have more time with them, although they are now visiting other family. Our time together was fabulous (like we had never been apart) and I couldn't tear myself away from any of them in order to blog.

I have LOTS to write about, but just enjoy the pictures for now.

Oh, and did I mention she's a redhead?