OH! I'm so excited! I love me some blogging parties! I've been eagerly awaiting today's Simplifing for Sanity from Lynette's blog.
So, this week I decided to do my bedroom. I won't even horrify you with before pictures (because I wouldn't make myself take them!) but I will give you a bit of a description:
BEFORE: My bedroom was covered, and I do mean covered!, with laundry and whatever else the children happened to drop in there. You couldn't walk on the floor it was so full of clean laundry in baskets, dirty laundry in baskets, toys and other miscellany on the floor. It was pretty dern rough.
I mean, I want my bedroom to be sweet and calming, but at the same time, it's on the opposite end of the house from the living space and the children's bedrooms, no one is supposed to go in there except me and Josh so in theory it shouldn't get dirty. BUT what happened was that if I was rushed and didn't have time to fold and put away laundry then I just threw it on the bed. No big deal, right? Because I have to clean it up before I can go to sleep. Well... let me tell you something, Missus! It NEVER gets done like you plan it! In the rush of the day, I couldn't always leave the children unsupervised long enough to get a handle on it, and there's certainly not room in there for all of the monkeys being monkeys AND a monkey mommy cleaning, so it was just easier to hide it and pretend it wasn't there until I crawled into bed with the lights off, too exhausted to worry with it.
SO I decided that I was going to create a CALMING environment. NOTHING would exist in my bedroom unless it had a specific purpose for being there and a specific place to go. It took me about 3 hours to completely scrub everything and get it sparkling, but I DID IT! And now, I'm going to walk you through my NEW, Simplified, Master Bedroom. :)
Now, My bedroom is roughly 14x14 and is actually the second smallest bedroom in the house, which also holds the house's largest bed (go figure, right?). BUT we chose it because it is so isolated from the rest of the noise and light. We don't even have any windows in our room because of how it's tucked in there!
Let the tour begin!
This is the view from my bedroom door.
The walls are actually BRIGHT SKY BLUE, which my new, relatively cheap, camera doesn't seem to like taking pictures of in true color.
The Hubby's Nightstand.
(The table cloth is actually brown, but again, the camera didn't pick it up :( ) Notice the entire lack of anything besides the phone charger and a lamp! No books, no soda cans or water bottles...NADA!
The bed all made up and my pretty painting.
Our bed is pale pink and dark blue. (LOL) All of the stuff has a gingham/floral pattern on one side and stripes on the other. The painting was actually found by my husband in a home he was remodeling. I love it!
My night cabinet.
I keep so many books and other things that I think I just have to have right by my bed, that I decided I couldn't really keep a bedside table clean, so I just moved this freestanding cabinet to use instead!
A slightly different perspective.
I absolutely HAD to have flowers somewhere in the room, so I bought this bunch of faux peonies for $3.00 at wal mart. The vase I had, and I mixed in some rose scented potpourri and apple scented pine-cones to hide the flower stems. (They actually smell really yummy together!) The mirror I had shoved into a closet and the candles are cranberry vanilla, with a vanilla reed diffuser. :) Believe it or not, the smell is seriously yummy!
The Dresser.
The candlesticks I found on sale at Fred's for $4.00! I want to get some nice pictures of me and Josh and put them between the candles, as well as some shorter candle sticks for the votive candles. One good thing about having a small room though- any angle you look into the mirror you can see the flowers on the cabinet!
The Chest of Drawers.
I have to admit, I was out of inspiration when it came to the chest of drawers. I wanted to keep this crystal punch bowl in my room (I'd be terrified it would get broken in any other room!) but I didn't know what to do with it. Truth to tell I still don't! (And I noticed that the candle was leaning after I uploaded the pictures but this is the best picture I got of it!)
But!
I love how it sparkles with the candle-light!
You see,
What I did: I took some taper candles (cranberry vanilla!) and two of the punch cups and some leftover rose potpourri and shoved it all together. This is what I got!
AND
The piece with the most history and meaning in the entire room to me! This painting was done by a dear friend of mine (Charlie Litherland) for my sister-in-law. She hung it over her mantle for years and when I lived with them it was a constant in the house. When Harmony was born, that was all she would look at while we were at her house. So, my ex-sister-in-law graciously offered to give the painting to us since Harmony was obviously delighted by it. It's hung in every single home Josh and I have shared since Harmony was 2 months old, been all around the country and through some crazy adventures with us! It hangs on 'my' wall so it's usually the first thing I see each morning when I roll out of bed!
So there you have it! I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished!
