Living "Family" room update

There is always a bit of debate about what room should be called what in our home.  Growing up, our "living" room was the nicer room.  The room where the home teachers would come to visit.  The room with the piano.  The room we rarely went in.  Or the room where we actually did very little "living."  The family room was where we hung out.  It had a couch for lounging, a TV, comfy chairs, the fireplace.  The first 6 years of our marriage, we only had one living space.  This often got referred to as the "front room" for some reason.  Even in Maryland we didn't have 2 rooms that fit the definition of "family  room" and "living room" to me.  We had a basement area, and a "family" room.  But now we have 2 rooms with couches.  And lots of confusion about what they should be called.  To me, our "great room" as it was called when we bought the house, is what I would consider a "family" room.  It's got a big sectional, the fireplace, and it's where we project movies to watch.  It's adjacent to the kitchen, and it's where we do most of our "living." I know that doesn't make any sense. Our other room, the "piano" room as it gets called a lot, is what I would call a "living" room.  It's where we have the home teachers come (when they come), and it's more formal.  But, the way the decorations of this room are going, it's turning out to truly be a "family" room.  This is where I have hung our Genealogy fan chart, and our wall of family history pictures. 

For Christmas this year, I worked on creating a silhouette chart, similar to one that my sister Sarah had created for my mom for mother's day back in 2010.  So now I have a chart for each family, and I framed these and added them to our wall:

Don't look to closely - I hung an earlier version of the Payne family chart.  I updated Olivia's profile and added a future child for John and JaNae, who are expecting!  I just need to get a new one printed up, and put in the frame.

I think it ties in really nicely with the family history wall. 

 
And then I found some fabulous round frames and Micheals (40% off + an additional 25% off the sale price!) and decided it was time to put something above the piano.  I knew I needed something there, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. 

Since almost all the frames in the room are holding black and white photos, I wanted to keep with that, but I didn't really want a huge family picture or something.  So this is what I came up with:

I took our individual silhouettes, and made enlargements at costco - 8X10's for Sam and I, and 5X7's of the kids.  The baby's frame has Olivia's old silhouette minus the pony tail as a place holder for now.  I think I need to readjust the size of some of them - they are slightly out of proportion and I think Sam wants a new one done of him.  But for now I'm loving this.  I may even try and update the kids every year or so, as they change.  I think the silhouettes will be a fun keepsake to have. 

So, maybe we should start calling this room our "family" room.  What do you think?

Christmas Decor

I felt like last year I really didn't do much in the way of Christmas decorations.  We didn't put up any lights, and the indoor decorations were minimal.  We were out of town the week of Christmas, and with my new calling as primary president, my life was too crazy to dec the halls.  So, this year, I really tried to make an effort to get our house feeling Christmas-y.  We spent the rest of the day on Thanksgiving getting out the decorations we had, and setting up and decorating the tree.  The kids did almost all the ornaments themselves.  It was great!

I convinced Sam that putting lights on the outside of the house would be worth it.  We were both a little worried about climbing around on a ladder outside, but I found a pole kit at Target that allowed you to put up the lights without a ladder.  While it was quite frustrating a times, it was decidedly safer.  And I loved how they turned out:

We needed some extra outlets outside, and we ended up buying one with a digital timer. I didn't realize how much I would LOVE my lights automatically turning on at dusk, and turning off several hours later.  So glad I paid the few extra dollars for that feature.  It was so nice to come home from being somewhere in the afternoon, and have the Christmas lights on when we pulled in the driveway.

After thinking about the mantle quite a bit, and not knowing quite what to do, I finally settled on putting up some large frames with photos from past Christmas'.  I really like how it turned out - I didn't take any pictures of this, but the kids managed to get a few in their picture taking sprees they often do through the house:

Note the pile of Christmas books next to the fire.  It has become one of our traditions to unwrap a Christmas book every night of December as a count down to Christmas.  The kids loved reading these books every day, and this year we had more than 25, so there were several nights where we let all 3 kids open one. 

You'll also note that we have 10 stockings hanging on the mantle.  My mom and Sam's mom have both been giving us stockings since we've been married.  We usually hang both sets, but in different spots in the house.  But we decided our mantle was so big, we'd just hang all of them over the fire place.  We'll have to see if we keep that up next year, when we'll have 12 instead of 10.  We did get some funny looks when people came over, "How many kids do you have?"

Since green is the main color of our great room, I found some cheap accent pillows that were red, and threw them on the couch and chairs to make it Christmas-y.  This was also where we had our tree.

And we strung a garland with lights up the stairway. 

There were more spots around the house decorated up too, but I didn't document any of it very well.  But I was happy that we spent all of December surrounded by red, green, twinkling lights, stars, Nativitys, poinsettias, holly and pine, with Christmas music playing almost daily, and lots of gingerbread and peppermint goodies baking in the kitchen.  Made the season feel really nice to me.  And, while I do enjoy getting things put away, part of me can't wait to pull it out again next Thanksgiving!

Our Custom Master Bedroom Bench

As one of the very last projects of the year, Mollie and I tackled the bedroom bench.  Since we moved in last year, we have had a list in the back of our minds of furniture that the home needed that we could build.  This was the last one on my mental list, at least the last one for now.  I'm sure we will do more soon.

The day after Christmas, Mollie looked at me and said, "So do you want to make the bench today?"  We had just barely finished the locker system for the laundry room, so I was not really expecting this.  Having slated most of my vacation for playing helping the kids build legos, I was a little surprised at the request.  She told me that she had been browsing plans for a few days and had a pretty good idea of what she wanted.  We looked over a few different types of benches and quickly settled on an ideal plan; we already had most of the materials.  I think that we only really had to buy one piece of plywood (which we now have a good size scrap from) and the skirt fabric. Which was a deal in itself. The foam had been purchased nearly a year earlier, but was slated for this project. Although, it was decidedly the most expensive part (even though it was purchased at 50% off), since it had been purchased so long ago, it felt like it was free. The fabric for the seat was what was left over from the amazing deal Mollie found and Joann's for silk at less than $5 a yard. The rest we were able to use from scraps out in the garage, which really cut the cost. I think we spent less than $30.  If we add in the cost for the foam (around $50) and the cost of the fabric (about $9), it comes in just under $90.  And as a bonus, we got rid of a lot of the scraps in my work area outside.

In our bedroom, there is a little bump out for a window, and we decided to make the bench fill that space. We debated the size quite a bit.  Should it be only as deep as the window?  We opted for a much deeper bench (Mollie wanted plenty of space for lots of pillows), and took the width of the foam as our guide.  Should it go from wall to wall, or be narrower?  We decided we wanted the curtains to be able to hang on either side of the bench, so we made it narrower than the space, just the same width as the window frame.  First off, I built the basic skeleton of the bench from left over 2x4 and 2x6. It could have easily been built from just 2X4's but we didn't have enough, so we used the 2X6's (left over from our table we built last year) that were too warped for any other project.   Since it was pretty wide, we actually built 2 benches to make sure it would have enough support in the middle. 

 As an aside, I really hate dealing with stud-wood.  It is just so warped and difficult to use.  But we still got it done. This was an ideal project for warped boards, since the skirt of the bench was going to hide everything from view. We used Kreg-Jig pocket-holing wherever we could, both building the frame and also for the eventual attachment of the seat to the frame.  We had to drill this ahead of time, since the bench was going to be upholstered, it needed to be attached from beneath. 

 Mollie glued the foam down onto the plywood and then covered that in some additional batting to smooth the corners and edges.

Then we used the silk (after pre-treating it with scotchgaurd) to cover that.

The next step was the skirt.  Mollie had purchased some home dec fabric to make the skirt, but it wasn't quite right.  Then she remembered reading about people using canvas drop cloths for upholstery and such, and so while I was at Lowes, she called and had me pick up a drop cloth.  Just $10 got us a 9ftX6ft drop cloth. Then she bleached it, and washed it (with lots of fabric softener and dryer sheets), and then ironed it with pleats.

The really great thing about a drop cloth is that it comes pre-hemmed. And a simple slit in the fabric allows you to rip it all the way down completely straight.  No need for meticulous cutting or sewing.  And it was just the look she was going for, and super cheap.  So then, after Mollie pinned in the pleats, I attached it to the base of the bench with staples.The kreg-jig and the air compressor are our 2 most valuable tools. Such time savers. 

For one last touch, Mollie made some piping to go around the base.  We stapled on a double row of that.

The final bit was to attach the seat to the bench skeleton.  We were pretty cautious here, because we didn't want to twist and distort the seat fabric.  Using Kreg-Jig screws, we first secured the middle of the bench, where there was no fabric, and then tested a few screws on the back where it would not be as visible if something went wrong.  As luck would have it, we were able to screw right through the fabric without it twisting.  So we went ahead and put in all our screws and we were done.

The finished bench:

The kids love all the space underneath.

  

I have plans to build some storage compartments to go underneath, and serve as a charging hub for all our various electronics, which used to find themselves in a heap right here.  And there's plenty of space to stash any other clutter that seems to find its way into our room.  Kids included :)

Gladiolus!

Our front lawn has a flower bed where we put in a bunch of bulbs. One of my favorite are gladiolus. We planted these in our San Diego garden, and has loved them ever since. Besides being beautiful out in front of the house, we love having fresh flowers inside on the table.

Peaches

Earlier this spring, we bought a peach tree as one of our early yard expenditures.  Living in the Northwest, we have a great climate for fruit trees.  Across the street from our house is a large orchard with apples and pears.  So we were really excited to get some fruit trees of our own.  We found a nice local nursery, The Flower Farm, which had many beautiful varieties.  After some consultation with the owner, we found out that apple trees and cherry trees need constant spraying for worms and whatnot.  We settled on a peach tree.

Growing up, my dad was always planting fruit trees in our yards. I remember Kansas and Texas, but I presume that he planted in Iowa, North Dakota and Missouri.  The only problem was that they took forever to bear fruit.  We only lived in these houses for about 5 years, and I just remember that we rarely got a good crop out of any of them.  The lone exception being the mulberry tree in Kansas, but that was planted before we owned the house.

The tree that we bought was significantly more mature than the average twig that you buy at walmart, but I was surprised when the nursery owner told me that it would bear fruit this year. This last week, we got ~20 beautiful and delicious peaches. They were so good that we may end up buying another tree next year. I could personally eat peaches all summer long.  They are amazing! And if we have so many that we can't eat them all, canned peaches are also good.  But I don't think I'd ever let it get to that point.

Living room progress

Right after we moved in, we took a trip down to Utah for Thanksgiving.  While we were gone on our trip, the builder was suppose to fix some issues with the paint in the house.  It was good timing, because the work to be done was somewhat extensive, and they were going to be there all day for several days. But, when we pulled up to our house (after driving 16+hours through the snow and arriving home very late) we found that every  room had all the furniture literally piled in the middle, and if there was anything in the closet, all of that was piled on top.  Everything was still covered in drop cloths.  No one had a place to sleep.  So, after throwing some mattresses on the floor that night, I went to bed knowing I had a huge task of rearranging every room in the house.  The next day I was called to be the Primary President.  So, for several rooms in our new home, I just shut the door, and decided it would just have to wait.  Our living room remained in this state for several months.  It didn't have any furniture, and I just kept the door shut.  It's actually where I put all the damaged items from the move, to wait for the insurance guy to come have a look.  This was the room I had decided would house the piano, but we didn't own a piano. It was really fine to just keep the doors shut, and pretend it didn't exist.  Then, in February, I found a great deal on a piano, and we bought it.  This was just the motivation I needed to get that room figured out.  I had purchased a new cover for our couch at the Ikea in MD, but it was a print that was discontinued, so they didn't have the matching love seat.  But when we went to UT over Thanksgiving, we stopped in Ikea, and they had the love seat cover.  Both covers were a STEAL because they were just clearing out the inventory.  So, finally in February, we moved the love seat down from upstairs, and put the matching cover on it. The room is starting to come together.  It's kind of funny - after I cleared the room out, put the furniture in and let the doors stay open, I had some people come over that had been over several times before, comment that they didn't even know i had a room there.  Exactly the effect I was going for!

I found some fabric in green (like the fabric I found for the curtains in my room) and made some for this room as well. 

I also finally hung up my geneolgy fan chart, with our family history pictures.  This is one of my favorite walls, and I was so glad to have it up in our new home!

And the piano - the motivation to put the rest of it together! 

Right about this same time, a guy came to the door selling "hotel" type art.  I decided to look through his stuff, since we have lots of bare walls.  On first pass, I didn't really like any of it.  But then I saw these pictures of magnolias.  I wasn't sure the color was right, but he brought them in, and I fell in love.  We hung them in the entry way, over our DIY bench.  I really love how they look. 

This is the view of our new pictures from the front door. 

I'm loving how things are coming together, but I still feel like I have lots of blank walls, and rooms that need decorating.  The problem is I have a terrible time deciding what I want.  If John and Sherry of Young House Love still did their room mood boards for a fee, I would really consider having them figure out my great room for me.  I also have to remind myself that it's a process to get it done, and while I don't like not having it done, I don't want to rush and do something I'm not going to like.  So, if you come to my house, and it feels a little underdone, just know, it's a work in progress. 

Things I'll Miss

You may have noticed some of the negative things I think about the house we've occupied for the last 11 months... So I thought I'd document some of the things I will miss - the things that made me want to stay a little longer.

It really looks pretty decent from the outside - besides the missing shutters, it has a nice color scheme. And the moss, from a distance, looks like green grass :)

The cherry blossoms. Our street is lined with cherry trees, and so for a few weeks in the spring, the view is breathtaking. It would just make me happy every time I caught a glimpse of the pinkish white blossoms out my window. And driving home was always an amazing sight - the houses are lost in the wall of beautiful blossoms.

The wildlife. I don't thing I've ever been surrounded by more wildlife in my life. Let's see if I can name what we've seen/heard/smelled in our own backyard: Deer. Lots of deer, from big bucks with antlers, to tiny new fawns, and graceful does. Sometimes in groups of 10 or more. Sometimes greeting me on my door step.

This was our first morning here. See the little fawn staring back at Harrison? Before I got my camera out there were at least 7 grazing in our backyard.

Woodchucks, skunks, squirrels, turtles, bunnies, and foxes. And the birds. Oh my. Flamboyant red cardinals, bright blue jays, noisy geese, disgusting vultures, high flying hawks, and many more that I do not know the names for.

The view from my kitchen window. We have 3 large windows in the kitchen, right next to our table. And just outside is our oak tree, with the cherry tree to the left. I can see out this window from my desk, and since it faces east, it gets great morning light. It just always makes me happy when I look out, and the view changes dramatically with each season.

This is Noah cruising with Jordan in her Barbie Jeep in the back yard.

Our neighbors. We have a pretty quiet street. Many people are the original owners of their home, so their children are grown. Our best friends are the newer comers to the neighborhood with kids. Grady (3) across the street, and Henry(2) and Meghan (6 months) a few houses down. Jordan comes to visit her grandparents (who share a backyard area with us). They are pretty sad to see us go, since we doubled the amount of kids on the street when we moved here.


Our back yard. The only thing I would add would be a fence. But then again, I don't think the boys would have become friends with Jordan, if we had a fence. It's very large, and we acquired a nice swing set at the beginning of the summer, which we are hoping to put in our new yard (it will take up almost the whole yard, so we'll see...) There's plenty of space for throwing the Frisbee or setting up the slip'n'slide. And we have a nice deck adjacent to it that we've enjoyed grilling on all summer long. One thing we wont miss - mowing it. Our lawn mower just died (we got it off craigslist for $10 when we got here, so we're not complaining). I think a weed whacker will probably be enough at our new place :)

All the storage space. More than 1/2 of the basement is unfinished, and so we have a ton of storage space. We keep all kinds of food storage, water storage, bikes, scooters, out of season clothes, seasonal decorations, and anything else were not using at the moment down there. And there's still LOTS of room for the kids to run around and play. Right now it's full of packed boxes. We'll have to be a lot more creative with our storage in our new place.

All that being said, I am so excited about our new place. And discovering all new things to love about it. And of course, all the things that I wont miss out this place...

Family History Wall

I have been pondering doing some kind of family history wall in my entry way for quite some time. I have been gathering family photos for 2 years, and spent a good deal of time scanning and touching them up. But I hadn't come up with a solid idea of how or what I was going to do. I saw a post on Design Mom recently that totally inspired me. I've been working since January to get this up, and it's finally all in place (except for the one photo I forgot to order....) The center piece for the whole thing is a family history fan chart, filled in with all the family history we have for the Payne and Madsen sides of our family. What took the longest (and is still not resolved) was getting the chart printed. I wanted it printed on nice parchment paper or something - but I had to settle for just plain white bond paper. When I find a printer that will do it, I'll upgrade it - for $10 you can have the a chart generated with your family history all filled in in a pdf form. So I have the pdf, and I can make as many prints as I want (and trust me, I made lots of them trying to find a better paper...) But I still love it. And it got Harrison excited about family history. He found an old check register of mine, and told me he was writing his own family history in that. I even had a friend come over for a few minutes, and he explained to her that mommy's family history was on the wall, and he had a family history in his little book. I'm glad it's up, and I love looking at it!