{p,h,f,r} The Bookshelf Edition

I was planning on putting up cute snow pictures today but Auntie Leila asked for bookshelves, so bookshelves it is.

I shared pictures of our library/playroom/homeschool room last year but I've done some rearranging since then.  I reoriented our bank of IKEA shelves so that it enclosed the play area in the hopes that it would be less distracting to those actually attempting to be homeschooled.  I had Chris make a back to the exposed shelf to give us a bit of wall space to hang maps on on the other side and also to stop children from shoving all the books out and tunneling through to the other side.  It's been wholly effective at deterring tunneling but only mildly effective at reducing distractions.  Mostly due to the fact that those banished to the playroom side have taken to playing/frolicking on top of the shelves in order to stay out of the baby's range and also drive their mother crazy.  

When I did the rearranging I also sorted out the books and labeled the sections for ease of re-shelving.  I wasn't sure if it would help or not but it has gone surprisingly well--especially considering only one of my children can actually read the labels.  There were so many books before that the boys were having a hard time finding what they were looking for and a lot of the books were living lonely and forgotten lives.

I pulled out all the books we had and sorted them into piles to get a feel for what categories we needed.  I ended up with:

• Goose, Seuss, Scarry and Spy (John's favorite section by far, which is why there are hardly any actually on the shelf)
• Picture Books--two shelves of favorite stories
• Fairy Tales and Fables
• History and Geography
• Science & Nature
• Insects & Ocean Life
• Animals & Dinosaurs

We also have a section of poetry books on the bottom of our homeschool shelves that I couldn't fit in here.  And then of course there are even more books stashed in the bedrooms upstairs. 

As you can see my labels are very fancy--index cards cut down to size and stuck down with packing tape.

Opposite the children's books are our main bookshelves, also from IKEA and hard to photograph due to the skinniness of the room.  I like these shelves because they are sturdy (made from actual wood, not press-board), they have a built in feel and with all our military moves I know I can always go pick up some more if I need to reconfigure them.  I could actually use a couple more right now but I have no idea where I would stick them.....

These shelves were organized by subject and alphabetized by author but unfortunately our sweet little Margaret is a bookshelf dumper.  And also a bookshelf climber.  I think it's the red hair.

I did recently gather up all of my book piles from around the living room and stick them on this one, 'you need to finish reading these before you buy any more books' shelf of shame.  I only let myself keep out four that I'm currently reading and I'm not going to grab any more until I've actually finished those.  Well except those two from the library that I need to pick up tomorrow. But after that I promise.

And lastly, my favorite shelf.  I'm not a collector of things in general but I started picking up these Agatha Christie books our local used book store in Florida and now I'm hooked on them.  Apparently they are from a collection that you could buy and then you would have one new book sent to you by mail each month.  How fun would that have been?  I wish there was something similar now.  I suppose I could just go on Amazon and pick one out for myself each month but that just doesn't really have the same feel............


Make sure you click on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for even more captured contentment and bookshelves :)

On Having a Lot of Legos

 

Legos.  They're kind of a big deal around here.  Probably due in no small part to the fact that Daddy will gladly sit and play with them indefinitely.

I've come around to their charm, which is good since they've completely invaded my home.  It's fun to see all of the creative things the boys make.  Even John gets in on the action although he only knows how to make one thing, which is always a flat piece with some other piece on top and occasionally a minifigure:  "a  boat mommeeee!  a boat!  look at my boat!  BOAT!"

We used to store them in a dresser organized by color but now that John is in the mix there really wasn't a prayer for that system to work anymore.  When we moved I had Chris build dividers into the trundle part of John's big boy bed so now the front three sections are full of Legos and the back section holds shoes-to-be-grown-into and winter gear.  Of course that solution only holds the loose Legos.  We also have finished and in-process creations on pretty much every flat surface of the room.  The big boys have also taken to hoarding all the *best* pieces in their own designated special spots to make sure no one else can use them even though they aren't actually currently being used..........which generally ends about as well as you would imagine.

The giant bin-o-legos has made clean up much easier, although clearly it's not foolproof since--children.  Luckily, David jumped down from the top bunk this week only to realize he'd landed directly on his own tiny instrument of torture and I think we may have finally made a breakthrough on understanding why I make such a big deal about always clearing away the Lego minefield before bedtime.  I suppose only time will tell if that particular lesson sticks.  

Here's hoping....

One of Those Weeks.....

I think this picture pretty much sums up my week.  In fact it was probably the high point........

Me:  "Henry.  Why did you do that?"
Henry:  "I didn't want that (pointing at the toilet paper) on there (pointing at the roll).

Of course.


Well, like I always say:

When life hands you lemons..............

..................organize a closet....or two.....or three....................

Rats in the Pantry

We live in Florida.  We have a tinyhouse with a tinypantry......and also we have critters......in the kitchen......mostly of the giant cockroach, palmetto bug, and tree frog variety.

Now that it's summer and our critter friends have begun emerging from every crack and crevice and startling me in the wee hours of the morning I have begun emptying all of our pantry staples into more critter proof containers.

I have also begun to get fancy with the chalkboard contact paper and a chalk marker.

If I had a more appreciative audience here in my house-o-boys I may not feel the need to over-share this with you but I don't and I know there must be at least one person in my family who will be interested in my new pantry organization :)

I also splurged on some OXO containers to hold my various flours.....they're worth every penny.  I mean, what would you pay for the assurance that every scoop of your flour would be blessedly cockroach free?

Even with all of my food precautions however my pantry isn't 100% safe.  Today I noticed that my baking chocolate has still somehow been attacked by what can only be described as rodents of unusual size.......

......rodents with mouths about the size of a little three year old I know.........

And yes, apparently this particular giant rodent feasted on both chocolate and paper.  Sneaky rats don't have time for things like unwrapping their booty.

Project Simplify: The Lego Dresser

Project Simplify is going on over at Simple Mom and if you know me you know I don't need much arm twisting to organize something.  This week is drawers and shelves so I tackled our newly founded lego dresser.

Last week after losing the battle on whether or not to let the husband's childhood lego collection into the house, I subsequently lost the battle on whether or not we should bunk the boys' beds.  I'll share some pics of the new arrangement as soon as I can get at least three quarters of the toys put away for long enough to take a decent photo....so maybe never.....If you've Face Timed with David recently you've already been blessed with the whole fifteen minute tour of their new space and received a detailed explanation of the whole bed-bunking process--if you haven't had the pleasure just call in the evening when Chris is home with his iphone and I'll be glad to set something up for you :)

Anyway.....the gain in floor space from bunking the beds meant that we could fit the boys' other dresser (that had been residing in our storage room since we moved in) back into their room--and (I hope) it is our perfect lego storage solution.....

You remember the before?

Well welcome to the after....

At first we just dumped the legos into the drawers and called it a day, but it was a lot of legos to dig through and they were ending up all over the place so we decided to sort them out by color--mostly because there is no way the boys would be able to put them back if we sorted them by type which was Chris' first preference.  If the boys are ever at the point where they want their legos sorted by type they can go ahead and take care of that themselves :)

I was going to make some cardboard dividers and duct tape them in, but Chris thought that that was really ghetto and sad so he used some extra plywood we fished out of the river on a recent river-fishing expedition and made real dividers for me instead.

Thanks to the giant ship and submarine sets I bought Chris in college, we have a ridiculously disproportionate number of grey to colored lego pieces........I'm not sure I would have given him those if I had known how they would come back to haunt me.....

The other drawer is for base plates and special pieces in an old silverware tray and then the top has instruction books.

So far it's been working well but I think we need to invest in one of these to use when the boys are building to help contain the mess and allow for easy transport from room to room, especially when Henry's napping and all of the lego pieces left in the room are being held hostage until he wakes.  I'm thinking the true blue one.

I guess I'm warming up to the legos....they are kind of fun to build with......

.....and I don't think I'm too shabby at building random lego things either :)


P.S. it's supposed to be a dog in case you're wondering.......

Yay for storing lego pieces off of the floor and check out the other before and afters!

{p,h,f,r} Master Bedroom Sprucing

One of my all-time-favorite-blogs-ever gave out a challenge to beautify your master bedroom this week so I thought I might jump in and participate instead of just lurking around as I'm apt to do....besides, I'm in full-on nesting mode and I know you wanted to see pictures of the new house that aren't just the boys' room and our patio anyway :)

{pretty}

Are you loving our ceiling fan?  They are the same all through the house--at least we have a consistent look :)  And they have dimmer switches so that's exciting........

Since Chris insists that we will never, never, never, under  any circumstances downgrade from a king to a queen sized bed I'm left to try to stuff this overlarge monster into tiny base housing bedrooms.  I was pretty impressed with myself for figuring out how to squish the bed plus two nightstands in while still being able to open the bi-fold closet doors--it involved finding just the right placement angle for the roundish table so that the door could open into the perfect section of curve in the top of said table......

I think the $15 old glass door that I picked up a few years back and had Chris stain is still one of my favorite things in the house.  It makes a lovely headboard--goodness knows I don't need an actual king-sized bed to drag around from state to state right now--although I would love a good old fashioned four poster.....one day.........

{happy}

Chris has a tendency to pile things on every flat surface he finds--my ingenious solution--a basket...at least this way his stuff is all semi-contained.  He doesn't posses my same knack for artistic book stacking...or maybe for some reason he just doesn't find it as satisfying as I do?  In any case, having his things neatly contained makes me happy :)  

{funny}

If you do an about face you can see the rest of our room in it's entirety.  Does the size of our tiny room strike you as funny?  The boys' room is bigger but we weren't going to give up the en suite bathroom for a little extra space.......There's room for our armoire and a chair and that's it....well, I think there may also be room for this totally extravagant bassinet.  Judge me if you will for being totally ridiculous and wanting something that expensive that will only be good for six months tops, but after all that's happened this year I just want everything to be perfect for our little guy and, let's face it, we definitely don't have room for the pack n' play that lived in our old bedroom pretty much since Henry was born.  This bassinet is good up to thirty pounds and it has wheels so I can move it around the house to give the baby a safe place to be (i.e. away from his brothers) and I can easily wheel it next to the bed at night and then back out so that we can access the closets, and it has a storage shelf so I can put extra diapers and necessities there (since there isn't anywhere else for them to go)....plus the pack n' play is ugly and I'm pretty sure not meant for daily use for multiple years.....and hopefully we'll be having several more little ones to put in it, so really I'm making an investment for our future, not being silly and making horrible hormone induced decisions right?  Right?  

{real}

Welcome to our master bath.....it's so...cozy...that you can't get a picture of it from the inside.   Are you loving this lovely light fixture as well--I've never seen one mounted to wood before but I suppose every new rental home will also bring new surprises in home decor.  I can't seem to decide what to do with our little rug--it doesn't really fit in front of the shower, or the sink--so I've settled on leaving it laying diagonally on the floor and just scooching it over to where I need it when I'm in there--I know, your're all astounded by my home decorating tips and tricks :)

Chris and I both have a shelf in the cabinet over the toilet to hold our essentials and then the sink cabinet holds a trash can and one basket with my (let's face it, seldom used) hair styling equipment.  This is pretty much how it always looks--you know, not super fancy but oh-so-practical......

And here's a closer look at what I'm sure you are all more interested in than my bathroom--it's pretty, happy, funny and real all rolled in to one :)

And you should definitely pop on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for more lovely and useful bedroom fixes.

Forward Face

Before Chris started back to work he was hard at work at home doing several big projects I dreamed up while he was away.  First on the list was a set of forward facing bookshelves for the boys room--I wanted something a little sturdier than the rain gutter shelves we had before and I had already given the gutters over to the boys anyway to play with outside :)

We used a tutorial I found here.   They were simple to make but it took a lot longer than we thought since we made so many (these plus four more for the library!).  It was worth it though--says the one who was overseeing the whole process and not actually building anything.......

The boys love them at any rate.  David has taken to "reading" books to Henry which is beyond precious :)

I've come around to the idea of having most of their toys in their room.  I didn't really like it at first, but they've got the biggest room in the house so it didn't make sense not to put their stuff in there.  I imagined giant nightmare messes of dumped out toys to deal with every evening, but they've been keeping it relatively clean and usually just grab one of their baskets and bring it into the living room when they want to play with it.  They're also getting more picky than me about getting the toys back into the correct bin at the end of the day......Our categories right now are as follows......

I also made a little spot for their dress up clothes, repurposing the old coat rack we made last year (as sadly, they really don't need a coat rack in Florida).  It's a perfect costume holder though and the overflow fits nicely into the old suitcase underneath......

I'm not sure what you call this particular costume medley.....superhero knight of the fire station realm?

PS Chris has requested that I take a bit of a poll to find out which you like better, these shelves or the rain gutters?  Feel free to agree with me that these lovely wooden ones were worth the effort :)

Even More News......

......we aren't going to be homeless after all!  In a miraculous turn of events the three to six month wait to get into base housing has turned out to be a mere one and a half months instead and our new home will be ready in time to move our stuff straight there (as opposed to the movers putting everything into storage which is where things have a habit of disappearing....).  Did I mention we were moving to Jacksonville, FL?  We are.  It's official :)

Apparently most of the people on the housing waitlist want the brand new, big, beautiful, two car garage townhouses (go ahead check out the videos) as opposed to the small 1940's bungalows which I have been unable to find a single picture of anywhere and everyone in front of us passed on our new house.  I don't know if that bodes well for us but I'm not so picky as all that.....I mostly just wanted a house.  On base.  That I could move into now.   So I wouldn't be homeless and doctor-less.  So this one seems to fit the bill.......  

Our new dreamhome apparently sits right next door to a playground on a little culdesac with a handful of other single family homes and lots of trees, so that sounds nice.  And I can apparently cut through the backyard and....ta da!....pop out right in front of the naval hospital.  You can't get much more convenient than that!  

I wonder if they let you stroll your new baby home as opposed to performing the mandatory car seat installation check when you live right around the corner?

Here's the floorplan....it's the only thing I have to go on aside from an aerial google maps shot---apparently you can't do street views on military bases :)

It's actually larger than our current house--if you can believe it--but it doesn't have a fenced in yard which is a bummer.  The main downside of the house is that it appears to be seriously lacking in the storage department.  I've been spoiled in our current house (old as it may be) with all of the built in storage/cabinets/basement/giant walk in closets that run the length of the second floor.  I think I'm definitely going to need to purchase some extra cabinets to create some kind of makeshift pantry/place to store extra kitchen and utility room type things.  Maybe like these....and then assemble them myself--which might be an interesting adventure......I'm pretty sure if I don't invest in extra storage right away I won't be able to actually unpack our stuff as there won't be anywhere to put it!  

I also have no idea what I'm going to do with the "specialty room" up in the top right corner.  It looks pretty small.  I could maybe put David's old twin bed with the trundle in there for extra sleeping space but that may be pretty much everything that fits in there.....Chris doesn't want to use it as a playroom but that's definitely where I'm leaning....Well if you aren't there to help move and unpack you don't get the final say right?  

I also really want to get a new bookcase so that our book collection isn't just stashed in corners/on top of tables/stuffed in said built in cabinets all over the house.  I think it's time to let our IKEA expedit go--I really don't think you are supposed to disassemble and move it three times....or ever.  I've had my eye on something along the lines of this but we'll see.  Moving is so expensive.....even when the military pays for it....things just come up that the new place requires that the old one didn't.  In addition to giant cabinets for the laundry room we also need a washer and dryer, either a queen size mattress or twin box-frames (depending on which of our various bed frames we decide to actually use this time in our new guest room/nursery), and the obligatory curtain rods, shower rods, closet organizers, rugs, etc that you inevitably realize you need because the sizes you had before won't work in the new house.  Oh, and patio furniture, but I guess that's more of a want than a need......

Oh well, I've seen at least three decent washer/dryer options on craigslist and we're going to check out the local scratch and dent to see what they've got.  I've never bought a washer or a dryer before--they've always just found their way to us of their own accord so I don't really know anything about them, but I do want to buy them now so the movers can move and connect them and I won't have to deal with accomplishing that myself.....not that I'm not capable, I just don't want to :)  

Well, I'd better get back to hypothetically decorating the new house.....you know, the one that I really have no idea what it actually looks like.......I do love a good surprise......

Rain Gutter Bookshelves

I've been wanting to make these bookshelves for a while now.  I saw a tutorial here, but of course Chris didn't want to follow someone else's instructions.  It ended up being really easy.  We just cut two ten foot vinyl gutters in half, put end caps on, and screwed them right onto the wall.  The whole project cost less than $20 and was done in an hour!  Now all of the books are visible and easily accessible. Yay for reading!



David seemed to like them....



Well at least for a little while.....

Free Bathroom Makeover

Okay, makeover is probably too strong of a word :)   We acquired this new (to us) mirror from grandma and grandpa Reintjes' stash of pre-renovation treasures.  Don't mind our sad little shelves, they came with the house and as you can see we are in no place to get rid of extra counter space.  I think everyone can agree though that this mirror is a step up from the five dollar Target mirror we had up before....

Before



After

 A few weeks ago I found this....let's call it a plant stand....I'm not sure what exactly it is but it definitely looked like it spent some time outside.  It was in a pile of free garage sale rejects (I love walking on Sundays!).  I wasn't sure what to do with it but I finally decided to clean it up and hang it in our bathroom.  Since David began potty training we've had to move everything away from the potty because of some *aiming* issues :)  Now everything is up high and out of the way!

It definitely spent some time outside....



Before





After


Our little white cabinet was also a freebie--Chris pulled it out of the dumpster and brought it home to our very first apartment.  Since we have no storage in our bathroom, all of our toiletries live here.  Impressive I know :)