girls and curls

look who's reading!

Regan has been working with Max all year, learning letters and practicing their sounds and this weekend all that work has culminated in this...
Max, reading to the family (with his proud teacher looking on)! Looks like Regan has made my job (of teaching kindergarten this fall) a whole lot easier!

just for me

I've been admiring all of Target's Liberty of London things since they hit the stores this spring and finally brought home something for myself from the collection.

I am so glad to be done with the rearranging and am looking forward to a relaxing weekend. So, as soon as I finish hanging this...
putting up this here (scroll down)...

And painting this...

you will find me reading this. (I just had to throw in one more picture of my pretty new wallet!)Hope your weekend is happy and relaxing too!

my "studio" tour

I finally finished last night! Turns out the job of rearranging the office/craft/school room was a much bigger job then I anticipated. I still have a few loose end to tie up- like that pile of "to be filed" papers on the desk and we would also like to replace that IKEA rolling file cart (far right, in front of window) with a real file cabinet, oh and those boxes of magazine under my sewing desk that need to be gone through, but otherwise It is mostly done, and finally usable! Here are some pics...

Before:
After:

under construction: the school/office/craft room

This is what my poor husband has to put up with...
I have a disease, it's called chronic rearrangement syndrome. It is genetic, I inherited it from my mother and I think I've passed it on to my daughter too. As soon as she saw me moving furniture she got really excited and started telling me about how she wants to rearrange her room!
The truth is, this space just was not working for us anymore and I've been itching to find a way to make it work better. I don't know that I've found the answer, but I finally realized I could not figure it out unless I just dove and and started moving things. I am obviously a long way from finished, but hopefully by the time Phil gets home from taking Max to a birthday party we will at least be able to walk in the room :)

Oh, and here is a little peak at my new table/counter top. I have a few 2x8 pieces of plywood in the shed, so I cut one to fit my space and covered it with scrap book paper and a roll of plastic I just happened to have in the garage!
Well, I'm going back under, hopefully I will resurface soon with more pictures. TTFN!

window treatment

Okay, so our new windows are in (and they look oh so lovely) the trouble is, I can't decide what to do about curtains! I almost hate to cover them up they are so nice- even putting the couch back in front of the window was hard to do. But, they do seem kinda bare like this.

These are the curtains we had up before- just sheer, white, tie curtains. Oh, and there were blinds up before, but I am leaving those off, at least for now- I never have liked them anyway.

And here they are pulled back. I'm just not loving them.
What would you do?

new windows!

A friend from church came over today to "help" us install our windows- you can see from this picture how most of the day went- Neil doing most of the work and Phil and I standing by to hand him things (and take picture) We are so grateful to have had a professional here to "assist" us. :)

Okay, so I threw this picture in just because I though it was cool.

This was the first window to go in.

If you look closely you can find Max in the background watching in almost every picture. He's gonna be our handyman.

Phil- working hard.
We had not taken the stickers off or clean up the yard yet, but they are all in here!

Here is one from inside- I love how the windows look open with grids in the top sash only.

A close up from the outside. I love how the trim looks all wrapped- makes me anxious to do the rest of the trim on the house!

And finally- the before...

And after! I am enjoying the first ever cross-breeze in our house as I type! So nice to have windows that actually open :)