Guest Room/Playroom/Sewing Room Reveal

So the room itself is still very blah (and I moved two plastic tubs of papers to sort into the office)…but the room AND closet are finally clean and organized.

You may remember I did a quick fix on the closet in there a few months back.

But all that stuff needed to be dealt with…so that was tackled in earnest this week. A lot of papers were sorted (though there’s plenty more to deal with) and all the other odds and ends were gone through. The best part though was getting an organizer (on sale this week at Target) so that I could FINALLY get all my sewing stuff in order. I haven’t really had it organized much since getting married and am excited to have it all in order so that when I DO have some time to sew I will be able to find everything I need!!

Top shelf now holds sleeping bags, gift bags and tissue paper, baskets I hope to do something with craft-wise, and extra throws and spreads.

The middle shelf is my sewing/crafting stuff. On the left are my bigger pieces of material and a couple of organizers to contain all the little bits and pieces like buttons, needles, etc. On the right are a few things to mend and some Goodwill finds I hope to use parts of in creating some garb for renfaire in the fall. The middle holds my organizer full of lovely drawers…the top one for patterns and ribbons, the next one for odds and ends, the next one for current projects, and the bottom one for smaller pieces of fabric.

The bottom of the closet was the hardest as far as sweat equity goes though. I disassembled Bug’s changing table from his room and moved it into the closet in here and reassembled it. Let me tell you it was NOT easy…and I will definitely have help on any future projects of this nature. It is just VERY hard to maneuver in such a long narrow space!!

To the left of the changing table I’ve got a couple pillows and a duvet waiting for any guests we may have. To the right I have my sewing machine and a couple old bulletin boards I plan to refurbish in the future with some pretty fabric. The changing table itself awaits cute little baskets or buckets to contain things and will be the new home for all Bug's various toys. Yay for a toy-free living room!! Granted, the toys were hidden away at times in their little cubes in the entertainment center…but let’s be realistic here and say that they were usually scattered about the living room (and in the case of the ball pit balls usually even farther afield as cat and baby batted them about)!!

My next post will be a plea for ideas as to how to decorate the room that will be a combination playroom and crafting room with the occasional incarnation as a guest bedroom!!

Hooping!!

Did you ever hula hoop as a kid? I did. I learned in kindergarten during a very cold December where they hardly let us play outside on the playground during recess, instead sending us to the gymnasium where our options were jumping rope or hula hooping. I loved it so much that I decided for my seventh birthday that I MUST have a hoop of my own...and pestered my parents incessantly for one. In retrospect, they may have gotten me that hoop just to shut me up about it!! :-P A couple years later when a little brother messed that hoop up I got another one...but when that one got messed up, that was it for me and hooping.

Now I discover that there is a whole hooping movement going on out there in the big wide world of adults!! Sara, a blogger whose several blogs I've been following for a couple years, recently was introduced to hooping and then started her own hooping blog!! When I first read her first post about hooping I decided I wanted to start hooping again too!! So this Sunday I will go to my first hooping gathering and hopefully within the next week or two I will also have my own specially-made-for-me hoop from an Etsy shop!!

Bonus: Besides it being lots of fun to hoop and do tricks to music, it is also a very effective workout that tones your core without really seeming like a workout cause it's so freakin' fun!! Check out this video!! If I can get as good as that, I'll be pretty happy!!

Current Projects..

This next Tuesday we are having some friends over to grill burgers and relax. I'll wash the cushions ahead of time for the patio furniture and we'll prob hang the hammock...and we will definitely get the mister going out on the patio to help keep us cool!!

Then my SIL and her three kiddoes are coming for a visit in about three weeks. It's been a while since we've had overnight guests and DH has actually built a murphy bed since the last time...so it will get its first use while they are here.

Also in July we've got Independence Day as well as the birthdays of my two most favorite people in the world...DH and Bug!! So we'll prob have some sort of celebratory something or two for all that as well!!

With the different guests coming during the next month...I have got to get on the ball with finally getting the house in order and fixed up the way I'd like it to be. This means tackling the mountain of papers to sort in the office and doing a major scrub down of the house!!

I am also planning on finally finishing the curtains and bedskirt I never finished before Bug decided to come...as well as "toddler-izing" his room now that he is so mobile!! Once the guest room is in shape it will also become Bug's playroom whenever it isn't needed for guests, so a clearing out and reorganizing of the stuff in the guest room closet is also a must...so that there will be room in the bottom of it for toys!!

So, no pics in this post...but keep your eyes peeled for pics of Bug's nursery, the guest bedroom, and the office...as I make headway in getting them the way I envision them being!!