Our Steedly House: Bedrooms

This week for the 4 Moms Open House tour, we are in the bedrooms!  ..I will confess that these pics are from a post I put on our family blog aobut 6 months ago, after I had finished all the painting and while things were still dust free and somewhat ordered :) ...right this minute, not so much.

First, the boys room ..these are more snapshots of the decorations we have in there. They boys are in bunk beds and, other than the dresser the rest is just open space for them to play. Their boys are in bins under their bed, when they are not scattered all over the floor! :)

Above our little monkeys beds ...

We havent added Joshua's name yet, but we will when it is time for him to move in with his brothers.

Then, the master bedroom ..again, more just snapshots of the room. ...

We have a vanity that opens into our bedroom, which I love...almost as much as I love how I have my OWN sink :)

We have a guest room as well, which is doubling as Joshua's room while he is between mommy's room and brothers' room. Hopefully, we wont traumatize him by not giving him his own nursery ..I dont plan on telling him :)  ..that picture though is not gonna happen, as I dont want the mess that in there on any type of recording device that can be referred to in the future :)  I think that the 4 moms are doing a second part for bedrooms next week, so maybe I will feel motivated to do that :)

So ...that is the Steedly House so far..feel free to go back and visit the entryway, dining room/kitchen, living room and schoolroom. And thanks to the 4 Moms for hosting the open house! :)

Our Steedly House: Living Room

Well, I am still having fun looking at my house through the camera lens. This week on the 4 Moms Open House tour, they are looking at the Living Room!

I am not in LOVE with my living room right now ..it has too much furniture that doesnt match each other and I am needing to do something different in the deco department, but it is still a blessing :) It is a great benefit of this house because it is close to the front door, close but not open to the kitchen, and far enough away from the playroom/schoolroom and bedrooms that there is some peace and quiet in there even when the boys are in the house :)

Here is a view from the entryway ..of one side of the room

And the other ...

The fireplace, a major plus to our house ..even though we live in SC, and so it is not the most frequently used appliance. However, it does fit all my Christmas morning fantasies :) Please, be sure to note the feather duster in the chair ..that is as close to evidence of dusting you will ever find in my house :)

 I am planning on adding some more pictures above the couch, and they will be lined up under the wording ..."May the warm winds of heaven blow softly on this house"

This is where we do all our family cuddling, the boys do their wrestling, we do family MarioKart tournaments, and where we watch America's Funniest Home videos so that we can watch our kids laugh like crazy!

Its a good place, this Steedly House :)

Next week, the bedrooms ...if I get them cleaned up enough for a camera ...its been good motivation so far!  :)

Our Steedly House: Dining Room/Kitchen

I really love my kitchen ..its one of my favorite parts of my house.

But first...from the entryway, we head into the dining room:

This is in the dining room facing back towards the entry way (see the stairs through there?) ...and the flowers are sitting on the table that is in the other pictures.  See that large piece of furniture in the shot above ....that one is my most recent ingenious idea when I brought it downstairs out of an upstairs bedroom to make room for baby. I set the there until I could make room in the garage for it. I loved it there!  I had been looking for something to put in that space because our dining room is really made for a bigger table.  It now houses all our school supplies, my Stress Less Journal, my husbands pocket contents (he has his own drawer), my coupons, extra paper for the printer, and some other stuff.

I had a great idea to update it a bit by changing all the knobs..until I took them all off, THEN went to the store to price them. After determining that it would cost $35 to replace the KNOBS ..I put the old ones back on. I will chose not to stress about THAT! :)

The curtain covers the double glass door that leads to our deck and perfect-for-boys backyard. It is a MESS, so you will have to wait to see that. Incidentally, what you also dont see is that I had to shift the mess from the table to the buffet so I could get a decent shot of my dining room :)

That table will be getting alot of use this fall..I cant wait! 

Then, looking from my dining room into my kitchen...

 You can see the start of my awesome bay window in the top one, and all of it and the island  that has hosted many a cookie or pizza making party in this one... also, you can see my calendar and my paper clutter solution!

Swinging past the window, pantry and fridge (which you can see in the shot from the dining room) ...

See my green crockpot? I got a story for another post about that! And, so you see the cookie jar next to the stove? ... My husbands love language is cookies :)

Here is the rest of that counter space ...

The floor is a wide open space because we have the island against the window right now. Its been great to have a big space for the kiddos to play on the floor while I cook dinner or bake cookies! They are gonna be underfoot anyways, might as well give them some space to do it! :)

So..that is my kitchen and dining room!

Oh..and one more thing. ..I just hung another one of my Uppercase Living expressions in the Laundry Room ...

It says, "I'm thankful for piles of laundry ..it means my loved ones are nearby" ..love, LOVE it!

Thanks to the 4 Moms for hosting this Open House Tour ...next week, the Living Room!

Our Steedly House: Entryway

So, I have had so much fun planning on participating in the 4 Moms open house!

Last week, I rebelled and participated but didnt follow the assignment ..;) This, week I will make up for both assignments!

The 4 Moms are touring their homes, and because I have enjoyed looking at theirs I figured ..why not?! I have had so much fun looking at my house through the view finder of my camera! I have enjoyed taking the time to ponder each part of my house that we have shared so far. I have noticed several things that need doing (including touch up paint, some dusting, some clutter that I hadnt really noticed before) and having to take pictures has motivated me to GET IT DONE!

First, we have been in our current home for about 1.5 years. It were first-time home buyers, and love owning our home! This house was not at ALL what I had been looking for when we started looking the first of last year. I was getting quite discouraged when we found this one, which my husband immediately fell in love with. I did not. It was not at all what I had in mind when we started looking, and the evening we looked at this house I had already fallen in love with the one we looked at immediately before. I was crushed when MY house was listed incorrectly, and so was not even an option.

While I whined and felt sorry for myself, my sweet husband quietly suggested we consider this house again. I didnt want to. BUT, in order to honor his suggestion we came and took another look. As it turns out, it is the PERFECT house for our Steedly Home.  I had no idea that I needed a kitchen that was far away from the playroom and the living room (I wanted a totally open floor plan, kitchen/living room/dining room combo), that we would benefit from living in an older home (rather than the new builds I loved), that we would be on this side of town (I liked closer to where our rental house was) ...I can promise you that my husband reminds me regularly that the home I love LOVE was HIS idea :)

Okay..so to start with ...right now, the summer has killed all our flowers and the front of the Steedly House is not beautiful ..but here is a shot from what it looked like during the first Charleston, SC snow in 10 years (February of this year):

Picture it with lush green grass, pretty flowers hanging from the porch, green bushes and tulips in the front flower bed. That is not what it looks like now, because the 110 degree weather killed all of them :)

Our entry way ... this is taken  from just inside the living room (that is next week!) that you can see into from the front door. Up the stairs is the all the bedrooms, and has the only carpet in the house. Unfortunate that the only floor I have to vacuum is stairs ..blech.

I have had this dresser since I was about 13. It has a beautiful mirror that has avoided being broken for 20 years AFTER I got it (it was antique when I got it) ..until I broke it a few weeks ago while moving it. Awesome.

On it sits a book I am proud to own ...

 It is a pictorial tour of Arlington Cemetery, where my baby brother is buried. My brother in law found this at Barnes and Noble where he was flipping through the pages, and he found my brothers head stone front and center on page 169.  A few weeks later, my parents received a leather bound copy of it from the Superintendent of Arlington Cemetery.

 I leave it there in the entry way so that I can never forget that he lies with heroes! :)

And, finally for this room ...the saying above my door.  This saying was part of my Uppercase Living order that I placed a few weeks ago!

Okay..moving on to the dining room and kitchen! ...

Our Steedly School Room

Well, the 4 Moms are doing a home tour..and while they are at their entry way..I am being rebellious and showing you my school room! :)

With our school year starting in 10 days, I have been working on getting our school room together these past few weeks! I have been having a blast putting all the books in their places, storing school supplies, choosing our posters and making plans for our learning to begin!

I have loved every minute of it, and while we are getting closer to my ideal, I am sure there will still be some rearranging left to do before August 16th!

We have all our K12 books lined up and ready to go ...we are doing Phonics, Language Arts, Math, History, Science, Art and Music. I am little nervous at the amount of work we have, but looking at the lessons they arent too in depth all at once and we should be able to ease into it pretty well, since a good portion of it is review for Ty at first.

We will also be doing bible, scripture memorization and character quality education. We will be linking qualities of SUPER Bible Heroes of the bible to character qualities that these little daddies and men in training need to know. 

I am really excited to get to watch them learn all this stuff! Ty is especially excited about learning about space. He is pretty proud that he can name most of the planets, and is even getting good at telling you where they are on the solar system poster we have up. He is a smartie :)

Our preschooler, Canon will also be working with us when he is willing and able. He loves worksheets and such things. And, he is our little artist. The art program is going to let us work with lots of different media and doing our own version of alot of different styles of art. He will love that, probably more than Ty. I cant wait!

I am trying to heed some of my mothers words ...the ones she shares on her own blog here (you should especially appreciate the awesome pics on that post ;). To remember that teaching them all the most important lessons isnt about where the school supplies fit, or which school books they use. Its easy to get caught up in all of it ...because I LOVE the education store! :)

As you may, or may not know, I am a second-generation homeschooled kid and I am excited to head back into the schooling experience I know and love. My sisters have been schooling their own children for several years now, and its been fun to both watch and learn from them.

I know that teaching my kids at home is a lifestyle ..because they are going to be with me every minute of the day, and because our every day life will have to include while still compartmentalizing school AND home.  Because of that, I have been working on a plan to keep my stress level down as we head into this big shift in our Steedly life.

Some ways I have been doing that ... really clear out my schedule (I have given up alot of church and social responsibilities and with it the necessity to be so many places), prepare our home for the new tasks it will perform, work on better sleeping and eating habits, and working on managing some of my home tasks a bit better.

I am not sure how I am going to manage my home and my school ...we shall see! :)

I am looking forward to both the hard work and the challenge of it (that is my personality). I know alot of that is because I know that all of the work and sacrifice is worth it (this is guest post I wrote for Smockity Frocks)!

So...have you been organizing and getting things ready for the chaos of the upcoming fall? 

or have you used the summer to recover some area of your home?