Divide and Conquer

Remember when I first showed you our guest room in our rental home in Ohio? Remember how we ended up changing it to be our 6-year-old's room? Remember how I said it is also where I store my craft supplies and it can easily accommodate guests? Yeah, it's time to see how all that works.

First up, let's review how this room fills the needs of the little dude who lives here. Jonathan sleeps here at night, plays quietly here at rest time, and changes his clothes in the morning and evening. That means he needs a bed,

 
a few toys and books,

places for his clean and dirty clothes,

and a smattering of things around the room to make it feel like it's HIS.

 Next, let's look at where I store my craft supplies.

Jonathan uses one drawer in the desk and I get the rest. I keep some scrap book supplies here like my cutters and pens. I will sometimes use the desk or the bed for a quick project, like hot-gluing a frame back together, or cutting down a paper to the right size. But if I were to really tackle a project, I would take my supplies to the dining room table.

I keep papers and stickers in the top half of the dresser and Jonathan uses the bottom half. One basket on top of the dresser has ribbons and things in it, while the small basket with the puppy is for our little boy's treasures he's always finding--rocks and feathers and such.

I keep the rest of the scrap book supplies as well as other miscellaneous crafty things in these boxes in the closet which leaves plenty of space for Jonathan's dress clothes to hang and for his dirty laundry bin on the floor.

Oh! I almost forgot, I keep wrapping paper in long, flat bins under the bed! I've done that for years and love it. When I need to wrap a present I usually pull out the needed bin (one for birthdays, one for Christmas) and either wrap the present on the floor or on the bed. Some day I'll have a cute wrapping station, but for now, this totally works. (Sorry no picture!)

Ok, so next is how this room would work as a guest room! We haven't needed it as such since Jonathan moved in, but we would only need to change a few things to make a guest feel comfortable here.

This picture is from before I moved the collage on the wall out to the hall. (You can see that here!) But it shows a well-made bed with different pillows that are only for guests.

There is room for hang-up clothes in the closet and the chair can be placed between the bed and dresser to act as a luggage rack. Of course there would be a stack of fresh towels for our guest and anything else they might need.

As to where a certain little boy would sleep, he is already looking forward to "camping" in his brothers' room!

What about you? Do you have a dedicated guest room that no one else uses? Do your guests share a room with a member of your family, or does someone move out for them? We're looking forward to hosting a guest or two in the near future!

Guest Room Close-Ups {Wordless Wednesday}

Put a Frame On It

One of my successes as a blogger is this collage wall that was part of our youngest's nursery in Iowa.

Sigh... I miss that room! 

Here in Ohio, we decided because of the layout of the house and the ages of our boys to put them all in the same room. Only the youngest naps anymore, and they seem to be so tired at night from all of the outdoor play they get that they usually go right to sleep instead of keeping each other awake. 

But this isn't about our parenting choices, it's about a collage wall! 

I knew since most of the furniture from Josiah's nursery would now be used in our guest room, the white frames would follow suit. Here's where it is now.

I've been picking things that are a little more colorful for the guest room than for the nursery. I added the two pictures of my little guys in the bathtub too (still need to edit and print the third--oops!). 

This wreath hung on the barn door headboard at our old house. Remember it? I hung it on an empty frame that used to feature a cute little outfit in the nursery.

And then there was this empty frame from the nursery that had twine strung on it. Why not clip some paint chips to it? Instant color! 

Moral of the story: If it's cute, put a frame on it! Or if it's the right size or texture, or if you can group like items together, or if you just like a bunch of pretty things, frame them! And if your frames don't match, spray paint is your friend!

Now what else can I add to that collage?

Guest Room Tour

Welcome to our guest room! 

You guys! I've missed you! I've missed blogging! I've missed over-sharing our lives and home. 

We have been in Ohio for about 6 weeks. Most of the rental house is unpacked and looking like home. I'm planning to take and edit more pictures this week so you can see where we'll be calling home for the next year. Talk about a whole package of answered prayers.

Do you mind if I tell you one of those answered prayers?

It's Mother's Day and this is my prayer as a mom way back in California when Gary was in school and we had no idea where we were going or what we would be doing. And I kept praying it through the ups and downs, through the long months of waiting in Missouri, through the unknowns. I felt like it was somewhat of a selfish prayer, knowing all that really mattered was that our basic needs were met.

Please let us end up somewhere that the boys can play outside safely, without my constant supervision. Please let them have friends who are similar ages who are good influences on my impressionable young boys. Please help Gary and me to have friends too...

Our house is on the property of a private high school where my husband is the assistant boys' dean. There are literally acres between the school and church properties and not including the main campus where the boys can play. Our house is on the hill where I can peek out the window and see most of their play places which include a huge parking lot (empty except for weekends) for riding bikes and scooters, a playhouse in the yard, a garden area, a basketball quart and a big hill for a backyard. At the bottom of the hill is the backyard of another school family, with their sandbox and swing set. And their four children, ages 8, 6, 4 and 1. Can you believe it? There are several other families connected to the church and school as well. God is so good!

Anyway, this was supposed to be all about our guest room. So, let's get this train back on track. 

If you've been around Beauty4Ashes for awhile or if you've been to my house in real life, you'll recognize most of the things in this guest room from our home in Iowa. Most big items were in our third son's nursery.

 The craft supplies in jars were from my craft closet in Iowa.

This was Josiah's changing table. I'm collecting frames for a collage wall.

This highboy was _this close_ to ending up as kindling. So glad I rescued it! It now is full of scrapbook supplies and lots of other art things. 

The only thing I bought for this room was the comforter and green pillow shams. Yay for using what you've got!

Now because it's fun, let's see the same little whirl around the room but with BEFORE pictures! To be fair, the before pics were taken with my cell phone and completely unedited. The afters were taken with a nice camera and some tweaks with good old PicMonkey. Here we go!

 

 

Wasn't that fun?! Hopefully, a welcoming, relaxing space for our guests.

Also hopefully, I'm getting back in the swing of blogging! Can't wait to catch up with you!