Changes

I had a busy weekend! 

Every now and then, I get this irrepressable urge to move the furniture around. 

It drives my change-hating husband crazy.

I love moving the furniture around.  It just gives me a brighter outlook on life.  It's also an excellent reason to clean out those corners that I don't usually clean...AND it is excellent excercise! 
Win, win, win. 

Remember when I cleaned and organized my office?  It felt great, but after a while, I realized that it was only a band-aid on a broken room.  So I decided that I needed a fresh start--something completely different...and I had just the space.
 
This area used to be our office area.  It was right after we moved into this house and it worked pretty well for a while.  This space is just opposite of the tv in the family room downstairs.  After a few years, my husband decided to go back to school and get his masters degree.  He needed a quiet place to study, so we moved everything upstairs.  I also had moved my teaching stuff and paper/scrapbook supplies upstairs, so it would be in the same area as the printer.

He graduated about a year-and-a-half ago, and it continued to be our office, but it was mainly being used for Relief Society handouts, Visiting Teaching Messages, and gift tags, etc.  And the kids would sometimes do art projects in there. 

Translation: mess.  All the time. 

Seeing as how that room is right inside the front door of our house, and how it always looked like a bomb had gone off in there, I decided to move the office back downstairs.  I also hated that I felt really disconnected to my kids when I was working upstairs and they were playing or watching tv downstairs.
Here's what I ended up with:

There's even space for the kids' projects.

...and when if it gets messy, it's not right at the front door for the world to see.

My new work table is one that my friend Julie helped me refinish.  It was free!  {Thanks Jennifer!}

There's still stuff to do, but I really like the way everything is coming together in our new office/work area.

I also love my new view:

Way better than looking at the street.

To help organize my supplies, I needed some shelving.  About 12 years ago, my husband built me a bookshelf {in our apartment in Provo}, that never really found the right spot in this house.  It had been sitting in the garage for the last 6 years--but it fit perfectly in the spot that I needed storage! 

Problem was, it was buried. 
I am embarrassed to say that our garage looked {notice that past tense, thankfully} like an especially bad episode of hoarders.  I needed that shelf, though, so that garage needed to be cleaned and organized.  It's awesome to be able to move around in there again.  We could always park the car in there, but sometimes it got a little scary getting out of the car and walking into the house. 
Now I can do a little twirl. 
With my arms out even. 
With a friend. 

Hopefully with the completion of the shed imminent, we may even be able to move even more stuff out and maybe even park my husband's car in there this winter. 
That'd be something.

I'm sad I didn't take a before photo of that one...it's probably better that way...

I wouldn't want the health department sent out here.  :)

I also finished a project that I'm really excited to share with you all.

But this has gotten really long.

So you'll have to wait 'til tommorrow.

Have a great day!