Sunday, January 15, 2012

Our Winter Remodel (well, sort of)
Ok, so we didn't remodel our whole house, just the most important parts. Here are the updated photos of the living room, dining room, entryway and family room I promised oh, so long ago!

The family room/homeschool room...although we enjoyed having a homeschool room, for our family, we found that it secluded education from life. We don't actually "school" our children, we EDUCATE them. Schooling is in a building. Education is LIFE and that's one of the big reasons we made the move. We also have an awesome, incredible grandma who loves to visit us now that she's back from China and needs a room to stay in. We knew that our homeschool room was a temporary fit for us, but we weren't sure if we'd be enclosing our back porch or not. We finally decided not to as we're hoping to move to a larger piece of land in the next few years and didn't want to sink the money into enclosing the porch. So, we exchanged our large, leather L-shaped couch for two softer couches and a reading chair. Moved our bookshelf, added a fun, red rug, and found creative ways to use space as we cleaned out education non-necessities and moved everything out. The old schoolroom/aka:Grandma's room is currently "under construction" as we save up for some furniture, repaint and clean out a few things left over. Won't be long though. I'll post photos of that when it's finished.

Our homeschool bookshelf...we love having things right out in the open. It's so nice to have our books and materials right alongside us as we're learning each day. We can find a book on a shelf that we need, grab art/craft supplies quickly and everything is visual so we know right where it is. Love that. Something we didn't have when our schoolroom was separate. I'm a strong admirer of the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind" as I find this SO true with my own life. Now that our education resources are alongside us as we're learning each day, we use them so much more!

Our new Living room/Music room. It's nice now that the kids are getting older and interested in musical instruments (Rob plays piano, I play guitar...a bit, mind you...,Lincoln loves jamming alongside me with his own guitar, Avonlea has a mandolin and also enjoys piano). We can all sit out in the Living room and sing.

This is my reading chair. No one is allowed on it, although there have been incidents, hence why it's also been washed a few times since we bought it in late November. I love snuggling up with a blanket, a cup of peppermint tea and a good book during nap time/evening time with my little guys are sleeping. Ahh!

Here is a photo from another angle. We decided to put our John 15 verse on the wall as well. Rob and I used an overhead projector with a transparency of a photo that I found for free on the Internet. I think with paint and all the whole tree cost us $17.00! Everybody has their photo up on our family tree. We only put immediate family members on it for now, but when I get time, we may add up other family pics.

It's been such a nice change doing our work at the table. We work harder at keeping it clean since we have to and the kids' workboxes fit so nicely alongside it. We feel so blessed with this change! I think the neatest thing though (touching, really) was that this was all my husband's idea. Although, in the beginning, I had to warm Rob up to the whole homeschooling idea, he is now just as strong of an advocate as I am and loves having our learning supplies out for visitors to see so that we can share how God has blessed us and what He is doing in this amazing experience.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the new tour of the house and hopefully once we get the kids' rooms finished, we'll post newer photos of those too. Glad I could finally share. :)

1 comment:

Rachel E. said...

I enjoy having the kids all work side by side in the same area I do my stuff. I just get so frustrated with the messy table at the end of the day. But, we are working on that...maybe some day they will remember on their own to clean up. :-)