We just stack 'em!

In a recent post, I shared how we turned some of our free scraps into a loft for our oldest son. Now it's time for pictures of the boys' entire bedroom. It's taken a while to get the whole room clean all at once for pictures. In fact, these pics were not really taken at the same time. HA!

Jonathan has a loft, Jacob has a cave and Jack has a box (get it?), and under the loft is a "fort" that we intend to close off with a curtain soon. (One thing at a time!) There is a lot packed into this little 9' X 11' room! (I thought it was bigger, but I just measured, and it isn't very big at all.)

As you enter......

Are you diggin' the green carpet?!

Pan to the left. Notice the shelves above for storage.....the hubby's brilliant idea!

Looking through the end of the "box" where Jack sleeps, into the fort.

Continue to the left. Opposite side of the room, looking into the "box" where Jack sleeps (the door is just to the left).

All the toys that are too big for the shelves go behind his bed in the closet floor. Almost all of them are Little People toys that we've accumulated through the years!

Jonathan hung some random pictures on the wall to decorate Jack's box. :)

A closer look at some of the toys on the shelves up under the loft. Trucks/cars, balls......

foam blocks, wooden blocks, and (not shown) Little People figurines, letter/number cookie cutters, Lego Duplos.....

and the medium sized toys and books on the opposite side.

I also want to get a gutter and screw it to the wall to use for the board books.

And here is the "cave", a.k.a. the middle bunk where Jacob sleeps and keeps all his personal belongings. He's got approximately 4' X 6' all to himself, and he LOVES it.

And now for the loft. Jonathan was taking pictures of the new chicks a few weeks ago, and his loft was actually clean, so I'll use these. :)

Just barely to the left of the picture here is his bed, the top bunk. To the right is the window, behind the shelf (which he built himself).

This is his top bunk, looking into the shelf of the closet. We added the shelf to match the height of his bed and made it strong enough to hold a lot of weight.

The shelf he made, looking through to the window.

And here's his little nook he created, shelf on the right and window to the left. The TV (used for gaming and DVDs only, and only with permission!) is sitting on the outside edge of the loft on a little coffee table he built for himself. He did a great job creating his own storage and arranging the room to fit his "needs". :)

And there you go! That's the whole room! We all just love it. Every aspect of it works so well for each one of them. It couldn't be any more practical, so I don't care that we have old, green carpet or that the walls and wood could use some paint. We feel proud of what we've accomplished!

Has anyone noticed there are no dressers anywhere in the room? That's because the 4th bedroom, which is right next to our master bedroom, was turned into the family closet. Maybe I'll post pictures of that another day, but it has ended up being just the boys' closet, all four of them. All of their clothes are in one room, and it is so convenient! But that's another post for another day.....

Deck the Halls

Since we were home all of Thanksgiving weekend, we went ahead and deorated for Christmas! Well, when I say we decorated, I mean we put up and decorated our tree. We have a wreath for the front door but haven't put it on yet, but other than the tree and the wreath, we don't do any other decorating. It just isn't practical for this phase of our lives or this small house we are in!

But regardless of the size of the house, the tree we have this year is the biggest I have ever had in my whole life! It is mearely inches from our ceiling, and it is sitting on the floor, not on a table or desk like trees from previous Christmases! I bought it at Wal-Mart for $78, one of the cheapest 7.5 foot trees I've seen, and it was worth every penny!

We still have not finished those popcorn strings yet, so I'll have to post another picture when those are done, but for now, there are lights, candy canes and tons of Hallmark ornaments (a family tradition) on our tree. We actually had plenty of room for all our ornaments this year, with lots of room to spare! Wow!

So here are a few pictures of our decorating time together. :)






The tree is straight! I have no idea why the kids are all leaning the same direction! LOL!

We took a break after setting the tree up. It took a while to spread out ALLLLLL those branches! There is no way that it will ever fit back into that box either!

On to the lights and ornaments....

Jayla's room

We (including the kids) have all been working VERY hard in our house for the last couple of months. It has actually felt like we're moving! Myles' overtime will not last too much longer, so we are taking advantage of the "extra" money while we can. Specifically, for the last two weeks, we have been working on the bedrooms and laundry. They are almost all done!!! :)

We had some clutter that is nearly gone, and we have also finally given Jayla her own bedroom. She has been needing more privacy for a while, but we only have a two-bedroom house, so the kids were all sharing for a while. The 2nd bedroom is small and has been used for a variety of things over the years, but we finally decided to clear it all out and make it into her bedroom. She LOVES it!

Fortunately, the boys are able to sleep (on bunk beds) in the 2nd living room, so they do have their own space, just not as much privacy. We plan to (hopefully next year) turn the "middle room" into a brand new kitchen and then convert the current kitchen into a 3rd bedroom. Both of those changes will increase the value of our home immensely! Then we plan to move! :)

ANYWAY!

Here is a glimpse of Jayla's room. I haven't taken any other pictures yet, but this is a start.
She has a little nook in the corner that has a shelf/desk, but we thought it might be nice to hide it with a curtain, so last week we bought some. She also needed some storage for her toys. These little plastic drawers are perfect, and she loves the color! The windows will have matching curtains soon, but just this little setup right here was about $50! Yikes! So we just did the corner for now. We also plan to paint her walls a light yellow and get her a new twin bed (she currently has a full size and it takes up way too much room). She will likely get the bed this week. I think we already have the paint, but I don't think it will get done before Thanksgiving. It is not a priority over the clutter and other things! :)