Domicile Changes...

As you can imagine the past seven months have brought about big changes in the house too... I decided to take a break from people updates to share a couple with you. I don't know if I told you this or not but when we first arrived in Maine my parents house was neglected and full of clutter. The girlies and I worked around the clock when we first got here cleaning and decluttering... It is a process that is going on til this day. One of the major issues was seating in the living room. They had two recliners that were surrounded by stuff in which they lived their lives... My husband called it command centeral. Here, I'll show you...

I didn't really take any good pictures of the whole area but you get the idea.

The only other seating in the living room was one additional recliner (Like the one above) and a tiny love-seat... No, seriously a tiny love-seat...

Here, I took some pictures at Christmas time, have a look...

To give you an idea of scale that green pillow is only 7". Two of us could sit on here, but it was snug. One of the issues I discussed with my parents before I moved here was the lack of seating in the living room... Even with two of us on the love seat, there was still only room for three people to sit in this room besides the two of them... Oh, and at last head count there are four of us... Not good. Another problem is that they rarely leave the living room. They sit/doze in their chairs from 8:30 in the morning until about 3:00 AM... And the TV is on the whole time... The four of us were stuck spending most of our time on the bed in Paul's and my room. This got old fast and we were never able to have company over because first of all, where would they sit. Secondly with my parents front and center in the living room, when people did come over it was awkward to visit. We were all miserable... One of my gifts is hospitality... I love, love, love to have people over. We came up with a solution. Paul and I set up a make-shift bedroom for us in the basement and we moved their recliners (command central and all) into a "den" for them... Now they can sit there watching TV nineteen hours a day with clutter piled as high as they want it and we can all use the living room!

That brings us up to today... We got a new sofa about six weeks ago and I finally decided to change around some of the pictures... This is the before...

(excuse the computer and various other clutter...)

See that little shelf there? It had a bunch of nick-knacks on it that I had just taken down to dust for the 6000th time this summer when I decided enough is enough. We had decided two weeks ago that painting this room was going to have to wait until next spring. (Darn priority list...) So I decided to go ahead and change it up some. Paul thought this was a waste of time but I told him it would give me a chance to see if I like it this way or not... He walked off totally uninterested, but lucky for me there are always plenty of extra teens around here (being summer and all) and since I am the keeper of the food, I was able to do this tiny project without breaking a sweat. First we took down that little shelf that had been up there since my mother was into "home interiors" back in the 80s... Wanna see what happens to a wall when you leave a shelf in one spot for 30+ years?? Here, take a look...

Keeping it real folks...

Let me just pause here and thank whoever invented magic erasers...

(A moment of silence in their honor)

Anyhow... My parents have lots of art work laying around so I decided to keep one of the paintings and add one of a ship that they had in a closet...

Tell me what you think...

I think I like it...

Here is a close up of the paintings.

While we are in the living room I'll show you a couple other things I've done...

I am seriously in love with this John Waller song...

So I got out the ole cricut and added this...

I have also been changing out the stuff on top of the entertainment center seasonally...

Here was Christmas...

(here it is closer and no "minion")

(The clock, swan and striped candles are my mom's and she wants them to stay...

I'm working with them.)

I changed it up for Valentine's, St Patrick's, & Easter, but didn't take any pictures.

For summer I decided to go with a "sea-side" theme...

The sea glass and urchins are from a little shop in town. Other then the little star fish in the front one it is stuff the girlies have beach combed this year.

These lanterns are from Home Goods... The big white one was on clearance for $5.00 and the little blue one was only $1.00! The stuff in it cost me more then both lanterns!

Well, I guess that's enough for today... Two posts in one day...

I'm gonna wear you guys out!

(Hello... anyone still there?? I know this was a long post, but really, I have a lot of catching up to do!)

Thanks for listening,