One Sunny Monday morning.

This morning I've already been back to the kids school to pick up my sick little kindergarden man. Apparently the sore throat that's been bothering him made him cry when he started coughing in storytime.

So now he's all snuggled in on the couch with his favorite pillow. It has armrests and a back with a handle on the top for carrying it around, and is very soft of course, Seth's main criteria. I had bought it thinking it would be useful for sitting up at night feeding Max, but I never did even try it out. Seth confiscated it the instant I brought it home, named it Sharky (a name I still don't understand), and has been carrying it around ever since. He liked it so much I didn't have the heart to reclaim it. So now he's all snuggled up with 'Sharky', a blankie, Blue's Clues popped in, and a bowl of oranges, reiterating that he's "Prince for a day, right mom?". Right babe.

Before I start to tackle a mountainous laundry folding session, I'm enjoying this coffee. The dining room is sunny, and the birds are loving the birdfeeder Thane made recently at Scouts, newly hung this weekend. I love that Troy hung it on the flagpole in direct view from the kitchen and dining room windows.  

Troy is also finishing his coffee, and prepping to continue destroying the playroom. Yep. It's in shambles.

We actually have enough projects on the go at the moment, with our new family sized entry closet half built and the entry, front living room, and den revamps in full swing (yay!) but realized our assessment date for the EcoEnergy grants is coming right up and that we still had these two exterior walls in the playroom that needed to be insulated. 

So now it is. 

I'm pretty sure I had a picture of this room when it actually looked like a playroom, but can't seem to find it at the moment. Here it is all cleaned out the other day, waiting to be gutted. The kids LOVED the empty space.   

This room is my favorite in the house, the most sunny and warm room, in the oldest part of the house, still sporting it's long narrow old hardwood that I love. It has such a soul. In the mornings when we're here alone, Claire and Max and I will hang out while I have a tea, them playing around me, sometimes with me, Claire serving Max and I her tea. I picture it evolving with us, being a family art space, my 'art studio' some day. Because of the great light in this room I think it would be the perfect space to create in, to draw, paint, sew. I want to eventually paint it Benjamen Moore's Vellum or Dijon, both yellow, a bit mustardy, but keep getting distracted by another yellow called Handmade, just because of the name!

But then... then we got thinking, actually my mom mentioned this idea and we started to chew on it. Wouldn't it be a great spot for a new bathroom?

We have one very small family bathroom, in an odd spot, just before the kitchen, not very close to the bedrooms. Very small, I'm talking 5' by 7'. And very outdated and worn out. It's defintely seen better days. I tacked one of the bathtub walls back up with a nail type of better days. I had said I would not move into this house before that bathroom was renovated, but I said a lot of things back when I had no idea. 

So Mom's idea, a good idea I think, was to take some space from this playroom (our third 'living room' space really) and build a new bathroom instead of renovating the one that we have. At first I balked at the idea, in fear of ruining my favorite space, but the plan kept playing in my brain. A bathroom we could actually move in AND have room to store our towels in? That would be a step in the right direction. It's the closest room to the bedrooms, making the run in a towel from bathroom to closet much less dodgey. And we would still have most of the playroom, with a little thought into the layout I'm sure we could be left with useable, beautiful space.   

Playing around with layout, the couch is our 'tub'. The toy bins and stool, walls!
The kids love the empty space, which is certainly food for thought.

And the extra space added to our kitchen when we take out the first bathroom? Oh, that's the seal on the deal. As one of my friends put it, with the kitchen larger it would be a true Maritime home.

Project Plans: Chaise Bench

This pretty little window seat is the perfect size and space for tiny preschool bodies to snuggle up with his or her blankie of choice and enjoy a cat-like bask in the sun. This piece came from Troy's mom, who got it from his sister, who inherited it from a roomate I think? It was on it's way to the garbage anyway when I nabbed it and made Troy fit it into our already jammed van to take back to NB. The things this man goes through in the name of my creative inspiration. I actually like the blue and soft feel of this fabric (the softness factor of fabric reigns supreme in our family scale of like or dislike, especially for Seth and I) and will probably replace it with much the same, it's just stained and a little squished, in need of an uplift. I'm also thinking this will be a much easier starter reupholstery project. As opposed to, say, a sofa.

Project plans: Mrs. Sofa

I'm tired of talking about (ranting about?) health issues for now, as I'm sure you are tired of reading as well, so today we're on to much more fun topics.

Project plans!

As in project want-to's! (As opposed to to-do's or should-do's.)

I constantly have a running list of project plans on the back burner, and generally don't have enough time for everything. So I thought I'd start showing you the plans. Visualizing is key in making it happen!

This week, I thought I'd start by spending the week covering a few furniture pieces I have big plans for.

Starting with the biggest plan.

This old sofa is begging me to reupholster her. I say her, because this couch reminds me of a mom who is dressed so practically, and really wants a makeover to return to her glamourous self. For some reason I think I am up to this task, even though I have never reupholstered anything before, save a few seat covers. I just think that it has such great old bones, I love the woodwork on the front of the arms and the legs, the kids love how the sloped back creates the perfect tunnel between the sofa and a wall. I'm not sure when it got the funny corduroy that really doesn't seem to mesh with it's style, but I remember it being that way ever since I was little, when it was already the couch relegated to the playroom.

I already have this goldish-yellow fabric for it that should compliment the dark wood very nicely. I found on sale several years ago, bought something like 9 yards of in my excitement and lugged it from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick with us in our move. Or was it 19 yards? I had worked it out and it seemed like the right amount at the time. I'm pretty sure you have no idea how bulky and heavy that quantity of fabric is, it's a sizeable package. As you can imagine, Troy loves when I buy project supplies and stash them, because 'I'm going to do that project at some point'! The worst part is that now I keep thinking the fabric she really deserves is a large bold floral print. No?