Another Ikea Addition

The big linen closet project had some nice follow-on effects. The contents of this trunk in the office, my yarn stash, relocated to some plastic boxes in the upstairs closet. It's a bit hard to access but perfect for how often I need to get there (plus it let me sort everything into smaller categories like yarn weight). It also stopped me from cursing out the messy children each time I had to get in the trunk and was stopped by the mess on top. It wasn't really a crafting surface, but of course, EVERYTHING is a crafting surface. So we moved the contents of the trunk and put the trunk itself away and decided what to do with our newfound space.

We knew we needed a space for crafts/art (see above comment) and we had lots of small things to store, specifically blocks and OH SO MANY LEGOS. We figured we'd stick to the rainbow decor (also known as "I've given up and decided to let my kids dictate my decorating") and purchased a TROFAST from--where else--our favorite store, Ikea. We went with the white since our room colors are a dusty gray brown from an old Hemnes line (yes, also Ikea), a white STUVA (Ikea) and D's white and bamboo standing desk. Yellow pine wasn't really the look we wanted. And of course, we went with rainbow drawers.

Building the pieces was the easy part. Sorting the Legos by color, now that took time. By the time we were finished, these bins were mostly full.

I like how it came out. Let's see how long the organization lasts.

Decorations in Review

Though the holiday season is a thing of the past, I couldn't resist a chance to document our decorations for the blog--and for my own reference--before I took them down last weekend. Each year with the encouragement of our little ones, we keep upping the game. This year, we brought out all our normal favorites and added a few sets of lights as well. We stuck to our candy cane and ornament theme, adding some hand-me-down candy cane ornaments to our crepe myrtle and lighting up our path with little candy canes. Larger candy canes that used to light up but no longer do edge our front garden. We have all-weather large ornaments in a bunch of trees and on our lamppost. Finally, our matching wreathes (along with a matching door wreath that I'd already swapped for our standard winter snowflake) are holding up pretty well too. D went up on the ladder to string up our icicles, making that the most time-consuming part of decorating.

I failed to manage a night picture this year but imagine last year's look but with the addition of three more sets of lights. And because I struggle every year to remember what I bought the previous year, I took a picture of this year's new light (as our holiday collection continues to grow). I'm always surprised how a new set of lights will look totally different despite my best efforts at matching. I'm sure that the same set won't exist next year, but hopefully I'll be able to find something similar if we decide yet again that we want to add more.

Indoors looked much the same as always, though we went for silver rather than red garland on the tree (I know, we are SUCH rebels).

The only thing missing was some winter weather, but there are a couple more months to remedy that. I hope you had a happy everything, whatever your chosen holiday.