The evolution of a room

Thanks for all of your nice comments about my new curtains and our master bedroom. But, I have to giggle a bit, because my room looks that nice less than 1% of the time. A glimpse into someone's life through a picture can be very deceiving, can it not? I do try to make my bed everyday, but I had to do a lot of tidying before taking that picture, removing debris from the floor and banishing a random collection of junk from the window seat. Also, just out of the frame is Clara's changing table, laundry basket and a stack of large boxes of diapers and wipes.

It's also interesting to me to think of the slow transformation that our bedroom has gone through. Of course, we started our marriage with an eclectic mix of hand-me-downs from our parents and cheap college furniture. We had a bed frame, but no headboard or footboard, and Eric's childhood chest of drawers and that was about it for the first few years of marriage. We later added a hand-me-down dresser and nightstand. Our first purchase of our own was the white nightstand seen in the picture. It was $25 in an "antique" shop (more like a junk shop) and was painted a streaky red color. We repainted it white and added the knobs.

My parents found the rocking chair at a second hand store and refinished it and Mom made the cushions for the birth of my first child, Jonathan. 

Our first "real" new piece of furniture was purchased around the time of our sixth anniversary. I bought the bed seen in the picture at a huge flee market in Canton, Texas for, if I remember right, about $250. It's solid wood and the gentleman we bought it from made unfinished furniture on the weekends to supplement his family's income. A can of spray paint made it black.

I bought the bedding for our ninth anniversary and we really splurged as the quilt, shams and sheets are from Pottery Barn. The green throw was a $7 purchase from Bed, Bath and Beyond. Somewhere along the way I made the throw pillow on the bed; it was my first attempt at piecing and I was pleased with the result at the time. I pieced a second pillow cover, as well, and it remains unfinished in a box hidden in the back of a closet even though it only requires a few seams to be complete.

The photographs above the bed, as I already mentioned, are my own and I had them printed on canvas and framed about two years ago. They are the focal point of the room and I love being greeted by them each time I enter my room to put away laundry or change a diaper. With the addition of the curtains I feel like our room finally looks beautiful (at least when it's tidy), and it only took 11 years! For many of those years our room was anything but beautiful, full of random things: boxes, outgrown clothes, pictures that never were hung on the walls, junk that I didn't have the courage to throw away. Now my room is a respite and a haven from the craziness that controls the rest of the house. Such a blessing!

I heard somewhere once that it should take you until you are forty years old before your house is fully furnished. I'm 34, so at the pace we're going it will probably take at least until I'm 50; but, in the mean time, I'm really enjoying the journey.