Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real: Master Bedroom Edition

This week, Like Mother Like Daughter issued a challenge, to post at least one thing in your bedroom that you made useful and/or beautiful, with the appreciation that starting in the bedroom that you share with your husband is of key value to making your home life and marriage beautiful and God-fearing (that's my own paraphrasing).

So, here is a peak into our bedroom.  I did not do anything new beyond making the bed, which I succeed at probably two or three times a week these days, and clearing off a few surfaces of books, toys and clothes, which I succeed at once every couple of weeks (ok, months).  But I have made some efforts here throughout the short years of our marriage, and in the spirit of the statements above, I do try to keep this room from becoming too much of a catch-all and mess.  I think our room is vitally important as a little sanctuary.

{Pretty}

in my humble opinion

Here is our room from the door entering from the hallway.  The only pieces of furniture we have bought were the bed (before homebirth number one) and the rug at the foot of the bed (we had a rug prior to this but our former dog pooped and threw up on it, and homebirth number two was so fast that we did not have time to get out all the chucks ~ sorry if that is TMI).

I made the comforter cover myself, before any babies of course. I found two Ralph Lauren sheets at Marshall's for $7 each, and sewed them together.  I had to re-sew the top since it was much longer than the actual comforter, and more recently, I went in and sewed lots of ties to the inside, as well as to the top of the comforter, because it drives me nuts when the comforter slides down in the cover.  My husband does NOT like helping me change the comforter now.  :-)  

This little table was in the entryway of my parent's house for as long as I can remember, holding hats and other debris that got dropped off as we trooped in through the front door.  It is wobbly and not strong but I am attached to it.  And see!  I actually have my first little crafty project in the works in about 3 years... started a couple of weeks ago.

{Happy}

I found these elephant book ends at Marshall's ages ago, when I was a single girl with lots of time to help my mom Christmas shop for my five siblings and various relatives.  I bought them with her credit card and told her to give them to me for Christmas.  Even without the element of surprise they were my favorite gift that year. They had languished on top of a bookshelf holding overflow books, until my husband saw the messy stack on my side table and put them there one day to surprise me.  I was really touched that he thought of that.  Anyway, they make me happy every time I see them there.  Also {Real} they are very dusty, as is much of the room.  I.do.not.like.dusting.  So it gets done about twice a year.  At most.

This is the rest of the corner, I cover up my alarm clock because I can't sleep with light in the room.

A friend gave us her old glider rocker when Bluejay was a few months old, and it has made nursing SO MUCH nicer.  I mean, I love nursing.  But the glider brought the whole experience to a new level of comfort (especially when I was having some back problems).  My sister-in-law found the footstool at a yard sale, and we only bought the replacement cushion, which {Funny} or maybe more maddening, took 4 months to get here from somewhere in Canada from whence it apparently travelled by train, pony express, and turtle-pack animal delivery service.  Chickadee is going through the "write on everything in the house with ballpoint pen" stage, so I recently had to attack that cushion with hairspray, soap, and various cleaners.

{Funny}

My dresser is never this clear.  I just put away bunch of things including stacks of clothes. 

On my dresser are some of a recent haul of hairties which Chickadee picked out at Target, and now will not let me put in her hair. All she wants to wear are her Elmo and Big Bird clips, which she pulled out of her hair somewhere a few weeks ago, and I now cannot find.

We put the curtains up to hide our closet, which was originally closed by horrid gold-framed mirrored sliding doors.  The curtains are generally opened, I closed it to hide the mess for these pictures.  But I can also close it when I just want our room to look nice for US and no one else.  I like that.

{Real}

This is my husband's dresser top.  I feel bad about this.  While right now it is mostly covered with his clothes, because I finally did the laundry after he ran out of socks and work pants, it also often acts as a repository for things I'm hiding from the kids, random stuff that ends up in our room, and, I'll be honest, overflow from MY dresser.  Poor guy.  He doesn't even like his dresser (it was a hand-me-down from friends who moved) and has a lot of his stuff in boxes above the closet.  Also you can see a dress hanging there on his side, which is one of a bunch from my childhood that I'm saving for Chickadee, taking up his very minimal closet space.  

Also, not shown (I know, I should but I just didn't really want to photograph it) is the closet floor which is covered with shoes all mismatched, dirty clothes and toys, and the closet shelves, which we've organized several times but are pretty disastrous, because we both use them to stash things on top of other things, that are either a big problem when the kiddos get into them, or are meant to be surprises, or are for future use, or are just OURS and we don't really want to share with said toddlers or relegate to the garage or shed.

So that's it. It is pretty much the nicest looking room in the house.  The rest of the house is much more cluttered and messy so please, please do not take this as an example of my homekeeping skills.  In fact, as I type this, Aaron just called out to me "Maybe this weekend, we can figure out all the crap behind the couch, get rid of some of it."  So yeah.  It's just that I do try to keep this room a little bit nicer. It's important.