Finally!!

If you have children, you know how hard it is to have beautiful things in your home.

Aili, at six weeks (with BLUE eyes!)

When they are infants, you are so sleep-deprived that you don't notice that you put your underwear away in the ottoman and the television remotes in the refrigerator.

Connor, at 3 yrs (please excuse the horrible shadow behind his head!)

Then they come the mobile toddler - all of your beautiful Lladro figurines, Limoges porcelain platters and Waterford crystal go into hiding, safely encased in bubble wrap, awaiting the day that they can once again find refuge on your coffee tables and curio cabinets.

Aili, 5 yrs and Connor, 9 yrs (love their expressions!)

Surely, you think, once they become school-age....?  But no - you cringe every time a wayward Nerf hockey puck lands on your fireplace mantle, where a priceless vase once stood.  They wrestle each other on the furniture.  You still find lollipop sticks and empty granola wrappers behind the couch.

Honestly, you can't recall EVER bringing your children out to the barn to be raised, yet here we are...

So you bide your time.  You visit your friends' homes and admire their beautiful, matching, CLEAN furniture.  Lovely accents.  Framed artwork .  Okay, so you're a little bit envious.

But only a little, because they are now going through the "teenage" years.

Well, the fated day FINALLY came.

But first, a bit of background:

My in-laws are blessed to have had an entire wall in one of the guest rooms devoted to bookcases, filled with books.  Cookbooks.  Novels.  Navigation books.  Science/Medical journals.  Entertainment biographies.  Comic books.  Lots and lots and lots of variety.  When my mother-in-law passed, they were in the process of purging through their stuff, in preparation to downsize to a smaller place, closer to friends.

Last weekend, when we were there, my sweet father-in-law let Connor and I (the big readers in our family) go nuts and take any of the books that caught our fancy.  Three totes later and we were happy campers!

To make a long story short a little less long, once home, we decided to move our two bookcases upstairs to our living room, to create a library.  An unfortunate lip on the bookcases prevented them from sitting immediately side by side on the way, which led to some creative rearranging of furniture and a long discussion...

Which led us to go out today and buy this:

And two of these (minus the ottomans):

And this:

With its' sisters, this:

And this:

[source for all furniture images]

Oh, be still my heart!!  I'm so excited to get this furniture and FINALLY begin to decorate!  We've been in our house for over seven years and aside from painting the bedrooms and redecorating my studio scraproom, we haven't done much.  In fact, I still feel like I live in a "student" apartment - mismatched or old furniture, little or no accent pieces, no sign of personal touches anywhere.  

That's all going to change.  Time to start making our house a home...

Stay tuned for updates as we go - I'm picking up a pillow tomorrow, with a stop at Home Depot to snag a few paint chips.  (And maybe some extras to try this and this and this!) :)