Last Friday I threw my routine out the window and spent the whole day organizing our bedroom. Still a mess from when we moved in, I just haven’t had a good chunk of time to tackle this project, so I’ve left it a mess for far too long. When Dan commented on the mess (for the first time in six months) I decided enough was enough. I’m almost too embarrassed to share the “before” pictures, but this is our real life. And, they make the “after” pictures so much more impressive.

Here’s the view when you walk into our bedroom:

I managed to rearrange our furniture in a way that made the room feel more cozy. And I successfully hid Lydia’s old crib in the back of our closet. It’s not ideal, but it’s practical for the amount of storage space we have right now.

To the left you can see our closet:

I promise I only did a tiny little bit of mess-transferring. And the only messes I transferred were transferred to their rightful locations.

When you turn around you can see Abby’s crib and Dan’s desk:

Now Dan has a relatively spacious place to work away from the rest of the family. And he can actually get to it now that I moved his bike!

So, no, we didn’t actually remodel anything, but the change is just as refreshing. Instead of costing us a small fortune, this project was free. In fact, I found 74 cents in the process! I can’t help but grin when I walk into our room now, and I found myself wandering back there Friday night just to keep looking at it. And our routine-free day was actually not stressful or crazy like I imagined. In fact, I’m thinking of making it a regular practice to occasionally ditch the routine and tackle a project, just to keep things interesting.

Next up: That Elusive Laundry Room!

Monday was Dan’s birthday.  Sadly, Dan’s birthdays have fallen into a pathetic pattern over the past few years, which goes like this:

1. Plan special yummy dinner
2. Plan special (probably expensive) healthy dessert
3. Try to buy a gift he’ll like
4. Be disappointed by a dinner that was not as good as anyone had hoped
5. Be disappointed by gifts that he didn’t really want
6. Be disappointed by a dessert that did not taste good enough to justify the time or cost

This year was the year I decided to break the cycle. I think it worked.

For dinner, we used a gift card and bought Qdoba. Tried and true. For dessert, we bought some coconut milk vanilla ice cream and blended it up with peanut butter and a dash of maple syrup to make peanut butter milkshakes. Delicious. For gifts, I asked Dan for a list and then spent a few weeks trying to trick him into thinking he was getting a bunch of gifts not from his list. And now…for the pictures.

We started with the cards, of course.

Now for the first present…

This was a reenactment of his surprised and happy face. The original was much more authentic.

Lydia likes it too!

It helps with sore muscles, sort of like a massage. It hurts at the time but feels better afterward…what Dan refers to as “good pain”.

Abby doesn’t know what she thinks about “good pain”.

Neither do we. But we love him.

A bow for Lydia!

(Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the gifts we got him. Oops.)

What could this one be?

A new keyboard!

Dan’s new computer setup. He loves it. Now he won’t have to get a sore neck staring down into a computer screen all day long.

Dan and his baby girl.

And his big girl. She wished Dan a lot of “Hapter Berdays” all day long)

And his favorite girl.

Happy Birthday Dan! We love you!