Fall re-arrangement: art room

My re-arranging/cleaning kick continued! One of the places I really needed to tackle was my tiny and very narrow art room. It's a funny little space, because it is technically part of our family room: (see it, all the way at the end of the room through the kinda disco wall cut-out?)

(my knitting is always casually draped over the couch like that :). Just kidding, I totally put it like that for the picture)

The art room has traditionally been a shocking mess, which is unfortunate since you can see a lot of it through the wall cut-out. Would you like to know just how messy? I will show you because I have no dignity. (Mom, if you are reading this shield your tender eyes. It is very terrible.)

Yup. There it is, folks. To actually get anything done I had to bring it out of the art room onto a different table. The irony.

As abused as the room is, I love having a spot for all of my random art and sewing stuff. And that big table at the end is so great for the kids (when there is room on it to work) - but in the six years we've lived here I never really felt like I had a good system to keep everything successfully contained and every time I cleaned it, the room just went back to looking like these photos after, like, a day.

(view from the art room into the family room. It is nice to be able to supervise things while standing over here)

But now: hopefully we are getting somewhere. Over the years we've bit by bit been adding sections of elfa shelving to the wall (the newest addition being the narrower shelf holding the small jars).

(my sketchbook actually fits on the desk part!)

I requisitioned some more baskets and jars for separating art supplies for the kids. (This will not stay this clean. In fact as I type this, I can see it, and it's messy again. But that's ok with me, it's easier to clean up now that I have places to put things back into).

I have my easel set up in the corner where I never have to take it down (these days it takes me several months to finish a painting. Carissa - there's a sneak peak for you! Not done yet but in progress!), and space for the dangerous stuff on a high shelf.

And I've finally moved my bulletin boards to a level where a baby can't toddle by and tear off a tasty paper treasure to chew on (this has been an ongoing problem for about four years. Only the baby changes.)

So, wish me luck to keep it clean. Any tips on containing all of your creativity? I've started a pinterest board on studio spaces that inspire me to be neater (and, hopefully more productive. Because pinterest totally increases productivity! :) ). Melissa, where do you keep all of your painting stuff, and your whirlwind 8 year-old-mad-sewists' materials??

Fall re-arrangement: entry way

Lately in my internet moments I've been totally loving the charming and ever-so-helpful Little Green Notebook. I love Jenny's down to earth approach to decorating and how generous she is with her vast amount of home-dec. knowledge. Did you see her recent tour of the home of her college friend Emily? I loved it because (1) they did so much of it themselves gradually and on a budget and (2) because Emily pays attention to all the little nooks in her home and takes the care to arrange things beautifully. (And - she is an amazing sewer! She did most of her window treatments). Go check it out if you haven't seen it. It is such a friendly and warm house.

Seeing Emily's pretty rooms stimulated me to look at my home with fresh eyes. When you enter our house from the garage through the laundry room, we have an awkward little entry area. (I should have taken a before picture so you can truly understand how boring this wall was - a crooked picture hung here and this chair was piled with bags, things to be recycled and stray preschool papers). I gathered up some homeless frames from the garage and now I am so happy to walk into our house and see this little gallery.

(My mom sent me this little one below. It means that you should think of yourself third, after God and your fellow men. I love that simple recipe for happiness when I come in and out.)

Next up, radical clean-up of our art room...

Halloween (with the spooky filter on the iphone camera)

Hello out there, friends! It's been a long time.

October is totally my most favorite month of the year. Where I live in California we have seasons but they are on the subtle side - and so the way you really feel "fall" approaching is through the halloween decorations that begin to pop up on lawns and houses around us.

(I especially love the ghost my girls made and taped on our door. Scary!)

I find Halloween decor to be somewhat of a slippery slope. Years ago I began with the classy natural approach: a bare grapevine wreath, candy corns in a jar on the counter, blown-out eggs painted with semi-spooky Martha Stewart designs.

But soon pine cones and pumpkins no longer satisfied my who-knew-they-were-so-bloodthirsty children so I bought a tombstone for the lawn. The next thing you know we have an upsidown (presumably being tortured?) skeleton hanging from the limbs of a sweet little tree in the front yard and I find myself participating in a dinnertime conversation with the husband and children wondering if perhaps it might not be a good idea to make a pretend fire beneath the dangling skeleton.

What?!

But really, it's hard to compete when you have this across the street from you:

and this:

Yes, those are zombie BABIES behind the dismembered bloody man.

My friend Liz has I think found the perfect middle ground. Check out her flock of paper bats, flying across her family room:

Spooky and yet not something that would be forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Happy October!