Okay, it seems like forever since I posted. I have noticed a lot of other bloggers in the northern hemisphere seem to have a distinct reduction in the frequency of posts. So I am going to blame it on February and move on… hopefully quickly to some warmer weather and spring flowers. In anticipation of that, I was delighted to get a box in the mail filled these bright paper flowers.

They were sent by our friend, Harry, out in sunny Arizona. Thanks for sending us something to brighten up this winter weather! The kids love them and keep taking them, one by one, out of the bunch to their rooms to horde. I am sure a few have been dissected in an attempt to figure out how to make them.

Friday, before the kids got done with school, I packed up all my projects for the weekend. I didn’t want to see the mess, and I didn’t want to feel guilty about not working on them because I wanted to set aside my creative energy over the weekend for helping the kids make valentines for their class Valentine’s Day parties. I thought it would be great to give their classmates something other than candy so Saturday we spent the day decorating pencils with little foam heart shapes. My goal was to figure out something they could do mostly themselves and then try really hard to stifle my perfectionist tendencies and let them have fun. For the most part it was very enjoyable. The boy can be a bit of a bump on a log so I had to push him a little at the end to get him to finish. This sort of activity doesn’t come naturally to me (elementary teachers are amazing heroes in my mind), so the man was laughing at how stressed out I was after we finished. But it was fun and look how cute these pencils are!

Here is the headboard from the front. I guess it would cost more to make this if you had to buy everything, but I already had a lot of things. The curtains were on the windows until I noticed they were starting to fade and I didn’t want them to fade anymore. I think they will be a little safer from the sunlight in the middle of the room and if I ever want to put them on the windows again, I will have to line them first. I also had the black velvet and the pillows that I used to stuff the fabric covered headboard. I scrounged around in the garage for most of the hardware, and I already had that long bamboo pole and finials that curtains are hung from. I think it is a nice solution for dividing the space.

I had a root canal yesterday. It went as well as a root canal can go and I am hopeful that there won’t be any more complications. The tooth pain, money woes (who wants to spend $1000 bucks on a root canal) and the cold dreary weather has really zapped my motivation. But I have been mulling over a few projects I want to do, working out some of the bugs, and gathering supplies. On my list right now are a corduroy quilt, a throw, some pillows, and some rug ideas that I am dying to try out. So I am feeling very inspired and looking forward to getting to work. Today, on a whim, I did something completely different.

The man has been frustrated that he doesn’t have a space of his own. I have known for a long time that men, being rather a territorial species, can really benefit from having a space that they don’t have to share. Besides a time very early in our marriage, we have always lived in places that were just too small to provide that. Now we have a little more space, but nothing that lends itself very easily to becoming the man’s cave. The garage, which many men would claim as their territory, is filled to the brim with generations of stuff and two cars all sitting around in the freezing weather. Not too much fun as it is, and we don’t need any more heating bills! When the man’s brother posted pictures of his spiffied up basement space, it added to the man’s desire. So I started wondering if there was something I could do. I wandered through every room of the house trying to figure out how I could carve out a space for him. I briefly considered making the kids share a bedroom but the bedrooms are really small already and the kids are at odd ages to be sharing a room with the opposite sex, so that wasn’t really an option. So the only real option left was to divide our bedroom up. It would give him a window and the added bonus of not having kids wandering past (they are generally not welcome in our bedroom unless invited. We wouldn’t want them to find any “candy” wrappers laying around!)

So I rearranged the whole room and built a headboard/room divider. I also cleaned up an old desk that was in the garage. It was super heavy and I was kinda glad the paint was already scratched up since I had to drag it on the cement to get it into the house by myself. I gutted some really old speaker boxes. I couldn’t send them to the dump because these old speakers were housed in boxes made of solid wood. I was sure they would come in handy for storage and it was fun to take them apart and arrange them. I even left the dial on one of them because I thought it looked fun. Anyway, so here is a picture of the man’s cave. I will post a picture of the headboard once I have a little more light. I would have bought him this if money was no object, but since the man is allergic to debt, I went with the $25 room remodel.