Being Creative in the Middle

I shared a friend's blog posts yesterday to encourage others to be inspired! Her October series "In The Middle" have prompted me to change one of the last places to get real attention and re-arranging in our home; the room that I always put last on the "to do" list, for various reasons. Mainly because everyone else's rooms and the main living areas took precedence first, plus I was cooking a lot of family meals and kept very busy teaching these past twenty years here in the cottage. BUT before I write about the master bedroom and post photos, I have to back up a few months.

Being in the "middle" years means the nest empties out, bit-by-bit. Ours began emptying about seven years ago. When our third child transferred from a local college to go to a state university this summer, I knew I had about two-to-three weeks to re-do his room, which needed repainting. I also needed to bring down a daybed (from the attic) to have ready for this same son, and other guests, before my part-time Spanish teaching schedule kicked in. Working on that project kept me from missing him too much. This is key to making it through another transition: Don't just "keep busy," but stay productive creating new spaces in each new stage of life.

Dear son's kitty was not at all happy that he was moving.

protesting at his feet and clothing bag ~

This is what was left after we moved our son to the university and an apartment he is sharing with some of his old friends. The stack of books is new to the room, but everything else needed an upgrade. We were blessed to have leftover paint from other projects, so I didn't have to buy one thing. Not one thing for the transformation.

I mixed peach, white, with a few spoons of blue paint to make this lovely, beigy-blush hue

I even repainted our daughter's high school daybed and our son's old, small desk an espresso brown, to better co-ordinate and give a richness to the new room.

I then "shopped" a storage area of our laundry room for some art to re-vamp and put on the walls. I painted the frames the same espresso color to go with the furniture and drapes that were left behind.

And that, my friends, is how I spent the last couple of weeks of my summer vacation!


Javamom