in which i clearly care too much about my plant babies. (or, at least, one in particular.)

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I love houseplants.  I just love them.  They satisfy my need to nurture something non-human, without signing me on for a pet.  Not that I don't like animals, I just already feel like I deal with enough 'feeding and poop' issues on a day-to-day basis, and if we're going to add more of that nonsense into our lives, I'd rather just invest in another human.

But, plants!  Plants barely need any attention at all.  They never poop.  They purify the air instead of stinking it up.  They only need water about once a week (or, if you're a plant living at my house, about once every two weeks, or once you start banging on death's door, whichever comes second).  They don't make noise.  They don't barf on the rug.  They don't chew on the furniture.  They are nothing but respectful, quiet and nonobtrusive.  Plus, they're pretty.

Anyway.  Enough about my undying love for the flora of the world.  Brace yourself for some truly mediocre photos; my camera was acting like a turd, and I can barely be bothered lately to take photos of even my own children, much less plants while I'm in the middle of a project.  But whatever; here's what I was facing: a key lime plant striving to live up to its full potential, and a giant basket that forced me out of my complacency about it.

I've had this key lime plant for about seven years now.  I bought it for $5 at a moving sale, and it was root-bound in its pot at the time I bought it.  So I've known for years that it's needed a bigger pot, but I've been too skittish (and broke) to transplant it.  So I just squirreled away the ugly plastic pot inside a cotton basket and ignored the problem.

The ugly old pot was also getting brittle, so every time I picked it up to move it, huge shards of plastic would crack off.  This pot used to have a wide lip around the top, but no more.

I would like to tell you that I finally had enough compassion on this plant to declare that enough was enough, and that was what motivated me to finally transplant it, but sadly, no.  I simply needed the pretty cotton basket elsewhere, and I didn't like looking at the vulnerable nakedness of this pathetic little guy.  So, I bought an ambitious new basket, and spray painted (and added drainage holes to) an old laundry soap bucket.  (Yes, we buy our laundry soap in five-gallon buckets.  You can't possibly be surprised.)

I'm stingy with my spray paint, since it's not free and I'm not a McDuck.  So I only sprayed the parts that might possibly be seen from the top of the basket.

Transplant surgery was messy, but the little guy seems to have pulled through okay.  (Though only time can tell with transplanting, and I really should have done this in the spring rather than the fall in order to give the plant the highest odds, but I really only do things when I feel like it, and I didn't feel like doing it in the spring.)  Please be praying he makes a full recovery; I'm really rather partial to him, mostly because he only cost me five bucks, but partly because he sometimes actually grows me microscopic key limes.  Adorable.

See how brittle the pot was?  I literally just ripped it off the root ball in sheets.

I can hear his sigh of relief from here, can't you?

I always take most of my houseplants outside over the summer to revive them and attempt to give them a running start at surviving our dark, dark house through the winter time.  This plant was outside from early April until just this week, so I'm hoping he'll be happy back in his old home next to the window, but in his new bucket-pot.  

In "We're Real People, Raising Six Kids" news, check out the monstrous hole in my couch!  Also, the stain on the cushion!

Oh, don't mind me.  I only went through the effort of taking photos, but refused to put forth the effort to make sure the blankets were straight, or to pick up anything off the floor.  Because I like to keep things real.  (Or, because I'm lazy.)

I'll give you a full plant tour soon, because you can't possibly think I'd stop at just one plant post when all my plants are now back inside!  It will also partly double as a tiny-glimpses-of-our-house tour, since I almost never post about our house anymore.  So look forward to that in the coming day

tour our homeschool!

As we wrap up the school year, I thought I'd show you how we have settled into this school space so far.  It has been a gradual process, and it is continuing to evolve even now.  It is so weird for me to think about the fact that we have officially done more schoolwork here, in this house, than we did in Cedar Falls.

When I think about homeschooling the kids, I still have the strongest associations with our Cedar Falls house - watching Penelope wiggle around in the kitchen nook while doing her math, or Atticus working on handwriting at the dining room table, or Penelope hanging upside down in one of the arm chairs while she recited her narrations in the afternoon.  I still think of snuggling up on our sunny couch, on the end near the piano, to read books together and listen to our folk songs on the laptop.  It was the first place we jumped into our homeschooling adventure, and I miss it.

See?  Wasn't it cute?

See? Weren't they even cuter?

I have worked hard to try to make our current space as cozy and functional as that first space.  We still have a ways to go, but we're getting there.  One of the things I love at the moment is that we're finally getting some good use out of our beautiful piano - we've been carting it from house to house with us over the course of our many moves, but it hasn't been until moving here that the kids have actually started learning to play it.  I've also really liked the way our attached garage has become a flex-space for us, housing the kids' woodworking supplies, and providing an 'in-between' activity area between outside and inside.

Without further ado, I give you our homeschool:

All of our schooling happens in our main living area, which is not huge.  I like having our school things tucked away, rather than taking over all the visual space.  Formal school activities are only one part of our lives; I don't want it to look like that's all our lives orient around.  I want our living space to look like we live and learn here.

If you've been paying attention to my subtle (and not-so-subtle) announcements on the blog lately, you'll notice these photos were taken a few weeks ago.  Spot the changes that haven't been made yet in these photos?

We start our school mornings in the dining room with 'table work'.  The kids get out their binders, which contain all of their reading assignments, handwriting papers, and math worksheets.  They also get out their piano lesson binders, and take turns at the piano during this time.

If they need to grab manipulatives to help them with their math at this time, they just grab this basket off the shelf in the living room.

In the afternoon, Finneas joins the big kids for read-alouds while the littler ones are napping, and we all snuggle in the living room while we dive into the stories.  Often, everyone will sprawl on the floor and draw while I read.  (After each reading, I pick one kid to narrate back to me what they heard, so they have to make sure they're still paying attention while they draw!  So far, the fear of being called on and not knowing what to say has been enough motivation to listen; I haven't needed to craft a dunce hat yet.  Which is good, because I'm not crafty, and it would probably just turn out looking like a party hat anyway, which just seems counterproductive.)

All of our school materials are kept close at hand on this book shelf.

That's really all we need for any given homeschool day.  Obviously, there are special days that require extras like art supplies, which I keep in a cupboard in the garage.  I also have 'teacher-y' materials that I need to keep track of, so I keep them tucked away in little corners around our living space.

There's a china cupboard in our dining room that houses most of our 'random' office supplies and equipment.  Also, a stereo that hails from the eighteenth dynasty.  (It's so old, it doesn't even plug into the wall; it just contains a family band of rats who have been trained to play primitive instruments whenever I push the 'power' button.)

As for my planner, record books, and other quick-grab items I need throughout the day, I keep them on this ancient high chair I bought for $5 at a garage sale.  He's like the permanent butler at the door of my kitchen, standing at the ready with any items I may find urgently necessary.  Poor little guy; I suspect he doesn't feel like he is living up to his potential.

And that is our homeschool area as it currently stands!  (Or, at least, how it stood a few weeks ago before we got a new basement door and I hung some curtains and wall décor.)  I'm hoping to someday build some bookshelves for the back wall, replace the side chairs with benches, perhaps get a pretty wall map, and switch out the Black Hollow Core Door That The Underworld Rejected for something less vacuous.  If you squint really hard, can you envision it?

In case you missed it: for a video tour of our space (including an extra glimpse into our flex-use garage, and my supply storage), click here!

this is apparently what i do with my free time.

In a weird turn of events, I am finding myself with a normal week on my hands.  I seriously have no idea when the last time was that we had multiple days in a row in which we had nothing too far out of the ordinary on the agenda.  The students are on break, so while I'll still get together with a couple of them, it won't be during times that take my attention away from homeschool.  Also, we're waiting on our insurance to approve more speech therapy for Atticus, so no appointments whatsoever this week.

I am embarrassingly excited by this.  I have no idea what to do with my time, so I'm doing idiotic stuff with it.

I may or may not have found myself on Monday with saw in hand, hacking away at some scrap wood so I could stabilize this janky old bookshelf we have.  Once it was stabilized, I was like, "Hmm.  This would look good in the girls' room."  So it moved.  But now I have to find a place for the dresser that resultantly got bumped from its spot, so I'll be moving it into the closet.  But there's already a dresser in there, so I'll be moving that to our room... and on and on and on.

Plus, the weather is supposed to be unseasonably nice today, so I thought it would be a good day to clean out the garage so I could get the Christmas stuff put away out there.  But in order to organize the garage, I need a new shelf unit.  No problem, since I got some Lowe's cards for Christmas, but that means I need to actually stop at Lowe's to get it.  And if I'm stopping at Lowe's anyway, I'll just grab the brackets I need to secure the closet shelves, and maybe some paint samples for Callista's room...

I am clearly in denial about the fact that I have only three days left of this wide open week, so even though I have more time than usual, I don't have an eternity.  Plus, knowing me, I'll get all the supplies I need and then end up spending the afternoon reading instead of doing anything more productive.

Ahh well.  By the end of the week, I'll at least have a torn up house and a bunch of half-finished projects to show for myself, and no time or ambition left to complete any of it, so I have that to look forward to.

Onward and upward, friends!

'afters' of our basement carpet. finally.

So, think way back to when I told you about the time two and a half gallons of milk spilled all over our carpeted basement stairs.  And then remember how the carpet cleaner said the carpet wasn't salvageable, so Todd just ripped it out because it stunk to high heaven.  Then remember how I told you about the amazing way in which God provided for us to be able to recarpet, instead of leaving everything looking like this:

Okay.  And then remember how I told you we had gotten it all done, but I forgot to show you 'after' photos.  Well, today is the day I remedy that.  Let me remind you again what our basement had looked like the morning we had it removed (all the furniture is stuffed into the room at the back):

I get that it doesn't really look that bad in the photos (other than the fact that I haven't decorated and there are paint swatches all over the walls).  What you can't see is that these are simply carpet tiles, glued to the cement floor.  It was cheap, and uncomfortable, and dirty to boot - the previous owners had a black dog that hung out down here, and every single time I would vacuum, half the canister would be full of black dirt and dog hair.  It was really, really gross.

Plus, everything was the SAME STINKING COLOR.  The walls, paint and trim are all this gross yellowy-beige, and the carpet was a gross yellowy-beige and it just felt flat and dirty, and it looked like a smoker's tooth.

BUT NOW!

I feel like these photos are anticlimactic, but believe me when I tell you it has made a world of difference!  First, the carpet is a mid-tone greige, which makes everything feel a lot warmer and more anchored.  Second, it is actual carpet laid over actual carpet pad, so it is soft and squishy and doesn't scream 'cheap rental property.'  Third, it has helped me narrow in on the color I'll be painting the walls.  Fourth, it is not chocked full of someone else's dirty pet's dirty hair.  It is clean and new.  Fifth, it doesn't smell like rotting milk.

I am seriously in love.  However, it does make me want to paint the walls even more than I did before, but before I can paint the walls, I need to paint the ceiling and trim, so it's kind of a major undertaking.  Plus, I've been brainstorming how I want to decorate - I'm thinking some built in bookshelves, and a home office area, and a cute play area for the kids... it will look 100 million times different should I ever get the motivation to make some headway down there.

But in the meantime, the new carpet alone has done my soul good.

just one more way in which God is providing.

When we lived in Story City, we had a huuuuge house - five bedrooms, three bathrooms, basement family room, finished attic, 3600 square feet.  Everything we would ever need in a 'forever' house for a large family, plus it was beautiful to boot.  It was built in 1913 and had all the original woodwork, chandeliers, leaded glass, pocket doors.  Dang.  I still tear up when I think about that house, so I'm not going to keep dwelling on it, and I'll just move on to the real point of this post.

We had purchased a double bed for one of the (then-empty) bedrooms, for guests to use.  But when we moved to Cedar Falls, we didn't have official room for it. (Our house at that point was three bedrooms, one bathroom, and 1100 square feet.)  So we laid down a big piece of scrap carpeting in our unfinished basement, and put the bed down there for guests.  Not ideal, but at least it was something.

Once we got to this current house, and all of the four bedrooms were allocated to permanent residents, we still had nowhere for our guest bed, so it's been weirdly sitting out in the relative middle of our basement family room.  It's somewhere for guests to stay, which is nice, since out-of-state church planting just kind of comes with lots of potential for overnight guests, so we've had a lot of need for it.  But the setup hasn't been ideal - there's no privacy for friends who are staying, and when the boys wake up and come out of their room, they just kind of... stare at our sleeping guests until the guests feel a heavy gaze upon them and wake up totally freaked out.

See how weird the set-up currently is?

Suuuuuuuuuuuper weird.

So I've been praying God would somehow provide a better bed setup for us that would accommodate the double mattress.  Essentially, I was wanting a twin-over-full bunk bed set for the boys' room, where guests could stay when they come, but the boys could use the rest of the time.

The other day, I got a rando text from a friend saying she was getting rid of a twin-over-full bunk set if I wanted it - for free.  It's solid wood, and super sturdy and everything.  (We have twin bunks, but they are SO RICKETY we can't bunk them anymore, but these are really secure.)  I told her I had been praying specifically for that very item, and she said she doesn't even remember me ever mentioning it, and honestly, I don't think that I had, either.  It just kind of came to her mind that she thought I was looking for one.  God is so funny and awesome.

So once the carpet is installed next week, we'll get to assemble our brand new bunk beds and get the bed out of our family room.  I feel like living this house is starting to make more sense for us, and I'm so grateful.  It's these small (and not-so-small) things that God is faithfully providing lately that make me feel better about this being our house, and feel more and more 'at home.'  It hasn't been fast progress in that direction, but it's progress, and I'm really grateful.

Now, maybe with the new carpet and new bed arrangement, I'll finally get motivated to want to paint the basement - 1000 square feet of ceiling, walls, and trim, so it's no small deal, but it will be totally worth it.  IF I can get motivated to just do it.  And also figure out when I'm going to do it, since there's the tiny, insignificant issue of impending labor, birth and newborn... you know.  Shenanigans like that.

we're getting new carpet, and here's the 'how.'

So, I've already told you what happened with the carpet on the basement stairs - long story short, Todd was carrying a cooler full of milk in glass bottles down the steps, and the handle of the cooler broke off.  Shards of glass sprayed everywhere, and two-and-a-half gallons of milk saturated the stairs.  We had a company come to clean it up, but the guy was like, "I can make it look better, but I can't make it smell better.  You won't be able to get the milk out of the carpet and pad unless you totally rip it out and start over."

Because it started smelling so badly, Todd ripped up the carpet on the stairs, and some of the carpet in the family room downstairs, and we've been living with exposed wood stairs and exposed concrete on the floors since then.  We weren't totally sure what we were going to do, since insurance wasn't going to cover it, and we had definitely not budgeted anything like this into the finances for the year. 

We thought we'd go ahead and just recarpet the stairs, since sound from the basement is SO LOUD without the carpet up the stairs, and the boys keep stepping on exposed staples and stubbing their toes on the wood.  It felt necessary to get some carpet back down for functional reasons.  (Plus, obviously, it was dang ugly.)  Just doing the stairs would be cheaper than recarpeting everything, even though aesthetically it was less than ideal - the stairs would be one kind of carpet, the family room would be another (really, really terrible, dirty carpet tiles destroyed by the previous owners' dog), and the boys' bedroom would be another (the carpet from even BEFORE Dirty Dog Carpet got installed).  It was going to look janky, but it would do the job and fit the budget.  And at least it would look better than this:

But then I got a text from a sweet friend, saying she had overnighted me a package I'd have to be around to sign for.  I got the box the next day, opened it, and was pleased but slightly confused to find a pair of Old Navy boots she had sent to Laurelai after they didn't work for her daughter.  It was such a nice gift, but I wasn't sure why they needed to be overnighted and signed for.  But there was something else at the bottom of the box...

I pulled it out, and it was a check for the new carpet.  Not just enough for the stairs, but the whole basement.  I started sobbing at how big and faithful God was in that moment to provide for us.  (The kids were super confused, like, "Why are you crying if you're happy?")

Todd first tithed from the amount, since he's always so grateful that God consistently provides for us that he wants to respond with generosity and trust by holding even gifts with open hands.  (I love this about him.)  Then I got the name of a wholesale carpet guy, he came over and measured the basement, and guess what - the estimate came in at TEN DOLLARS UNDER what was left.  Ten dollars, you guys.  Ten dollars.  And this is fixed - this is the final amount he will be charging me for carpet, pad, and labor.  There won't be any hidden costs.  God provided exactly what we needed.

So the guys are coming next Tuesday to install our new (beautiful! clean! padded!) carpet, and I couldn't be more excited.  And instead of just getting new carpet, we have an amazing story how God, once again, came through for us in surprising ways.

I'm so excited to show you pictures once it's all installed!  Now, I just need to spend the remainder of the week getting all the furniture moved out of there, and the deep freeze and fridge cleaned out so they can be moved out of there... No small job, but totally worth it.  Pictures to come!

plans for a family closet.

So, I'm starting to hit that late stage of pregnancy where everything feels very imminent, and I get that 'thing' (nesting?) in me that tells me I need to do All the Projects and paint All the Things.  Last night, we were all sitting around watching a movie for family movie night, and I just kept staring at the basement ceiling, wondering how many weeks it would take me to paint the ceiling, trim, and walls of all 1000 square feet down there... and if it was realistic to hope to accomplish it before the baby comes.

I realize it's not.  I also realize it's in no way necessary at this point in life.  But I just get so itchy.  Like, I'm also currently dying to just cut a big hole in the dining room wall and put in a sliding door.  Also not realistic or necessary, even though I WANT TO SO BADLY.

So I'm turning my attention to an actual problem that needs an actual solution sooner rather than later: clothing storage.  Right now, the kids are sharing three dressers between the five of them, and there is no room for another kid's clothes.  We also don't have room for another dresser in the house.  (In fact, Todd's dresser is currently housed in the garage because we can't fit it in here.)  Conundrum. 

But you know what I do have room for?  A family closet in the laundry room.  WHAT?! Wouldn't that just be the best?  A single place to keep all the kids' clothes - one area, one piece of furniture, right next to the washer and dryer?  Angels, people.  I hear angels.

But the thing is... here is the side of the laundry room that I've set my sights on:

It's already full of bins.  So, the simple solution is to move the bins.  But this is my only storage area, so I can only move them to the garage.  Even once I've reconciled myself to the possibility of mold and mice getting into them if they're stored out there, I run into the problem of not having a ton of space there either.  But I could make space... if I take the old loveseat to Goodwill, and sell the jogging stroller and single stroller, and give our old coffee table away, and buy some shelves to get the rest of the boxes off the floor.  Simple enough, right?  Realistic to accomplish in the next few weeks?

And then I could actually set up the closet system.  I almost never hang any of the kids' clothes, so I only need to worry about getting drawers or tubs for everything.  (Their church clothes are hanging in an upstairs closet, which would probably just stay the same.)  I'm thinking I'll set up this:

via

And for drawers, I'll label these with each owner's initial and the intended contents:

via

Clothes for Rocco and the new baby would still be stored in the nursery, so I'd currently only need to use four rows of the five available.  I'd give Atticus the highest row, and down the line, and use the uppermost row for storage of right size/wrong season clothes for each of them.

You guys, I'm basically foaming at the mouth thinking about this.  I need to make this happen.  And I have basically no time in the next couple of months in which to clean out the garage, move bins, make a trip to Ikea, set it all up, move the kids' clothes into it, and set up a streamlined system before the baby comes, but I am praying hard that it can somehow miraculously happen.  I need this, people, or I'm a-scary-amount tempted to take a sledgehammer to the dining room wall.


*For some more family closet inspiration, I do have quite a few related things (and some unrelated things) pinned on this board, if you're curious.

how to decorate your home on the cheap.

Decorating a home: it is seriously one of only a handful of activities that I can say I truly love.  I also love reading, watching TV with Todd, writing, eating carbs, and... no, that's it.  Just those things.  And if you take decorating off the list, I can skate through my hobbies without spending a ton of money.  But if you add decorating back to the list, it can get pricey quick.

My main goal when I was starting to decorate our first apartment all those many moons ago was to do it on the kind of budget that only allowed $35 a week in groceries.  It seemed a little hopeless at first.  But I started to realize that, if you're willing to hunt around, and wait for The Things to find you, you can end up with a stellar, very personal home for not a ton of money.  So I thought I'd share my favorite places to find antiques, tchotchkes, and rando bits of ephemera that can really make your home your home.

Garage Sales
This is where I usually found myself in those early days, hunting for ten-cent onesies for Atticus and only-slightly-broken laundry drying racks for the cloth diapers (that were also bought at a garage sale).  I also found some crazy deals on pretty stuff for our house.  Antique ball jars and chalkboards, old books, even house plants were scouted out.  And this.  This $7 tufted blue velvet wingback chair is the Crowning Jewel of my garage sale efforts.  (If you see something you love at a garage sale, don't be afraid to haggle, especially if it's a single-family sale.  This puppy was priced at $10, which is still a great deal, but $7 is an even better deal.  Ain't no harm in asking.)

Estate Sales

If the garage sale is the place to find all the stuff someone else thought was worth getting rid of, the estate sale is the place to find all the stuff someone else thought was worth keeping.  These things are goldmines, because the stuff was considered valuable (to someone, at least), but is now being jettisoned, usually for dirt cheap.  Some of my favorite finds have been at estate sales, like this little planter basket inside an antique egg basket.  ($10.50 total for this killer setup.)  I've also found dressers, pretty kitchenware and art.

Gifts and hand-me-downs.

Don't be afraid to accept basically anything solid your family offers you.  It might not be your jam at the time, but eventually you'll probably think of something cute to do with it.  My mother-in-law had a collection of tiny, antique brass bells, which were so lovely, but I wasn't sure what to do with them, so they stayed in storage.  Eventually, it dawned on me to string them together and hang them from our buffalo skull at Christmastime.  But I loved them so much that they never ended up coming down at the end of the season.  They're one of my favorite things in the living room now.  Another piece I just love is a vintage painting of my mom as a toddler.  She had received it from her mom and didn't know what to do with it, so you better believe I scooped that thing up and gave it a place of honor.

And my piano.  Oooh, I love that thing like a human child.  My dad was all, hey I have this free piano sitting in my garage, yawannit?  And I was like, sure thing and I hope it's not ugly.  AND THIS IS WHAT HE BROUGHT ME.  People, please.  I just took the front off of it and it's a showstopper.  Lesson learned: ALWAYS SAY YES TO FREE STUFF.

coming together y'all. the magic of @theminivanvoorsts at work.

A photo posted by Todd Van Voorst (@toddhenryvanvoorst) on Jun 1, 2016 at 5:57pm PDT

It's coming together slowly.

The side of the road.
You might think I'm kidding, but I have found so much awesome stuff in people's trash piles.  An antique headboard.  Beautiful old suitcases.  Vintage tennis racquets.  Old books.  In fact, 75% of the décor on top of my piano was in some lady's junk pile.  Keep your eyes peeled, son!

Make it to fake it.

If you're at all handy (or, like me, are not at all handy but are well-loved by people who are), why not try making something awesome on the cheap?  We needed a new, bigger table, and I fell in love with one from Crate and Barrel (uh, cha-ching much?).  I sent my sister the link, and for Christmas, she made us this kick-ass, look-alike eight-seater out of an solid wood door and some lumber from Home Depot.  (Pictured here with chairs from - where else? - a garage sale.)

A photo posted by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Jul 16, 2016 at 2:37pm PDT

Hunt your own house.

Be willing to work around weird stuff, or move things from place to place.  This bathroom had an uber-weird old toilet, but it ended up being really cool once I upped the drama with a chandelier I moved in from the entryway.  Try to see that 'same old same old' kind of stuff in a new light.

Craigslist and Etsy.
I have to admit, I don't shop these sites often.  Like, hardly ever.  I kind of hate internet shopping.  I often like being able to see and feel what I'm buying for my house before I spend money on it.  But I did find Penelope's beautiful Jenny Lind bed on Craigslist, and a vintage coral wool blanket on Etsy that now lives on one of our living room chairs.  (Pictured below on the chair on the right.)

A photo posted by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Jun 6, 2016 at 5:15pm PDT

Bed frame for $50 on Craigslist, dresser for $30 at an estate sale

Flea Markets and Antiques Shows??

I would love to tell you to check stuff like this out.  I'm fascinated with the idea of the flea market, but I'm also a little terrified, so I've never gone.  I've toyed with the idea of telling people that some day I'd like to go to Round Top or Brimfield, because in theory I would.  But I also know myself well enough to know that I'd walk in, spend 30 minutes being totally overstimulated by all the people and the pretty, unique things and the good deals, and then go home to sleep off the excitement of the day.  (That's the same reason I spend very little time hunting through thrift stores.  It's mentally, physically and emotionally too much for me.  I'm really kind of terrible at being a normally-functioning person.)  But I was reading this blog post that mentioned that Walnut, Iowa is also known as Antique City and holds a yearly antiques show, so maybe I'll dip my toes into that scene on a trip home next summer?  And if it goes well, maybe I'll make plans to visit some of the other stops on the list.  (New Orleans?  Charleston?  Twist my arm.)


Do you guys have any places you love to find affordable stuff for your home?

a whole blog post about chairs. because, you guys. CHAIRS.

Since we've moved, getting stuff settled around the house has been a very slow process.  One area I'm  really ready to get moving on is the dining room.  It's directly in front of you when you walk in both the front and side doors, so it's kind of in your face all the time, and I get tired of looking at how ugly it is.  Someday it will have a big glass door leading out to a deck, and it will have pretty curtains, and paint on the walls that is not the exact color of smokers' teeth.  Aahh, someday.

Luckily, a tiny bit of progress has been made already.  I found a killer rug on deeeeeep clearance at Anthropologie a few months back (like, I felt a little like a criminal for buying it so cheap), and when we moved, my sister built us a beautiful, custom-made table.  Such a pretty table needs a pretty home.  And it needs pretty friends around it... eight pretty friends to be exact, since this table is (thankfully) bigger than our last and we don't have enough chairs.

So when Chairish asked me how I'd go about mixing and matching dining room chairs, I was all over it.  Because I love the look of mixed chairs, and I spend a weird amount of time thinking about dining room furniture on a daily basis.  So if someone's going to give me the green-light to ramble about it, then shonuff I'm gonna.

for sources

Yeahgurrrrrrl.

I went with white polypropylene chairs for the kids (which may surprise you but wait a sec) and tufted velvet captain's chairs for me and Todd.  Yikes, when I write that out on "paper," it makes it obvious they don't seem like they'd work together.  Kind of like the mind-boggling marriage between Maury Povich and Connie Chung.  But the chairs have somewhat similar lines - flat tops along the back, simple legs - so they have enough in common to navigate a healthy and committed relationship without feeling the need to change the other one.  And I mean, if the white chairs want to slip on a white sheepskin for a date night (read: non-mealtimes) to take it up a notch and coordinate a softer look to go with the green chairs, so be it.  Who am I to stand in the way of true love?

Okay.  You guys, I'm weirdly drawn to those white ones even though I normally stick with natural materials.  This is just as much a shock to me as it is to you.  You don't really find plastic decor, or furniture, or even soap dispensers anywhere in my house as long as I can help it.  But think how great they would be with kids - no slats for food to fall through, no wood grain for stuff to get ground into, no fabric that could get stained, no delicate pieces on the framing that the kids can stand on and break.  You can just spray them down and wipe them off and let them take care of themselves.  Genius.  These chairs have kind of stolen my heart.

As for the fancy-pants velvet chairs, well, all I can say is I'm a hopeless optimist.  I have crazy blind faith that Todd and I will be the only ones to sit in them.  That for the few scattered minutes I get to actually sit down and eat a meal, I'll be outrageously comfortable.  That the pillows will fool me into thinking that dinnertime in a large family will be at all relaxing, and even downright ergonomical.  These chairs will make me think that sitting in my dining room will be good for my physical and mental health.  ...And to shut the mouth of the hopeless realist in me, they will be heavily Scotchgarded.

So anyway, you can see how I'm finding myself in an "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" situation.  "If you give Paige Van Voorst a nice new table, she's going to need some new chairs to go with it.  And if you give Paige Van Voorst some new chairs, she's going to want to put pillows and sheepskins on them."  Etc. Etc.  You know the drill.

I hope you all forgive me for picking plastic chairs.  I just couldn't help it. They were calling out to me.

Thank you so much to Jeska from Saltwater Kittens for her work on the style board.  I'm absolutely clueless about Photoshop, and she came to my rescue!