A little decorating in The Great Room.

We have a great house. In this great house, we have a Great Room. A big, open, play space that also serves as our dining room. It even has built in shelves next to the fireplace.

Currently, the shelves are full of playthings and random stuff that was packed in boxes marked "living room" when we moved. All the games are here. The playsilks, the ribbon sticks & tamborines, etc. The top shelves contain our family albums and the kids' baby books, albums, and first year calendars. (Okay, 2 or 3 first year calendars. Kid 5 and kid 7 have calendars in their baby books, and the rest of them, well... I hope they understand.) See the giant photo album in the middle/right of the center shelf? That's the first 3 years of Zach's life. Poor Furby didn't need a single extension pack in his album.



Here is the great room from standing in the kitchen. The long line of photos on the back wall is the kids' "current" pictures. School pictures, birthday portraits from JCPenney, etc. Zach's military photo is the oldest, taken 2 years ago.



And here is the view of the kitchen from the middle of the great room.



Next to the shelves is the fireplace. The purple bucket is full of dress ups. All the wheeled toys live on the tile in front of the fireplace. Then there's the Duplo table.



Next comes Hannah's kitchen set. The kids have already broken the blue chair, and she just got it for Christmas. :( Josiah and I glued it, but it's ugly.

Then the Playmobil, train set, and Little People buckets, next to the train table.



This is the dining area. Sorry it's so dark. The other shot I took from the end of the table flashed off of the napkin basket and was really washed out.

The kids and I did something exciting this morning! I'm so thrilled with it. Paul asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I told him, "Ten matching picture frames!" "Ten?" he asked. Hey, he asked what I wanted. I have high hopes. So, he got me these frames for my birthday. (The other two are in my hope chest for now.) The wall sign was a Groupon-type deal where I ended up getting 2 signs (the other will be going up in my room) for $17. They arrived last week, and I asked Josiah to help me put them up.

Please excuse the Hello Kitty nightgown that I made 10+ years ago and the Saturday morning hair.


I'm delighted with how it turned out! Baby pictures of all the kids, in order.

Once we were done, and stepped back to admire our handiwork, I noticed that there's the perfect space under Samuel, should we need to move Brianna up into that empty area and scoot the youngest 3 over to the left a space to make room for another frame someday. Just in case.