Lessons Learned

The past couple of weeks have been rough.  Sickness has found our household, unfortunately, mainly focusing on me - the mama.  During this experience there have been several lessons learned, which when thought of as such, are pretty funny.

1. When the mama is sick, no one has any fun and cabin fever quickly inoculates all.
2. In case you're wondering, if a stomach ache is accompanying the illness, laxatives are not an appropriate answer.
3.  Mac and cheese is apparently a staple that should always be stocked (I didn't know this, and was informed when Joe went to the store and bought little else than several boxes of Mac and Cheese).
4. Shows such as 'The Voice' greatly attract the 5 year old set.  After watching for the first time last night, Natalie woke up at 6am to tell me it would be on tonight too (and then go back to bed). How does she know this and why does she care so much?
5. The family diet circulates around peanut butter and the promise of treats if you're good.
6. The definition of "quiet" changes by the minute.
Oh the list could go on and on, but I think the point is made - nothing is normal when someone is sick. I'm looking forward to Spring.

Pictures will come in another post, but there are none for the today. The camera must be sick too.

The Water Closet

One of the rooms of our house that typically gets looked over in the decorating department is the bathroom.  This weekend I set out to change that for the girls' bathroom.  See the before pictures:

There wasn't anything wrong with the bathroom, but the flat paint that resided, did not pair well with two children and a puppy who sometimes takes a bath too. 

Initially, the bathroom redo started to take shape with a color change. 

But something was missing...this is a kids bathroom afterall.  To help make the bathroom more fun, I enlisted a few professional painters.

They made some beautiful artwork to decorate the large, long wall in the bathroom.

We framed it and came up with this finished result:

Pretty cool.  Now this is my favorite room in the house, which is unfortunate since I spend very little time here.  Maybe I can get some help from the professionals to decorate my bathroom as well?

A few pictures of the rest of the semi-finished bathroom.  One or two small projects are still in the works to finish it up.

Pictures don't show the differences well, so I suppose you'll just have to visit to see it for yourself :o)