The Abundant Wife

If you missed The Birch Tree Project (Part 1) you can read it here. 

After 5 days of painting, and 7 days of having the house in disorder while the furniture and kids were displaced, I was delighted with the finished product!

The kids’ room rarely looks this neat!  I had to shut them out of the room to straighten it up for these photos.

Naomi’s bed will remain on the floor until we get bunk beds when the new baby arrives.  We didn’t see any point in buying a bed frame for her when she’ll be transitioning to a bunk bed so soon.

The dressers were Brad’s sister’s when she was a child.  The area rugs throughout the house were hand-me-downs from a friend.

I’m new to “staging” photos, so after looking at these I realized that I probably should have removed the baby stroller, barn, and toy basket.  The blue tub is for dirty cloth-diaper storage, and the wipe container on the dresser holds our reusable wipes.

I also painted the paintings around the room.  This one is painted on a large piece of slate.  It’s a painting of a tree down by the “swimming hole” at the creek near my parents’ house.  The lamp is an old one of Brad’s with a newer lampshade.

Brad is a former soccer coach, so for holidays he likes to give the kids soccer gifts.

The painting above was painted during a sermon when we lived in Maryland.  I was asked to illustrate Psalm 61 on stage while the pastor preached the sermon.  It was an interesting concept!

Oliver still sleeps in the crib, at least until the new baby arrives!  He also has a couple of soccer balls in his bed.

I painted the painting above during my sophomore year of high school.  It’s still one of my favorites.  When I lived in New Mexico I got to participate in a festival like this one, and rode in one of the hot air balloons!

I had a great time with this project, and now my kids’ room is my favorite room in the house.  I love reading to them, snapping photos of them, and playing with them in this fun space!

What fun or creative projects have you been working recently?

When we moved into our new rental home, one of the first things I hoped to do was paint birch trees on the walls of the kids’ room.  If you’ve explored my Pinterest boards, you probably saw some of my many ideas there.  Life happened though, and other things took priority.  Soon a year had passed, and I found myself complaining that I STILL hadn’t had the opportunity to decorate a nursery since becoming a mom, even though I was now pregnant with my third child.  The thought that followed that complaint was “Why not do it now?”  My family was coming to visit at the end of October, and my mother and grandmother (both artists) would love to see a freshly painted nursery.  So with a firm deadline and an audience to impress, I got to work.

One other big bonus of this project was that it was absolutely FREE!  I didn’t pay anything for my supplies.  We already had a gallon of white paint in our garage from painting our bathroom.  I only needed about a quart of paint, so I had more than enough for this project.

In order to work on this project (which took 5 days to finish) I had to work around my two lively toddlers.  First I pushed all of their furniture to the middle of the room, where they slept for 7 days.  They thought this was a great adventure.  Sometimes they hung around with me, and sometimes they watched movies at my computer.  Other times they made a mess elsewhere in the house, or Naomi covered Oliver in stickers (above).  If you look closely at the first photo, you’ll see their feet sticking out from under the curtains on the left.

Before painting I glanced at a few websites with instructions on how to paint a mural.  One website suggested using chalk to outline your mural.  I thought this idea was brilliant!  I’ve always used pencil, and been frustrated by the dirty smudges and tedious task of erasing the lines afterward.  By using chalk I could easily correct mistakes with my fingers, and when I was done painting I just used a damp rag to wipe away all the chalk marks.  For the chalk, I used some white sidewalk chalk from a box that Naomi had received for her birthday.

Once I started painting, I realized that I had a much bigger project ahead of me than I first imagined.  I had 17 trees with lots of branches and leaves.  I was working from laying on the floor, to a step-ladder, and then a 6-foot ladder.  I was circling the room over and over again, pushing furniture out of my way, and trying to get enough light to see my work.  But I was really loving the effect, and kept stepping back to admire my progress.  I started with the thick trunks and a thick paintbrush, before switching to smaller brushes for the detail work.

Come back to see the finished project!