Well, we’re redecorating again. Or should I say, still. Everything got turned topsy turvey about three years ago when we decided to turn our dining room back into a dining room and move Jeff’s music stuff, somewhere else. The poor guy has been feeling like an orphan at a family picnic ever since. And I have been feeling like a failure because I just could not make this new arrangement “work.”

We tried using the spare bedroom upstairs for Jeff’s music gear, but with the addition of a keyboard – for Charlie and then drums for Dillon, it just didn’t really fit anymore so we did a total upheaval of the house and moved three rooms at once.

We took our front room – where my office was as well as our work out stuff, my scrap booking and jewelry design gear, and crammed that upstairs – I never could get that organized well enough to find anything since.

Granted, half the reason why I couldn’t make it work was because I like to read Better Homes and Gardens, and well… I never come even close to what I think it should be. Take this photo for example. THIS is how I wanted my office to look like. Forget the fact that building out those shelves is a major renovation in and of itself, my room up there isn’t even layed out like that.I was trying to turn it into too many things. I never did get that finished completely. We took the den and moved it into the front room, but the shape of the room made the arrangement awkward at best.

We arranged the den to include ALL of our musical gear and while it looked really nice, it was located right in the middle of our home and did not have private access. You have to walk through that room to get to almost everything or at least the kitchen and the back yard.

Our house has been in cluttered chaos ever since the move. So last weekend, we emptied the front room, painted the walls and began the return to normal.

The drums are now in the garage. (Yeah!), our family computer is back downstairs and our TV is back in the Den. We also did our part in economic stimulus by purchasing a new modular couch at Sunshine Furniture (discount furniture store.) Now both of my teenage boys can lay on the couch at the same time and not touch each other. This is my new bliss let me tell you. A mom has a limit to how many “He’s touching me’s” she can withstand before cracking. I hit mine about 12 years ago.

Sometimes, even with the best of plans, I need to step back and admit that it’s just not working, go back to the beginning and try again. That’s what we are doing. Going back to the begining. It’s the way it was, but better. We painted the front room in beautiful sage green with Russian Borscht for accents. The borcht actually carries over from our kitchen and was his idea.

I’m still planning the layout in this room. What was okay for me upstairs and hidden will not work in the first room you see upon entering the home. This room will be a peaceful retreat for reading or whatnot. My design bench will be less obvious and my storage is the old linen closet upstairs. My shelves? Will be left behind and that’s okay too. Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) is my new mantra for 2009.

We will paint the old “new” music room in whatever colors he wants. He’ll have shelving that he didn’t have before for his gear and music books. He has a closet now built out for storage that we can share. It’ll be good.

It’s almost ready. I’ve got about another week of moving things around before it’ll be totally situated. Once that is completed, I’ll post the photos.