Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.

We moved into a house that was about 30 years old at the time, and most of the wall and floor coverings needed to be replaced. Of course, you have to space those projects out as time and finances permit. So after ten years we are just now getting to the bedroom of Jesse, my youngest son who just turned 15. He had three days off due ro a teacher’s conference, so Jim took those days off as well.

I didn’t really get a “before” picture as it was before we started working on it because…I would have been too embarrassed. He has the smallest bedroom in the house but the most “stuff,” some of it from younger days and no longer really played with, some that his older brothers passed down to him as they cleaned out their things. We would sort through and purge a few shelves or drawers at a time, but it was overwhelming for both of us.

My husband’s strategy was to pack up everything into boxes and put it in the attic, because if we took time to sort through it before painting we wouldn’t get done in the time frame we had. As we packed things away, if there was something obvious that needed to be thrown away or put in a give-away box, we’d do that, but otherwise we’ll just take the boxes out one or two at a time as we have time later to sort through.

So…here are the “before pictures I took after most of the furniture was out and they had done some spackling:

The walls look a little greenish here, but they were actually a barely-there blue.

Of course, you notice the hideous carpet:

We were delighted to find nice hardwood floors underneath:

Jesse first wanted to paint the walls red, but we felt that would be a little too intense. Then he said brown: we weren’t sure how that would do in a small room, but we were okay with it. Then he said he wanted to paint the trim blue. I wasn’t sure about that at all. But Home Depot had a computer setup where you could click on the paint color and then on the walls or trim of a picture of a room, so we tried it out, and it wasn’t bad.

It actually turned out better than I thought it would:

It was hard to capture the right shade with the lighting in the room and this camera, but this is pretty close. The walls are Double Chocolate, the trim is Smoky Blue. The doors and dresser are supposed to be Oyster, which I had thought was a little tanner than this — this pretty much looks barely off-white. But it’s fine.

I think he was wanting to try for a look that was grown and masculine, and I think this definitely fits the bill. I probably would have done things differently…but then, he is the one living in it, so as long as it wasn’t too outlandish, I was fine with letting him make the choices.

It hasn’t arrived yet, but I ordered this comforter — I let him choose it out of a catalog. And this weekend we’ll look for an area rug — I found a couple that incorporate the different colors.

He’s very pleased!

I also wanted to show my “work in progress.” It’s about one-fourth done.

You can find more Show and Tellers at Kelli‘s.

Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.

Recently I found this sweet little pin on sale at Sweet Necessi-Teas.

If you’ve been reading here long, you know I love hearts and pink roses and vintage/old fashioned things…and sales! So this fit the bill all the way around!

As the shop’s name would suggest, most of its items have something to do with tea, but I didn’t notice until after I looked at it a while that the little charm at the bottom is a tea bag. Isn’t that cute? Unfortunately it’s a little dark right there in the picture.

I also loved the way it came packaged:

Something I hope to accomplish in the next week is to figure out how to arrange these

On this wall.

A while back we replaced our TV and entertainment center, and the new cabinet was wider than the old one, so we had to take out bookcases that used to flank it and put them in another room. That left a lot of wall space. I’ve been collecting various items through sales and received some as gifts. I want to get a shelf as long as the long piece there (which, by the way, I got half-price at Hobby Lobby!) I am thinking of making three separate groupings, one over the TV, and one on each side, maybe placed a little lower. I’m thinking of putting the long plaque and a shelf over the TV.

The picture up there now is an older one I got during a Home Interiors craze that went through all my friends years ago. 🙂

It shows a mom stopping what she is doing to sit down and look at her child’s picture. I loved that — and hope I remembered to do that often! Of course, I love the house and flowers and colors in it, too. It’s appropriate for a family room, but I am trying to downplay pink and flowers in this room for the boys’ sake. So I haven’t decided whether to keep this in here or put it somewhere else…though there is really no room anywhere else for it.

I also had this painting over the mantle before receiving my Shepherd print.

It is special to me because of who made it. Several years ago when we lived in GA, the church we attended had a “secret sister” program where we drew names at the beginning of the year and prayed for and did little things for our secret sister anonymously throughout the year and then found out who our secret sister was at the end of the year. I drew the name of a lady named Gayle, who was very artistic and crafty. She couldn’t do much in that vein for her secret sister, though, because then that would reveal who she was in our very small church. So she often waited to do something special til the end of the year. Well, that particular year I had her name, but we found we were going to have to move in May, so I went ahead and revealed my identity to her. She gave me this as a thank you. I love it because it is from her, and I love the dogwood blossoms — two of the four homes we have lived in have had white dogwoods. She admitted that the little bird ended up “looking like he was ready to peck someone’s eye out.” 🙂 She added the verse because she said it reminded her of me, though it is actually speaking of wisdom. I hope I have gained and display wisdom, pleasantness, and peace, though I assured her I am far from walking in any of those elements perfectly.

But I am not quite sure where to place this little birdie. Decisions, decisions!

Hopefully I’ll have this figured out and can show you the finished project next time.

Thanks to Kelli for creating and hostessing Show and Tell Friday! Other show-and-tellers can be found there.