First Day of School Inspiration

Well, its official...my baby is now in high school! Yes, people, my 14 year old daughter, Miss K, has been thrown into the hornets' nest known as high school. That great adolescent right of passage. Oh boy, here we go! Really though, I am so proud of the amazing young woman she is and continues to grow into. She will love all of the new experiences that lie ahead of her, but Mom and Dad...well, we sill remember the day she wouldn't let go of our hand on the kindergarten play ground 10 years ago. Its kind of bitter sweet.

And here's her little sister, Miss H. She still has two years of peaceful bliss in middle school. 7th grade doesn't seem so hard any longer. But she has set her own busy path. I'm sure you will here about this child of mine and her extracurricular activities ad nauseam. I am going to apologize now, but one of the things that I did/do for both of my girls is support their music and drama efforts. This one, and Miss K before her, are very lucky to have the most amazing music teacher and musical director. And I get the pleasure of working with her as well. Just as the holidays approach we will begin putting together this year's musical, Will Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I get to play artist and design the set, as well as the lights for the entire production. Its a lot of work and a more fun. Remind me of this statement when I'm ready to pull my hair out sometime in March!

Enough about the kids already, what about my inspiration?!  Well, Nester got me thinking today. We have this room that the kids have claimed as their own. Its supposed to be the formal dining room, but it doesn't have any windows. Not one. Its a dark whole...

I know the paint colors don't help and that will hopefully be remedied very soon. But, do you see what I mean. No windows. There is a skylight at the back of the room, you can't see it and it really doesn't do much to help the situation, it just creates a weird strip of light in the middle of the day. Somebody wasn't thinking right.

So, this has been the kids' space all summer. They can spread homework out over the table and watch tv without taking over the family room. They didn't seem to mind it being dark. Maybe the outdoors is a distraction? Maybe. At any rate, Nester inspired me to make it more their own and that meant rearranging and working in a few projects to make it feel more like the homework/tv room that it appears to be morphing into.  Maybe a little of this:

                                                        with this