Office Space (Just What a Writer Always Wanted!); and a CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAY!!

Once upon a time, when I was writing novels, I would have given my eye teeth to have an office space to work in like the one I have now.  That is one HUGE plus of our new house in VA, where we moved in March of 2017 in order to be closer to our grown and married sons and their families.  We did downsize considerably when we moved here; but one thing our old house didn't have was an office.  Oh, initially we did carve out office space in our basement, which was mostly finished off thanks to the DIY skills of my hard-working husband.  But after our boys got older and outgrew the desire to hang out together down there, playing with their toys and video games, heading down to the basement to write or do filing or paperwork felt like being banished to the dungeon.

I eventually fashioned an office space for my husband, behind the couch in the family room, where he could keep up with the family finances without getting a bad case of FOMO.  I did write most of Finding Grace down in the basement, because I was using an ancient (and finicky!) tabletop computer for the first few years I was writing it, and that old girl couldn't be moved to another room.  But after my husband saw that I really was going to do it--I was going to finish that novel!--he got me my first laptop.  And so by the time I was writing Erin's Ring, I either worked at the dining room table or went off to Barnes and Noble for the afternoon, where I ordered one Starbucks coffee (and maybe a pastry to go with it!) and sat at a little table in the café area, happily pounding the keys of my laptop until my battery started to run out.

In our new house, one of the four bedrooms upstairs had been used as an office by the previous owners.  Since we no longer have any boys living under our roof with us, and that means every bedroom other than the master is now a guest room, we decided to follow the previous owners'  lead and continue to use the fourth bedroom as an office.

His work area.

And hers.

More hers.

Full disclosure, dear readers: those photos were snapped shortly after we moved in and set up the room.  Almost two years later, the office has seen a few changes.  (And it is much messier than it was back then, especially on my hubby's side.  Wink, wink.)

I love that our grandchildren's artwork now decorates my side of the office.

My desk is crowded and messy...but I don't dare show you his!

I cannot tell you how absolutely wonderful it is to have a place where my husband and I can both work so efficiently.  We each have our own desk, our own printer, and we sit in matching faux leather rolling office chairs.  We have two filing cabinets and plenty of storage and shelving.  It is everything I ever wanted in an office, and as I said, it makes it so that in some ways, we are better set up than we've ever been--even though we loved our big Colonial in NH, where we spent 26 of the best years of our lives.

It's almost too bad that I don't really write anymore, now that I have a great place to do it.  I don't even blog as much as I used to.  (See above: we live near a small army of Pearl grandchildren now...and time spent with them and their parents trumps time spent at my laptop!)  I'm so happy that before life became too hectic to do it, I fulfilled that long-held childhood dream of becoming an author, of writing just one novel that might make some infinitesimal difference in the life of even one reader.

Well...Hopefully, that has already happened.  Because I recently was given the rather discouraging news that because Finding Grace has not sold well enough in the six years it has been in print, after the end of 2018 it will no longer be available to the public in the paperback version.  It will still be available as a Kindle download, however.  Erin's Ring has not exactly sold like hot cakes either (my husband, who makes me laugh every day, jokes that it's more like "lukewarm cakes").  For the coming year 2019, it will still be available in paperback from Amazon.  But after that...I'm not sure.  It was never formatted into a Kindle book, and unless my husband and I decide it's worth investing whatever it takes to have that done, it will probably not be available at all.

In our correspondence over the years, my publisher (Cheryl Dickow of Bezalel Books) often comments that although I have been blessed in so many ways, having my books be financially successful just isn't one of them.  But I do believe that there is a reason for everything: I fully believe that I was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write my first novel; and I also believe that it was not meant to be a best-seller, but had some other purpose (which I may never know in this life).  So I am a bit sad that the paperback version of Finding Grace will no longer be available for sale on Amazon; I much prefer it, personally, because I use a lot of dashes in my writing and they look the same as hyphens in the electronic version of the book, and I worry that it's confusing to the reader.  But at least it will live on in Kindle.

I vacillate between not even believing that anything I've ever written is of any real worth or that I am even a real writer at all (instead of just "sort of" a writer), and hoping beyond hope that my books will find their way into as many hands as possible--particularly the hands of young adult readers whose lives might be changed, even in some small way, by these Catholic works of fiction. I trust that God knows what he's doing, and if Finding Grace  and Erin's Ring are meant to go the way of the dinosaurs, there is a very good reason for that.  But I have to admit that in my heart of hearts, I'd love to see those books available for my grandchildren's children.

In the meantime, I have plenty of copies in the office to share with my family.

And you know what?  I think in the spirit of Christmas giving, I'd like to give away one copy of each novel between now and Dec. 15. 

Leave me a comment by Dec. 15 and tell me which one you'd like to win and whom you'd like to give it to, and I'll toss all of your names into a hat (one for each book) and choose two winners randomly.  I will mail the prizes out to the winners the next day, and hopefully they will arrive in time for Christmas gift-giving.

I think I'll head on over to Instagram and post the contest there as well.  Thanks so much for stopping by here--and maybe I'll see you over there?

7 QT: Refinishing Bigfoot's Chair

I thought I'd join the 7 Quick Takes link-up today, because I don't have time to write anything lengthy these days but here I can be quick!  Also, it's fun to attend a "get-together" (in a virtual reality sense, anyway) with other gals in the Catholic blogosphere whom I admire and whose writing I enjoy.

The link-up, as you probably already know, is hosted by Kelly Mantoan, of This Ain't the Lyceum fame.  (Kelly recently signed a book deal with Our Sunday Visitor.  Congratulations, Kelly!)

Okay then, here we go: I'm going to tell you a tale about a dining room chair that was once owned by Bigfoot.  That sounds like a tall tale, I realize, but I assure you it's absolutely true!  That is the nickname by which my dad was known, and what all of his grandchildren called him.

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When I was in junior high, my mom found a treasure at an estate sale: an enormous antique oak dining room table with 10 matching chairs, and if I remember correctly, she got it for about $200.  She refinished the top of the table, but as a busy working mother of 5, she never got around to refinishing the chairs. Despite that, it was a beautiful set--solidly built, with exquisite carved details, packed with history.

This dining room set was used for many a family holiday dinner when I was growing up, such as this Thanksgiving (circa 1973 or 1974, when I was 15 or 16).  This is my dad, affectionately known as Bigfoot, toasting with his eldest daughter.  Dad is sitting in the only chair with arm rests, the only one big enough for a giant of a man such as himself (he was over 6'3" with size 13 feet).

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When my parents downsized to a condo a number of years after that photo was taken, their tiny dining room could not accommodate such a large dining room table.  By then, I had 4 children (which was more than any of my siblings at that time) and a new house with a huge dining room, so Mom decided that the set should go to me.  (Woo hoo!  Just one of the many perks of having a big-ish family!)  I got the table, 9 chairs, and a matching sideboard.  The only piece of the set that I didn't get was Dad's man-sized arm chair.  He just couldn't part with it.

For the 26 years we lived in our NH house, this dining room set had a perfect home in a space so oversized that there was plenty of room to spare.  I eventually refinished the 7 chairs that still had their cane seats intact--which was perfect because we eventually had a 5th son, so there were enough chairs for all 7 members of our family.

When we moved to VA and experienced a downsizing of our own, however, I was worried that I wouldn't have room for my parents' dining room set.

But I made room!  It's a little more crowded than it used to be, but I think it works.

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My dad, God rest his soul, died almost two years ago, and when my mom sold their house about a year later, she took what she wanted for the assisted living room that would become her new home and encouraged her kids to take whatever they thought they might use (before the rest was sold in a giant garage sale).  Everyone agreed that I should take Dad's chair, because it belonged with the dining room set.  So I did.

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Dad's chair has been sitting in the basement ever since we moved to VA, because I have been too busy to deal with refinishing it.  Well, yesterday I decided that it was time to get it spruced up so that it will be ready to use at our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners this year.  It will become my husband's head-of-the-table seat, just like it was Bigfoot's.

To refinish an aged beauty like this, I find that stripping the piece with Formby's antique furniture refinisher and then rubbing Formby's tung oil into it afterward gives the best results.

I actually love doing this.  I find it so satisfying to see the old varnish melt off to reveal the beautiful grains of the wood underneath.

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This before-and-after comparison shows how dark and dingy the wood looks before Formby's works its magic.  What a difference!

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Here is what Bigfoot's chair looked like, after I'd stripped off the old finish but before I'd rubbed in the tung oil to give it a protective glow.  It is so much more beautiful now!  It still has imperfections in it, like any piece of furniture that has been around this long; but what an improvement from the first picture up there, taken before I started the refinishing process.

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The after picture!

Bigfoot's chair now has a home in our VA family room, providing extra seating in there when our large and ever-growing brood comes to visit.  And it can be easily brought into the dining room when needed for special meals with our kids and grandkids.

I am so grateful to have this piece of my family's history--and a reminder of my dear dad--in my home.  I'll be toasting Bigfoot this Thanksgiving...with fond memories of the guy with the 70's sideburns and the full head of brown hair, who used to call me his "Ickle Aurie-Do" (which translated means "Little Laura-Do").

They weren't that Quick after all, but those are my Takes.  Now head on over to Kelly's for more!

Having My Own Things About Me

I have a tendency to hold on to well-loved things forever and ever.

We've had the same living room couch and loveseat set for 24 years, for instance.  I know their pink and green floral pattern dates these pieces; but even though they were bought at Costco for a bargain basement price, they are a good make (I think?)--Bassett--and they have held up beautifully, so I can't see the justification for replacing them.  Besides, when I see them looking right at home in our new house in VA, their steadfastness and familiarity--and all the memories they evoke, of Rosaries prayed together while sitting on them in our old living room when our boys were growing up--give me a great sense of peace and happiness.

Can furniture make you happy?  Should it?  I don't know, but it does.  And actually, the older and more well-used, the better.  I can totally relate to Mary Kate Danaher, the feisty heroine in The Quiet Man (hands down one of the greatest movies of all time), when she says: "Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of having my own things about me.  My spinet over there, and a table here, and my own chairs to rest upon.  And a dresser over there in that corner, and my own china and pewter shinin' about me."

I get you, Mary Kate, I really do.  Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of only two things: getting married and being a mom; and having a home to take care of.  Call me old-fashioned.  (Really, you can call me that.  I'm totally okay with it.)

When we moved in March of 2017 from our home in NH, where we'd lived for 26 years and raised our boys, the transition was a bit emotional. Of course, we were moving closer to the people we loved, so we knew we would be happy here.  But I have to admit that I wondered if the much-different house we were moving to could really ever feel like home to me.  Well, after more than a year as a Virginian, I am pleased to report that it does; and one of the reasons for this is that I have my own things about me.  Even shinier, newer furnishings could never make me as happy as these familiar friends.

Once such piece of furniture is a pine night stand that my husband made way back in December of 1991, for our two oldest sons' bedroom.  (I know this is when he made it because I actually dated it, in pen, on the back.)  Once upon a time, the room it lived in looked like this.

[Sniff]   Where do the years go?  It seems like yesterday that our five boys were all still sleeping under our roof, tucked in beds covered in Notre Dame puffs...

Sorry about that.  Back to the night stand.  This solidly-built little piece was a total original, made without plans, and my husband even let me help him with some of the design elements.

This is how this beloved friend looked when we found it a new home in our VA house, between the twin beds that are sometimes occupied by our twin granddaughters when they come for sleepovers.

So here's the BEFORE.

For years now, I've thought it would be a good idea to add another shelf to this piece, so that it could be used as a more traditional bookshelf.  But there always seemed to be more important projects for my husband to tackle, so I didn't push it.

BUT--we had to leave behind our built-in bookcases when we made the big move, and I've spent the past year trying to figure out how to incorporate book storage wherever possible; so I recently decided that now would be a good time to finally add that shelf, and this project shot to the top of the honey-do list.

And my honey did.  So here's what it looks like now.

And here's the AFTER.

I thought it might be hard to match the stain perfectly, so I decided to try my hand at using chalk paint, after hearing so many good things about it.  (The fact that it can be applied over stain without sanding first was a big selling point with me.)  I wasn't sure what color to paint it, but I always seem to be drawn to shades of green.  I think Mary Kate Dannaher would approve of this very Irish color I settled upon.  Aye, I think she would!

This charming little bedroom pleases me so.  It looks like it belongs in a B&B, always ready to welcome stayover guests.  That's one thing that does change when you no longer have a passel of messy boys living at home: everything stays so neat and clean!

Unlike Mary Kate Danaher, I can definitely live without a spinet (I have no musical talent whatsoever) or shinin' pewter; but I need to have my books about me!  So in a future post, I'll show you how I turned each of our bedrooms in the new house into mini-libraries, since there really weren't good places anywhere else in the house to add bookshelves.  I'm sure you'll be waiting with baited breath for that post!

7QT: The Hopeless Hibernophile Edition

It's been a while since I posted anything in the 7QT link-up, and as I'm trying to get back into a rhythm of blogging more regularly, I thought this was a good time to join the party.

I know the Takes here are supposed to be Quick; but I have to warn you that this first one is a tad on the long side.  (I promise to make up for it with the next 6!)

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The Irish I's Are Smiling!

Well, my eyes are smiling anyway.  Because I've completed the I pages for the ABC Book that I've been working on for my grandchildren. It's been a work in progress for more years than I care to admit, but I am finally seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. 

I was able to incorporate some of my favorite things on these pages: IRELAND and her patron saint...and also, something we all scream for, ICE CREAM.

Nice photo bomb, Finding Grace.  I see what you did there.

If you stop in here from time to time, you might know that I'm a huge Hibernophile (as in: a person who is fond of Irish culture, Irish language, and Ireland in general.  Its antonym is Hibernophobe.  The term originates from "Hibernia," the word used by the ancient Romans to refer to Ireland).

As proof of my Hibernophile tendencies, I actually found myself sighing with relief when our middle son got back the results of his recent 23andMe DNA test.  Faith and begorrah, look at that high percentage of Irish blood!

So of course, given the letter I to illustrate, I just had to include the land from which St. Patrick drove out all those pesky snakes. My map of Ireland would not pass the cartographer's smell test, I'm sure, but hopefully it approximates the shape of the Emerald Isle closely enough for the wee ones for whom this book is being created.

I am not that adept at maps, buildings, and inanimate objects; my favorite subject to draw or paint has always been people.  Like this guy.

Although anyone who knows me will be surprised to hear me say anything positive about my artwork, I am actually pleased with how he came out.

I'm NOT entirely pleased with my little ice cream-eater, however; and it's entirely possible that before this book goes to print, I will re-do that second I page.  Her hair looks kinda weird.  And then I added all that dark shading around her to take attention away from the hair.  And I don't know, she just didn't come out the way I'd envisioned her in my head.

But given that it's taken me almost a quarter of a century to get this long-dreamed-of book [almost] finished, I think she may end up making the cut, if only to save time.

Now for more proof of my Hibernophile tendencies, I'm going to share some photos of the breakfast nook of our kitchen.

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The former owners had already given the kitchen a green accent wall (and this was one of the things that made me fall in love with this house when we first looked at it just over a year ago).   That lovely verdant shade makes a perfect backdrop for my various Irish-y décor items.

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Our youngest son made a trip to Ireland and had pictures of himself taken on the Cliffs of Moher, so obviously a couple of those had to be included in my homage to Ireland.  There is also a plaque of St. Patrick's breastplate, a housewarming gift from one of my husband's sisters.  I found the painting of the little boy wrapped up in a quilt of Ireland online, made a copy of it, and framed it; it is one of my favorite pieces of artwork in the house.  The small resin wall hangings to the left of the large "Team Pearl" family picture are gifts from my boys.

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I have a Kelly green Kitchen Aid mixer, a gift from my kids a few Mother's Days ago.  I can't imagine a color that would make me happier.  (As if cake making wasn't fun enough already...)

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A new addition to the kitchen is this Irish Kitchen Prayer plaque...a Mother's Day gift that I picked out for myself this year and then told my husband he was giving it to me.  The framed Irish Marriage Blessing on the green wall was a gift from my very Irish mother-in-law.

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Even our Yankee candles are Irish-themed--as are our twin granddaughters (the oldest of our 12 grandchildren).  Their matching t-shirts in this 2012 photo of them say, "'Tis Weeself."

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Our two St. Patrick statues (both gifts from our boys) watch over this nook while we eat our meals together.  I'd say we're in pretty good hands.

I could go on, but that's 7 Takes.  So I guess I'll end here--and now you should head on over to Kelly's for more 7QT posts that might not be quite so Irish-themed, but are bound to be worth the trip.

I'm So NOT Melania!

My mother has taken to calling my husband and me "the Trumps."  (If I wanted to be at all political on this blog, which I DON'T, I would tell you that that is not nearly as much of an insult to me as so many of my close friends and family members think it should be).  Mom does this because we now own two homes--which makes us proverbial real estate magnates, I suppose.

Our lake house, which we bought about two years ago and dubbed "Oyster Haven," sits on a parcel of land that is probably more priceless and more idyllic (more heaven-on-earth-spectacular) than anything the Trumps own.  I may be biased, but I'm serious, I really am; I mean, look at this view from the deck of our circa 1830's farm house-cum-VRBO vacation rental.

Not too shabby, eh?  And hopefully someday, once we've whittled down the mortgage with rental income, we'll be able to spend whole summers there and provide our kids and grandkids with a yearly vacation getaway courtesy of Papa and Grammy.

But just because we've taken our first tentative steps into the vacation rental business, you can hardly compare us to POTUS and his glamorous (and Catholic! Yes, Catholic!) wife, Melania.  As I remind my mother every time she calls us "the Trumps," I doubt that Melania does as much cleaning as I do.  I sincerely doubt that FLOTUS scrubs as many tubs and toilets.

And that, my friends, is what I've been doing every weekend this summer.

My husband and I are the cleaning/maintenance/hospitality crew that gets our place ready between the 10:00 a.m. check-out time of one set of renters on Saturday or Sunday morning and the 4:00 p.m. arrival of the next group of guests the same day.  It's a grueling six-hour process that involves vacuuming and dusting and making up all the beds; scrubbing the bathrooms and kitchen until every surface gleams; restocking the towels, toiletries, K-cups, and the gifts of chocolates and wine; making sure the grill, boats, and outdoor furniture are clean and stored appropriately; trimming away the overgrowth on the bank by the beach; hauling away the garbage and recycling...It's a lot of work, and I am always bone-tired at the end of cleaning day. 

We have a great routine, though; we make a good team.  My husband and I usually make up all the beds together.  Then he drops off the dirty linens at the laundry service while I get to work cleaning the interiors.  If we need anything, he picks it up at the store on his way back from the laundromat, and then he gets to work on the exteriors.

No matter how respectful our renters have been or how relatively tidy things appear when we start out, the process rarely takes less than the full six hours to achieve the kind of quality we both want.  Sooner rather than later, we will have to hire a professional cleaning service to do this for us--especially now that we live in VA and not NH, and the drive to Upstate NY takes almost twice as long.  We can't just "pop up" here anymore to take care of Oyster Haven.  Luckily, we are able to spend the summer months (peak time) at my husband's childhood home on the lake, just 3.5 miles away from our property.

But until we can find a reputable cleaning service to get the job done, it's up to us to do it.  I am the maid, the help, whatever you want to call me (and so as you see, Mom, I am so NOT Melania!).

That's me (on the right--ha ha!); so, so NOT Melania--and that was

about four years and several pounds ago!

I'm not going to show you the Oyster Haven bathrooms, no matter how proud I am of the sparkling sinks and toilets.  But would you like to see the bedrooms?

The Norman Rockwell Room.

The Little Cherubs Room.

The Aviation Room.

The Master Suite.

I guess that last picture doesn't really show what the whole master bedroom looks like (there's a twin bed in there as well).  But isn't this queen bed pretty?  I like the hotel look we've given to all the beds in the house, using mostly crisp white linens with touches of color thrown in via the bed scarves and decorative pillows.  In fact, our beds look an awful lot like the ones in the hotel where my husband and I have a room booked for tonight.

The reason we're staying at a hotel is that my mom is in a hospital across the lake in VT, and we're going to visit her there tonight before flying to the Midwest tomorrow out of the airport just a few  miles down the road from the hospital.  Mom was supposed to have surgery early tomorrow morning to remove a cancerous kidney, but she has some other health issues right now and the procedure has been postponed.  Please keep her in your prayers, because she needs to get well enough to have this kidney removed ASAP.

Also, please keep my husband and me in your prayers, as we will be transporting some very precious cargo over the next few days, all the way from Chicago, IL to Pensacola, FL: our oldest son's wife and four young daughters, who have been separated from him for the past month while he's been in flight training and are joining him for the rest of the summer.  (They have an adventure planned that includes spending the next few months living together in a furnished Airbnb house.)

I don't know how much blogging I'll be able to do in the coming week, because I can't bring my laptop along (the minivan will be bursting at the seams, so I can only pack a small carry-on bag for our flight out to Chicago).  But when I get back, I'll fill you in on our cross-country road trip with our girls, I'll update you on my mother's health, and maybe I'll even continue with the VA house tour that I started but never finished.

Our new southern home is very nice, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not nearly as sumptuous as any of the lavish abodes the Trumps own.  Just one other way that I'm NOT Melania!

Hope you're having a good summer, dear readers!

House Tour: Part II

So, after giving you Part I of the house tour (and I'm referring to our new house in VA, where we recently moved to be closer to some of our kids and grandkids...since we were much, much too far away from everyone in NH), I thought it was time for the second installment.  It would make sense to show you the kitchen/family room space now, after having shown you the front entrance and the living room and dining room.  That would be the next logical step.  I mean, you can see through to the kitchen and family room areas from the front door and both of the front rooms, since this house has a fairly "open concept" vibe to it.  But I haven't remembered to take photos of those rooms when they're cleaned up and picked up and ready for show; so that will have to wait.  Instead of giving you a tour of the rest of the first floor today, I'm going to take you upstairs and show you the two guest rooms and save the rest of the ground floor for another day.

That's right, moms of young'uns: someday you will have bedrooms in your house that sit empty most of the time and don't really belong to any of your kids anymore, because they will be all grown up and have houses of their own.

You'll blink once or twice, and suddenly your kids will not look like this anymore.

They will not all be shorter than you are and dependent on you for their every need.  They will not be pulling on the hem of your skirt and looking up at you with their arms raised, begging to be picked up. They will no longer call you "Mommy."  (Actually, mine still do that sometimes, so scratch that last part.)

[Sniff.]  Moving on.

As I was saying, you will have empty bedrooms and you will call them "guest rooms," meanwhile hoping that the most frequent guests who will use them will be your grown-up children and their families.

There are four bedrooms upstairs in our new house: the master suite (which is ridiculously large; it's a little embarrassing, to tell you the truth) and three more normal-sized rooms, one of which we have turned into an office.  That leaves two small-ish guest bedrooms--which is the perfect number for us to have, since two of our five sons do not and most likely will never live in VA.

I am thinking of one of these bedrooms as our baby's room.  He's the only one who isn't married yet.  And he's the one who made it hardest for us to pull the trigger and sell our old house, for several reasons: that was the only house in which he'd ever lived, for one thing; and he will be stationed in Germany for about another year-and-a-half, and in a perfect world it would have been nice to be able to wait until he moved back to the States and could spend a bit more time in his childhood home before having to say goodbye to it.

So although this new bedroom is about a third of the size of the big one he used to share with two older brothers growing up in NH, I have tried to make it feel as much like "his" as possible.  First of all, the full-sized mattress is his--although it used to be on the bottom of a metal bunk bed.  (Son #4 used to sleep in the twin-sized bed that was on the top bunk.)  His bed looks a whole lot fancier now, since we put the mattress on a new metal platform bed and topped it with a new bedspread--both of which were bought to make our NH house show better when we decided to sell it.  But when our son comes home, his ratty old Notre Dame puff will come out of storage to replace this bedspread, and that will hopefully make the bed seem comfortingly familiar.

The bedside storage tables in this room were built by my husband, and in the old house they were in our master bedroom. Since this photo was taken, I have filled the shelves of both of them up with books.  Because I have been trying like crazy to figure out where we're going to store all of our books--our many, many books--in the new house, after having to give up the built-ins on either side of both fireplaces in our old house.  (Also my talented husband's handiwork, and so hard to leave behind.  [Sniff.]  Moving on!)

I've hung up the "school days" photo collages that I made for our baby and his two old roommates when they graduated from eighth grade, because nothing says "home" like a whole lot of family pictures. 

The Pack 'n Play and mobile were added for grandchildren and have already come in handy for napping and sleepovers.

On the dresser are some of our youngest son's high school football mementos and a little framed picture of him as a toddler that always sat on the shelf in his room.

This bedroom is not nearly as "all boy" and sporty as the old room in NH; but I think it's going to work out just fine.  (We'll get a chance to put that theory to the test when our son comes home on leave this summer!)

The other guest bedroom is a tad bigger.  In it are the two twin beds (on prettier frames now, with prettier bedspreads) that belonged to our two oldest boys, and in between them is the bedside table that my husband built for them more than 25 years ago.

One wall is adorned with the two oldest boys' eighth grade photo collages.  Since this picture was taken, I have removed the decorative storage bins in the small shelf to the right of the dresser and replaced them with BOOKS. 

Because to quote fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson--

Well said, TJ.  Well said.

As you probably noticed, we also keep a port-a-crib (the old-fashioned one we had for our boys, back before the days of Pack 'n Plays) in this room, at the ready for grandkids' naps and sleepovers.

Hanging on a wall that I can see every time I pass by this bedroom is a cherished piece of artwork given to us by one of our daughters-in-law, who is a friend of the artist responsible for this beautiful image of Pope Saint JPII.

I am pleased with the way these guest rooms turned out.  I didn't even have to paint them--they appeared to be freshly painted by the former owners, and I like the soft blue and yellow hues they chose.  So for now, no painting.

I know my decorating style is not super inspiring.  Joanna Gaines I am not!  But I do love the process of feathering a nest.  As difficult as it was to move away from our old house and all the memories we'd made there (26 years' worth), I am actually thoroughly enjoying figuring out how to make this new place work for us.  I like the challenge of turning it from a house into a home, where our boys and their growing broods can create brand new memories with us.