Before I get into any photos, let me give you a little background…

Why the Bedroom? – For a long time the “master bedroom” has been on my list of organizing projects to tackle but it has been low on the list of cleaning priorities because no one really spends time in there during the day or when company is over. However, this week Leila at Like Mother, like Daughter gave us a challenge for this week’s {pretty, happy, funny, real}. I went back and read her original post about cleaning the master bedroom entitled The Reasonably Clean House: Did you guess that we’d start in your bedroom? She beautifully explains why we should start in the bedroom:

The reason is simple, but profound. Your home has many areas that express family life, but your bedroom expresses the foundational relationship between you and your spouse — the inner sanctum where the sacrament of your marriage is consecrated and continually renewed with the conjugal gift.

If it weren’t for the intimate aspect of your commitment, your family would not be. God has ordained it so. It was that way from the very start. It has always been that way. It always will be that way.

That reality should be expressed in your respect for this physical place, for your body, for the body of your husband. Your first steps should be to make the room — the bed and the places for your clothes — truly orderly. (Read the rest here.)

A Little Sanctuary – As I was reading this I thought about Brian and all he does for me and for the family. He works so hard and puts up with all our craziness and although he never shows it, I know there are times when he just longs to be able to sit and read or write or pray in quiet. I wanted to make an area in our bedroom where he could do that. So with that in mind, I started my quest.

Déjà vu – Back in June when I wrote a post about NFP and Hallie’s challenge to make a Rockin’ Love Nest, I worked on clearing our bedroom up. The corner of my room holding the baby’s unused crib was my biggest problem. It looked like this in June.

Then I put everything away and it looked like this.

Fast forward a few months, and we had all the carpets in our house cleaned except the master bedroom. (The carpet was still new in this room so didn’t need cleaning yet.) That meant that everything from the other rooms went into our bedroom. That was a month ago yet the corner of the room still looked like this as of yesterday morning.

I figured that the only way to stop my habit of using the empty crib as storage/dumping ground was to get rid of the crib. Matthew didn’t sleep in it anymore and I didn’t see any babies coming in the near future (did I just tempt Murphy’s Law?) so I put everything away and took the crib down.

I then moved Brian’s small desk in front of the window where there is a view of our tree and the mountains surrounding our little valley. I added to the corner the small shelves (that used to hold video cassettes…remember those?) and the extra chair that sat at the opposite end of the room.
Here is the result.

{happy}

I love all the little details that helped add to the corner.

I placed on the wall two picture frames I bought at Target ages ago. They have been waiting in my closet for me to get my butt in gear. In the first one I placed family photos.

In the second one I put a couple of my Instagram photos. (Unfortunately, I made note cards with my favorites and this is all I had left.)

I also added Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I put some of Brian’s books on one shelf and mine on the other. (We have a ridiculous amount of books in our house but that’s another project.)

On top of Brian’s shelf I made him a little prayer corner with his favorite icon of St. Joseph, our icon of Our Lady that has accompanied us to the hospital at the birth of each of our children, the little rosary holders we received at our wedding and a fragrant candle that smells like autumn.

I am so happy with the results, but nothing could have given me greater pleasure than to hear Brian gush over the room. Anyone that knows Brian, knows he is not a gusher. I usually get a “that’s really nice” and that’s it. But he was really surprised and so pleased. He went on and on. Later that evening I heard him telling Bella, “Did you see how Mom fixed up our room? Doesn’t it look nice??” I couldn’t help but smile. It made it all worth the blood, sweat and tears to get there.

I admit, it wasn’t an easy project. The worse part was at the half way point. I needed to leave and attend John-Paul’s parent teacher conference at school and I knew if I broke the momentum it would be hard to get back into it. (It’s like cleaning out your closet and once you move everything to the top of your bed you wish you never started the project in the first place. LOL.)

Plus, it was hard to clean when I had to stop every five minutes to check on the kids. JP kept himself relatively busy but Matthew was in rare form – he scribbled on a wall, dumped out cabinets, danced on the table, climbed into the dishwasher and broke a glass on the sink, spilled milk all over the floor, wrote on the tv with a crayon…just to name a few.

I also heard JP say, “No, no Matty!” which is my cue to see what mischief he is into. As it turned out he also found a new place to play. He was brushing his teeth IN the sink.

I could not figure out how he got in there! We have a low step stool for the boys to step on to wash their hands but it is too low for him to get that high. I put him down and watched him as he climbed up again. He was able place his toes on the small borders of the cabinet and hoist his chubby little body up onto the sink. I’ve got a future rock climber.
So that is this weeks’ edition of OC&O and {p, h, f, r}. I still have more to do in the bedroom but I’ll save it for next week. In the meantime, I’ll be heading to confession tomorrow. I chalked up a fair amount of cussing, anger and impatience in the last 24 hours. 😉

PS – (11/10/12) This morning I received an email from Leila that said in part:

“Great job on your bedroom! You really transformed it, and I LOVE the prayer shelf on the bookcase. What a thoughtful touch!

I wanted to let you know that I would comment on your post, but I just can’t sign in to do it. There are so many posts, and so many of those ANNOYING verification things (that keep not working), and having to SIGN IN is the last straw. Just. Can’t. Do. It….”

LOL, a big thanks to Leila for her kind words. But I wanted to let you know, particularly the others who have emailed me about not being able to comment, that I am in the process of moving the blog over to WordPress. I hope to have the new blog up in a couple weeks, depending on how much free time I can squeeze out of my day… yeah, you better make that a few weeks. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by! xoxo!

PPS -You can follow RoL on Bloglovin, Feedly or another news feed. If you are a social media fan like me, we can stay in touch through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, GoodReads, Letterboxd or Instagram. 😉