The Master Bedroom and Bath

When we first walked through the house, I didn't think the master bedroom was all that special. Sure, it had a lot of nice windows, and a fantastic bathroom, but the room itself seemed just adequate. It wasn't until we moved in a few months later, and loaded in two dressers, two nightstands, a California King size bed and an old tan recliner that we realized that the room was enormous. At the time we thought we'd make one of the basement bedrooms into an office, but we soon realized that we had room to sleep, do our work, watch tv, and play basketball in this bedroom, so we decided not to have a separate office, and we've divided the room into different sections.

In the center of the room, you have the normal bedroom stuff. Dressers (Three four-drawer Malm dressers from IKEA, all pushed together to look like one unit), a bed, and a ginormous television (one of the few concessions to the fact that Eddie does live in the house). The bed is from Overstock. I made the headboard a long time ago and covered it with a new fabric for this house. The bedding is also from Overstock. We bought the nightstands (Bogart Collection by Thomasville) from several garages around Salt Lake County. The big blue lamps are from eBay. I love them.

When I talk about the books on my bedside table, this is what I'm talking about.

The north side of the room is the reading/lounging/one-of-the-kids-had-a-nightmare-and-wants-to-sleep-in-our-room zone. I didn't want to paint this room a funky color, so I got a big square of fabric and hemmed it and stuck it up on the wall to add some visual interest. Yes, I do have a plan for how to readjust the pictures when we have five kids instead of four. The only thing I haven't figured out is how to get professional 8x10s of Rose at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months if she's living in an orphanage in China at some of those ages. The couch and bookcase are from IKEA, but I drove up to Layton (which is much further north than I thought it was) through a snowstorm to get the couch for less than half price out of some guy's house. The end tables are from the 1950s and purchased from another SLC-area garage. Les found the aqua Star of David bowl at the Salvation Army in Massachusetts and I decided it was way too cool to hang up on the dining room wall.

Finally, here's the business area of the bedroom (not that kind of business). I wanted to take advantage of this big bank of windows by being able to look out at the mountains while I wrote, or paid bills, or wasted time on Facebook. The chairs are Tolix and match the ones in the dining room (we can seat ten at the dining room table in a pinch). Desks are cobbled together from IKEA, the recliner is from Macy's. Shelves from IKEA. Justin Hackworth did the photos of me and the girls. Isaac did the Abe Lincoln art. Annie painted the floral still life. Don't you love the print of Emma Smith? And the little doll we bought for Rose? Have you been counting lamps? Eight. I know, it's overkill, but remember, this room is big enough to play basketball in.

When I saw the pictures of the house online for the first time, I laughed out loud when I saw this bathroom. Who needs a chandelier over the bathtub? Apparently me, I guess. All of the prints are from Etsy. You may notice lots of Asian-themed art. By the time we decided to adopt Rose, the bathroom was just about the only place that still needed pictures on the walls. We may move some around in the future so she doesn't associate being Asian with using the bathroom.

That's it until October. I hope to show exterior pictures, the kitchen and the basement when I can get my hands on Les's camera again.

Book #103: Swim Back to Me

Title: Swim Back to Me
Author: Ann Packer
Enjoyment Rating: 7/10
Source: Audible.com
Referral: Browsing the Audible website

I really liked Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier, and liked her other novel (the name of which is escaping me at the moment) pretty well too. So I ordered the audiobook of Swim Back to Me on the basis of her two previous novels, without reading anything about this one. So the first "chapter" of the book threw me a little bit. Packer delves into the story of Richard and Sasha, two middle schoolers living in Palo Alto who cope with their loneliness and unhappy families by hanging out with each other and smoking dope. It felt like Packer was doing a lot of exploring these two characters, but not a lot of developing a story. One morning during my run, I pulled off my headphones and did a search on the book and discovered that I wasn't listening to a novel at all-- rather this was a group of short stories. Aha! It all made perfect sense now.

In general, I think that the short story format allows a little more experimentation, a little more delving into character without a story arc, and Packer is playing with those conventions. Once I realized I was listening to stories, I really liked them. I particularly liked the story about the husband who does a runner and how his kids and his new wife react to the situation. I also liked that Northern California was a constant in the stories (and two of them dealt with Sasha, only she's in her fifties in the second one, and not nearly as messed up as we might have predicted from the first). I'm glad I read the collection, and glad that I didn't know I'd be reading short stories when I started the book, because I generally don't read a lot of them. All in all, a satisfying read, and it felt like an interesting departure from Packer's other books. 

The Kids' Rooms and Bathroom

When I was pregnant with Bryce, my mom offered to paint his bedroom. We were renting at the time, and the rest of the house had flat white paint, but one weekend we painted the baby's room a sunny yellow, and she stenciled navy blue stars as a border around the room. Since that time, it's become a tradition for my mom to do something over-the-top in the kids' rooms. We've had whales and sailboats, flowers and frogs, lots of hot pink flowers, fairies, and in this house she really outdid herself.

The boys' room was one of the first rooms in the house to reach a state of near-completion, and it's stayed this way for two years. Isaac had surgery shortly after we moved to Utah, and we decided that while he was in a full-body cast recuperating, we'd entertain him by transforming his bedroom (I'm guessing he didn't think it was as much fun as we did). He and Bryce have always been huge fans of the zoo, and what do you do to decorate a bedroom for huge zoo fans? You fill the walls with huge elephants, of course. We actually drew the elephants on the wall with washable magic marker, then painted in the lines. Bedding is from The Company Store, beds are from Overstock, dressers are from West Elm. We plan to put cork tiles on the slanted part of the ceiling, but haven't actually gotten that far yet.

When we visited the house for the first time, Annie ran upstairs and claimed this bedroom for her and Maren. I still don't think Isaac has quite forgiven her, but I have to say that I can't blame her. I would have chosen this bedroom for myself if I'd been a kid too. Although we bought the bedding while we still lived in Texas and assembled the beds (from IKEA) in this room before the moving truck arrived, my Mom didn't finish painting the room until about a month ago, and we're currently in the process of adding another bed to the room (we're having a neighbor build a built-in bed in what has been called "the reading nook"). I'd also like to add some curtains, so Annie can have her own little preteen lair in the room she'll soon share with two little sisters. We also have some lovely Olli and Lime wallpaper sitting in the closet that I'll get around to putting up on the slants over the existing beds one of these days. The chairs are from PB Teen and Overstock, bedding from PB Teen, dresser from KSL Classifieds. The embarrassingly large collection of American Girl dolls is courtesy of the Grandmas.

It took me a long time to decide what to do in the bathroom upstairs. I decided that rather than going for something over-the-top (since the bedrooms are already so wild) we'd go understated in the bathroom. I filled it with bird prints painted by Ashley Mae, a friend from my MFA program. The prints are much more lovely in real life than they look in the pictures, and I like the way that this room feels serene.

Up Tomorrow: Master bedroom and bath

Book #102: 22 Brittania Road

Title: 22 Brittania Road
Author: Amanda Hodgkinson
Enjoyment Factor: 5/10
Source: Holladay Library
Referral: Amazon's "Recommended for You"

I was not particularly impressed by the first chapter of this book. The author wrote with too many adjectives. It felt too flowery. But I decided to press on. Here's where  you'll probably expect me to say that I'm so glad I kept reading because the book was awesome. And I'm not going to say that. It wasn't a terrible book. Hodgkinson tells he story of Silvana and Janusz, a young couple living with their baby boy in Warsaw before the outbreak of WWII. During the war they're separated for seven years and they find their reunion and relocation to suburban England more complicated than they anticipated because they both carry scars and secrets from the years they spent apart.

More than any other, it's stories of separations and reunions that get to me. So I expected this one to hit me hard. And it didn't. I'm not sure why-- the writing was a little flowery, but not terrible. Hodgkinson did interesting things with narration-- the three members of the family all told the story, both during the war years and during the year of their reunion. But I never really grew to care for them. They were strangers to each other (which made the reunion difficult) and ultimately felt to be strangers to me. I felt little hope at the end of the book that the family was going to be able to go on as a successful unit, and I'm not sure that was the ending Hodgkinson intended.

The Family Room

We spent most of our time in the family room, so I knew it had to be comfortable and functional. It also had to have a lot of room for lounging, and our favorite pastime, watching television. I found a Room and Board sectional I LOVED, but since that one was more than $5,000, we settled for one from Macy's at less than half the price. It works for now, but a few months ago I went to Room and Board and actually sat on the couch I really wanted, and I had a little moment of silence for what could have been. The chair is also from Macy's, and so is the ottoman (which usually functions as a coffee table but is all skewed and crazy in the picture). The bookshelves are from IKEA and if you look closely, you'll notice that they're backed with the same fabric that's on the benches beneath the windows on the south side of the house. This room is always in a state of chaos, so it's nice to see it looking (mostly) nice for a change. Leslie painted the yellow and orange branch paintings near the back door.

 

Next time: I'll take you upstairs!

Book #101: Turn of Mind

Title: Turn of Mind
Author: Alice LaPlante
Enjoyment Factor: 7/10
Source: Kindle for iPad
Referral: Amazon's "Recommended for You"

While reading Turn of Mind, I became fully convinced that I had Alzheimer's. Every time I had to wait a second to find the right word or forgot what I went into the laundry room looking for, and I just knew that I was going to end up in an assisted living center by age forty. My own neuroses aside, Alice LaPlante does a great job getting in the head of someone with Alzheimer's. If it's not accurate (I honestly don't know how accurate it is) then at least it's very convincing.

In Turn of Mind, Dr. Jennifer White has a good daughter, a bad son, a dead husband, and a recently-murdered best friend. She also has early-onset Alzheimer's, which has forced her to leave her job as a hand surgeon to be cared for first in her home and later in assisted living. Pretty soon, it becomes evident that Dr. White is the prime suspect in her friend's murder. It would have been pretty unbelievable to have her figure out who the real murderer was, which is what I was expecting would happen, so I was pleased to watch the story unfold without having her sleuth it out (in the other books I've read this summer where the protagonists have memory problems-- and I've read a few of them-- this is what has happened). Because Dr. White is not going to get better. She realizes this, and I think that ultimately her friend's murderer realizes the same thing. Turn of Mind is an interesting book written from a unique perspective. I found myself as surprised by the identity of the murderer as I was intrigued by Jennifer's descent into the fog of Alzheimer's.

Hallway, Half Bath, Laundry Room

After passing through the living and rooms, a visitor to our house enters the hallway, which happens to be the spot of one of my most prized possessions. My Aunt Kate Gorman, a fabric artist, made this quilt and we bought it about a year ago. It took a while to figure out how to accessorize it, but I think we finally got a subtle sexually-charged theme working for us. There's space beneath for some of our favorite coffee table books.

When I finished covering a zillion pillows, we had a lot of fabric left over. I'm not one to keep scraps of fabric, so having the fabric in my sewing cupboard made me all twitchy. I'd seen some fabric-covered hoops in different places and decided to try to use them in this bathroom. They're colorful, cheap, and hung just high enough that the boys can't spray them with an errant pee.

I always imagined that when we moved into our "forever" house we'd have a mudroom with lockers for the kids. Although this house doesn't have a mudroom, it does have a nice big laundry room, which was a big, empty laundry room for the first year. Last year I decided to add some organizational stuff, and lockers for the kids. Because of an air-conditioning vent on the floor we had to mount the lockers, which are an IKEA hack (Expedit bookcase turned on its side with some of the shelves taken out). In fact, the room is basically all IKEA, from the kids' art display to the table to the cupboard next to the washer and dryer. The prints are from Leslie's "domestic series." The Donkey Kong piece is by Bryce Miner.

You may notice that we have only four lockers. I haven't figured out how we'll fix that when we have five kids!

Up tomorrow: The Family Room (but not the messy kitchen!)

Book #100: The Devil's Star

Title: The Devil's Star
Author: Jo Nesbo
Enjoyment: 7/10
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Referral: The next in the series of Nesbo books

I wish that I had a great review for my hundredth book this year, but I don't. That's not to say that The Devil's Star wasn't an interesting read, because it was. The book definitely kept me reading. I actually think it may be my favorite of the three Harry Hole books I've read so far. But I don't remember the details well enough to do the book justice. In The Devil's Star, women start turning up dead in Oslo. One has a ring with a star-shaped red diamond on her severed finger, another has a star-shaped red diamond placed under her eyelid. Pretty soon it's evident that there's a serial killer at work in Oslo, and it's Harry Hole's job to find him, which distracts Harry from what has been his main objective for several years-- finding his former partner's killer.

Harry's lucky, because in The Devil's Star, he's finally able to figure out what we have known since The Redbreast-- the identity of the killer. And Harry's also lucky because the two investigations converge in The Devil's Star. The book is exciting and a little gruesome and while it's painful to watch Harry in a tailspin (he's in an alcoholic stupor for much of this book) it's also fun to see him be able to put one of his ghosts to rest. One of the things I've realized while reading the Harry Hole books is how connected Norway is to the former Eastern bloc countries. This is the second book that has a significant connection to Eastern Europe (and the next book continues in the tradition). The books have made me want to visit Oslo in a big way.