Bronwyn's Room Transformation

The last time I blogged, I was at the end of my whirlwind "take the girls to college" trip to the US.  It was a great trip, but I came back pretty tired and needing to spend some good time with my boys who stayed here in Porto Alegre.

Well, 3 weeks has gone by and I finally feel like I'm rested up and ready to take care of all the stuff I need to take care of!  Make sense??  

So, the one thing that I didn't show you from our trip was Bronwyn's room.  We all (my mother in law, Carys, Bronwyn, Stephen, and myself ) spent a lot of time working on her room during the week.  I had been bugging Bronwyn about sending me the "after" pictures, and last week she finally did.  So... here we go:

I'm sorry to say that this is the only "before" picture that I took.  I wish I had taken more, because this room really underwent an impressive transformation that can only be truly appreciated if you saw the way it was before.  Her room is actually part of the garage that was closed in to make an extra bedroom.  This hadn't been done by a professional.  The walls are kind of just pieced together and there were big cracks in the corners.  The room was painted white, with the baseboards and all around the window and doors painted black.  And there were some lovely heavy black curtains sadly hanging in the window.

   My mother-in-law and I decided pretty soon that the whole room needed to be repainted.  While I went to meetings with Ansley, Bronwyn and Marie (my MIL) painted the black trim with white enamel paint.  There was a lot of taping involved and a lot of care taken not to get the carpet dirty.  But, they got it done and did a great job.  Just covering the black made a huge difference.

 Bronwyn picked out a beige color for the walls...

 And we rolled and painted 2 coats on all the walls, except one.

 Looking so much better already!

 For the wall that her bed would be against, Bronwyn picked out a pretty salmon pink color.  She wanted the room colors to be salmon/coral with brown.

 Here is a picture of Bronwyn's bed before:

She bought it from a friend last year and got a good deal on it.  She liked that it had storage, but it wasn't comfortable to lean back against it, so we did a little bed makeover.

 After painting it, we made a cushioned board and connected it with hinges at the bottom of the shelves to make a cover for the shelves.  It stays closed with velcro at the top.

 We bought a curtain panel for the window and a really cheap sheer one for the closet.

Here are the final pictures:  

Stephen snagged this couch when ACU got new dorm lobby furniture.  It fit in and matched perfectly.  We made those salmon colored pillows using this tutorial since we didn't have a sewing machine handy. (yeah, Pinterest!)

The picture above the couch is a poster of a picture that Stephen took of Bronwyn sitting on a pier during their trip to the Amazon this summer. 

This coffee table was given to Bronwyn by a friend of ours in Memphis.  It was a dark brown stain.  we took it apart and painted it cream with the pinkish legs. It looked so cute.

The bookshelf came from Stephen's family.  Bronwyn made the little chalkboard (which still has Anderson's name that he wrote on there).  We bought the mirror for 6.00 at at flea market in Abilene and painted it.  The little table was from my parents.  

This is the left wall of her room.  It was the one in the worst shape (half the wall was concrete, the other half some pieced together plaster things that hadn't been pieced together very well.)  To cover up the bad shape of the wall, we covered two foam core boards with fabric and hung them on either side of the bulletin board which we had also covered with coordinating fabric.  Bronwyn bought her desk for a good price last year.  It's "shabby chic".

Just a shot of the closet and window with new curtains.

This is my favorite part:  Bronwyn worked on these embroidery hoops all summer.  Some are embroidered, some have doilies (thanks, Granna!), some are just fabric, some have felt flowers, and one is just string wrapped around a hoop.  Put all together, they looked so good behind her bed.  The little table beside the bed was from my parents.  It was bright orange when they bought it, but they stripped it and painted it this creamy color.  It went perfectly beside her bed.  The lamp, we found at a thrift store in Abilene for $10.  Bronwyn has had her brown bedspread since her freshman year.  Every year we have made new pillows.  My mom made these two pillows for her bed to coordinate with her colors.

So, that is it!  It turned out so cute and it was fun to work on!  Thanks to everyone who helped us - the grandparents and friends who donated furniture - and all the people who spent time working on everything in the room.

Hopefully Bronwyn will have lots of good times (and lots of good studying) in this room!

ONE MORE DAY!!!

Dear boys,

Just wanted to stop in my packing frenzy and tell you how much I love you all and how much I miss you.  Carys and I can't wait to get home.

I would post some pictures, but there is nothing special.  Just imagine that scenario of me running around cramming things into already pretty full bags.

Besides, if I posted pictures you might accidentally see some surprises!!

Well, in an hour and a half are leaving for the airport, so I better get the rest of my packing done.

I love you all so much!!

love,
Mom

Happy Birthday, Kevin!!

Today is my husband's birthday.  HAPPY!

I am still in the USA and he is in Brazil.  SAD!

But, as he has told me, it is just another day.  We will celebrate when I get home on Wednesday (only 3 more days!).

In keeping with the Blume birthday blog tradition, I have asked our kids to write something special about their dad on his birthday.

At our new sponsoring church recently, someone who doesn't know Kevin that well yet, said that he was surprised to learn that Kevin is a big cut-up.  You will see from these words about their dad (and the pictures), that our kids, who know him VERY well, love to cut up and goof around with their dad.  And vice versa.

So here goes:

Giovanni:  happy fathers day!happy birthday dad! hi dad! you are so beautiful dad and you are so mean to mean dad! and i went to sogipa with dad and anderson! i love dad!

Anderson:  dad you are so cool, the only bad thing about you is that you are a big fat goober! Happy birthday! i love you! anderson

Carys:  Dad is the best dad ever i couldn't ever ask for a better one he always makes me laugh when i am sad and i wish i could be there today for his birthday but when i get there i am obviously going to do something special for him when i get there i loovvveee you dad!!!

Garrett: dad is the BEST dad in the world!! i love doing stuff with him, and spending time with him! a specially love wrestling with him, but i feel sorry cause i always beat him! i love you dad! happy bday!

Ansley:  DADDY POO, I LUH YOU, YOU SO NICE, I LUH YOU. did you like that rhyme that i made for you, daddy? well daddy, i love you so much. and i hope that you have an AMAZING day and know that we LOVE AND MISS YOU SO SO SO MUCH. sorry for never calling you daddy. now im making up for it. LOVE YOU, DADDY!!!

Bronwyn: Happy Birthday Dad!!!! I hope you have a great day today in the man cave! Thank you for being such a great dad. I love talking to you and beating you up when I'm home. Thank you for always calming me down when I call you and reminding me to have fun. I love you!! Love, your favorite child.

Me:  Simply said, you are the greatest blessing that God has given me.  I love you so much.  Thank you for treating me like a queen and being patient and loving with all my shortcomings.  I can't wait to get back to Brazil and be with you (and the boys, of course.)  I love the way you never stop growing, never stop trying and never giving up on being the best husband, dad, missionary, whatever that you can be.  Thanks for inspiring me to do the same.  KISS KISS - HUG HUG.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  YOU ARE VERY LOVED!

To my guys - 4 days left

Ok. Well I'm posting from an iPad for the first time. A little weird to type on a screen instead of a keyboard.

(Actually, I'm posting this a day late.  I never could get the iPad to work.  We are now back in Memphis - tired of driving, tired of eating out, but very thankful to be back safe!)

We are in Dallas tonight on our way back to Memphis from Abilene. This morning i went to meetings with Bronwyn about her nursing school. It was really neat to see her school, meet her teachers and hear what her classes will be like. She will have to study really hard, but we all know she will do great, right?

After her meetings we went to get her uniform and shoes. Check her out:

We picked up Ansley and took some farewell pictures:

Then we said goodbye with only a few tears and we were on our way.

When we got to the hotel, we didn't feel like getting ready and going out for dinner. We weren't that hungry and just sick of being in the car. So I decided to just go to the grocery store and get some stuff for supper. Here is my awesome supper combo:

 Chicken strips, baked potato salad, chips, popcorn, orange crush, and molasses cookies. That's gourmet dining at it's finest right there. Now our hotel room smells like a combo of micro popcorn and fried chicken. Yum!

Honestly, we are all so tired we don't even care. It was sad to say goodbye to the girls, but we are all ready to be on our way back home.

Love and miss you all,
Mom

To my guys - counting down now - 6 days left!

Hi Guys,

Sorry about not posting yesterday.  Lack of computer access again.

I wanted to tell you about something really neat that we got to see on Tuesday night.  It was the Candlelight Devo that is a tradition at ACU.

All of the kids who aren't freshman, and a lot of teachers and other adults, line up in a path and hold candles.  They all start to sing really pretty devotional songs and then the freshmen walk through the path on their way to an outside theater.  As they walk along and listen to the singing, sometimes people jump out of the line to give someone a hug.

As the freshmen get to the amphitheater they start lining up and filling in the seats, and then they get candles and start singing, too.  Then there is a little speech by one of the teachers at ACU.

It was really, really neat.  Grandmommy, Carys and I got to line up with Bronwyn, Stephen and all of their friends as the freshmen walked through.  Then we listened to the speech which was really, really good.

Here are some pictures:

This is the Bible building.  The sky looked so pretty as we got to the campus.

A group of freshmen was meeting on the grass.  We saw a girl from the back with blonde, curly hair and thought it was Ansley, but it turned out to be someone else. 

This is called the Tower of Light.

As Grandmommy said as we were leaving, "This was worth the whole trip."

It was really, really neat and, again, I am just so thankful that Bronwyn and Ansley are at such a pecial place with such loving people.

Love you all,
Mom