Five Favourites -- New house! New reasons to nest!-edition

I just love my new house! 

The tall staircase, the tin ceiling in the living room, the fact that it has two, count 'em two, bathrooms, the spacious backyard, the sweet little laundry room away from the public's eye (as our old house had the laundry RIGHT at the front door).

All of it is begging to be photographed. . . when perhaps there are fewer cardboard boxes to be seen. 

Yet some of it could use a leeetle sprucing up, Jenna-style, so it will look more like our home. Thus I give you this week's 5 Favourites!

1.

This adorable kid-room art.

This little fellow in the painting reminds me so much of my own boys that I would love to have this hanging in their bedroom. Right now their room is a mishmash of dated wood-panelling and stencils of... wait for it... hummingbirds feeding from morning-glories. It fascinates me who decided to go ahead with that!

My agreeable little four-year-old told me, "I like the hummingbirds pretty well, but I think I might like trains more."

Sometime, maybe, my sweet.

2.

(I can't get the image to upload! You'll have to trust me on this, or, click the link to see.)

This lovely duvet set.

Our current duvet is doing just fine so in actual fact I have no intention of replacing it any time soon. Yet here I am dreaming of redecorating every room, and I do love these colours so much. They're so soothing and yet somehow invigorating. I wouldn't have thought that was possible simultaneously, but there it is! I can only imagine I would get a PERFECT night's sleep and wake up bounding down to the kitchen in well-rested joy to put the oatmeal on after sleeping under that duvet.

Right?

3.

This so-sweet-my-heart-sings set of four prints.

I love this little family, exploring and traipsing around through the great outdoors in each season. The bearded papa reminds me, of course, of my own darling husband, and while I think each picture is adorable, I love the autumn picture best of all. The baby-wearing mother picking apples?! My heart can't handle the sweetness!

4.

This table runner.

I think I have decided runners are God's gift to busy homemaking mothers -- they are way less likely to get food on them than tablecloths because they don't sit under the messy eaters of the house! 

So I am on the look out for pretty, funky and yet fancy runners. I think this one suits my taste. 

5.

This 'classroom' border.

So, because we live in Ontario now, everyone expects us to be beginning Kindergarten with my oldest. He's only four. I mean, he just turned four two months ago! Truth be told, we have already done some "homeschooling" with him, but that seems like a funny word to describe it. It's more like, jumping-on-his-natural-interests-in-an-unstructured-fashion, mostly to the tune of reading him lots of good books, and letting him practice writing, and spending the rest of our days playing outside, using Legos, running errands together and conversing all the while.

Y'know, family life.

I really wasn't intending on doing "formal" school until he was at least five, maybe even six. Yet the push is there to start school, not simply from the wider culture here in this province but even somewhat from him. He's eager! 

So I am thinking, very loosely, about "curriculum" -- some nifty new picture books, working his way through the simple and gentle CHC workbooks, and maybe hanging this border in our kitchen to help him learn about the saints and go through the alphabet (he does actually know his letters already, though). 

I don't see us having a "school room" per say, in part because we lack the space but mostly because I think that's slightly arbitrary. His learning is happening while he plays, eats with his family, gets taken to Mass, the grocery store, friends' houses. So where would I designate to be "school"?

Yet I think it would be snazzy to have this in our kitchen, because that's where he will do most of his pen-and-paper work. And I just really like this border.



Don't forget to head over to Hallie's blog and check out other more Favourite-worthy Favourites, and especially, consider supporting her effort to help out Dwija who is bravely facing a very challenging pregnancy.