Getting ready for the school year

I haven't posted in a while, but we are having an great summer. In July we surprised my daddy for his birthday and had a fabulous weekend at Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio.

Most recently I have been scrambling to get the house organized and decorated before we start school, because everyone knows that if everything is organized and cute you'll have a great school year.

Our dining room also doubles as the school area so this was obviously first priority. So I went on a delightful, child free shopping spree to Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, Dollar Tree and Walmart. I used a high quality, washable paint, purchased picture frames (50% off of course), several sets of foldable canvase totes, numerous baskets, bins and buckets and set to work. Our dining room table was unusable for almost 2 weeks as I gutted our homeschool closet, organize the bookshelves, painted and decorated.

Notice there is a missing picture on the photo wall below. I was given an beautiful photo from our trip to Ohio and immediately knew just what to do with it. I spent HOURS arranging and rearraning these frames to make it just right. I measure, hung, rehung and leveled everything. I got to the last photo in the middle and realize that this beautiful picture is designed to sit on a shelf and not hang on a wall. It has no hardware to hang it. Mr. Fixit assured me that we could purchase the hanging hardware next time we go to town and over that last three weeks we have both forgotten each and every time we leave the valley.

This is my very first artificial flower arrangement. 

 And finally a peek into my homeschool closet. This is a work in progress, but I feel like I have everything consolidated and organized for the first time since the move. The goal was to get the house done this week, lesson plans next week and we will start school on Sept 3 since the co-op we are participating in this year starts on the 5th. Then this morning both kids were begging to do school, so life stopped while Blue read us a book and Pink practiced writing her numbers. I think this is going to be a good year.