We're going on a small tangent this post so I can write about our past week. :) We were home only to sleep and shower this week anyway so absolutely nothing went on at our house. But anyway, enough of the small stuff. On to what this post is really about.
Every year during Vacation Bible School (VBS), where pre-kindergartners through 4th graders learn and play at our church with Jesus as their focal point, the 'big' kids who have grown out of VBS (the 5th through 8th graders) go to St. Mary's Home for the week, a children's home here where they revamp a wing of bedrooms. The kids living at St. Mary's home all come from very dysfunctional, abusive families so we try to make their lives a little more normal by giving their bedrooms a more comfortable, personal style. Since kids may come and go and gender numbers fluctuate, sometimes girls get moved onto wings that were previously decorated to be boys wings and vice-versa. This year, however, the wing we did was and had been a boys wing so all we did was freshen it up with some paint, new curtains, and new bedding. We also lightened up a T.V./hang out room with new curtains and decorative pillows. We call this week of working "Trading Spaces - God's Way". Following are pictures I took showing the transformations. :)
I spent all of my time and energy on the week before and during Trading Spaces making new valances for every window on the wing. That equaled 13! I found all of the fabric (36 yards of it!) for right under $100 by shopping around and hitting up a favorite discount store! It was so much fun to pick out fabric that coordinated to the bedding! I made sure to have enough fabric for each window valance plus extra for the girls to help sew matching, decorative pillow covers. :)
Very 'boyish' fabric, huh?
Onto the rooms.
Here's the T.V. room before:
The curtains were awful! They were dated, dirty, too dark, and just plain 'ole weird. Needless to say, they had to go.
After the new valances went up and a donated couch was moved in, here's the lighter, brighter edition of the boys new hang out spot:
The wing we were doing had been redone by a Trading Spaces team about six years ago and definitely needed a pick-me-up and a really good deep cleaning, even though in the before pictures they don't look that bad. The team leader this year decided to go with a neutral paint color that could easily transition the wing to a girls' wing if need be so, color was brought into the rooms in the curtains, pillows, bedding, and other accessories. Here are the pictures:
Room 1 before:
Room 1 after:
Room 2 before:
Room 2 after:
Room 3 before:
Room 3 after:
Room 4 before:
Room 4 after:
Room 5 before:
Room 5 after:
Room 6 before:
Room 6 after:
The kids volunteering (all 85 of them!) had a great time painting, sewing, crafting wooden crosses, new bulletin boards, and frames, and arranging the furniture in the completed rooms - all for a fellow kid in need of love, compassion, and a bedroom they could call their own. It was awesome to see God working through His children!
So, that was our week in a nutshell...er, pictures. We'll be back next week with our regular, Bean Team happening. We've got more pictures of the love seat (still very unfinished and definitely the eye sore of the living room) and maybe even some more projects, including some landscape refreshing we tackled this morning. :) Have a blessed weekend!
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