Decorating for the Kid in You

"I love being an adult," I said to Justin last night.  "Huh?," he replied, pulled from what he was doing, "what do you mean?"  Here's what I meant.

As you may have noticed over the last couple of years, I've been more & more focused on home design and decor.  Working on our house has of course been the primary driver for that and I find myself having a wonderful time almost every night searching the internet for fun & whimsical things to translate to our own house.  As I look back at what we've already done and what we have planned, it makes me happy, but I think it's all gonna make our nephews and our future kids really happy, too.

So what I meant was that the best part of being an adult is that you get to do what you wanted to do when you were a kid!  To wit, here are some of the things we've already done that I've always wanted:

• put not one, but two hammocks up in the yard
• planted blueberry bushes (they don't look great right now after our dry summer, but hopefully they'll recover in the spring.  either way, we did it.)
• started a veggie garden
• made a pretty little pantry

Here's what we're in the middle of right now:

• building an awesome two-tiered brick patio
• converting my garden house --> office/potting house

And here are some future things we have planned that we think are awesome and expect that most kids will too:

• converting the office/potting house into an office/guest house down the road
• moving my potting stuff to the tool shed after the above happens . . . 
• AND converting the tool shed into a chicken coop for a few laying hens
• planting some forsythia, lilac, and hydrangea bushes around the yard
• hanging some swings in the trees around the house
• building window seats into both bedroom's dormers to create little reading nooks (like this one)
• digging out a root/wine/beer cellar in the hillside & building a green hobbit door for it (just like Bilbo's)

In addition to those more "physical plant" things, I was walking around this morning thinking how "us" our house already is.  It's filled with dogs, books, and plants.  Almost everything is made of natural materials (wood, cotton, wool, and leather are the most common materials in our home).  I can see little Stacey and little Justin being very, very happy here.  Hooray for using adult powers to live out your kid dreams!