Turning My Home Into A Haven

I'm having so much fun doing all the items that I found on the "How To Celebrate the Autumn Equinox" page that I found!  Of the 11 items, I've done 7 already.  This weekend I completed #9 Turn Your Home Into A Haven.  When I first read this one, I immediately thought of two areas of my house in which this could apply.  First, my downstairs bathroom.  We have done nothing with it since we moved in.  We rarely use it, but now we're starting to send the boys downstairs to shower at night.  So, I thought it might be fun to decorate it.  I don't want to do much, just a few things on the walls, a new bath mat and some fresh towels.  The other option was to clean the unfinished side of our basement.  That's where I do laundry and where we store all of our decorations, kitchen appliances that we don't use regularly (the griddle) and all kinds of other stuff that never found a home anywhere else.  It was cleaned out the summer we lost Meg and got the laundry chute, but that was before Olivia was born.  It was overdue. It was beyond messy.  Let's just say you couldn't walk from one end to the other in a straight line.  Of the two I was all set to do the bathroom.  That one was fun.  I got to go shopping and get some cute things and be a little creative with making the boring bathroom into a boys bathroom.  Then we looked at a house.
 I don't know if I've blogged about this or not, but we're passively looking for a house.  (That's the opposite of actively looking.)  Our house isn't on the market, we're not pre-approved for a loan, we 're just kind of browsing and seeing what's out there.  So Saturday I found a 6 bedroom for a really great price.  When we walked through I realized WHY.  Holes in the walls and ceiling, carpeting ripped up in the upstairs hallway and bedroom, beyond outdated kitchen and bathrooms, windows in need of repair, I could go on and on.  We're not considering it anymore, but it got me thinking about how if you don't maintain your house, it can fall down around you.  Then I cleaned out my unfinished side of the basement.  It took me 3 1/2 hours.  I still have a pile to go to Goodwill along one wall, but it's WORLDS better.  I'm so glad I did it and I feel good every time I go in that room.  I feel like it's really in the spirit of what the Autumn Celebration list meant my making my house a haven.  Now on to the next item--Be Creative.

I realize that it probably still looks messy, but it's so much better than it was!

These are both "after" pictures.  I was going to do "before" but it was too embarrassing to capture in a pic.