Thankful Thursday - Extreme Home Makeover Edition

Are you ready?

Because I have something AMAZING to show you! I'm thankful for so much today, but I've been wanting to show you our NEW master bedroom. It's finally done. Well, I still have one pillow to make, but I'm calling it done.

I know you're excited!

Or, at least, you will be! Here's what our bedroom looked like before:

Please don't email and tell me how awful it looks. First of all, the bedding looked just fine in our first two homes. With white walls. And secondly, I had to get these pictures taken while sorting Summer clothes for the boys. Ugh. It's not usually a MESS like this.

For about two years, I had been looking for new bedding that I liked. Problem was, I couldn't find anything. You won't be surprised to know that I wanted it to be red. Duh. But Coach was adamant that we could have nothing with flowers. Have you ever seen red bedding without flowers? Besides that, I'm a pretty simple kind of girl. I don't like formal (we have eight children, for heaven's sake) or fancy (have I mentioned that I married a football coach?). Classic, is more my style. Impossible to find.

Sometime during the Spring, I found a picture in a magazine that I LOVED. But it was WAY too expensive for my budget. Did I say budget? More like "what food can we do without so that I can buy a new comforter?" Anyway, I loved it, so I decided I'd look into buying the quilt and making the dust-ruffle and drapery panels. I began fabric shopping.

Yeah, I had lost my mind.

Then my Nana found another magazine with a similar print and it was much cheaper then the first one I saw. I debated, tried to think how I could justify it, etc.

Right about then, my Mom called. Said she and Dad would like to get us the new bedding for my birthday! Wow. It still makes me smile, every time I see it. I'm sure she was thinking she'd rather buy the bedding than care for my eight children after I went completely crazy while sewing. Thanks, Mom!

It wasn't just the bedding, though. Check OUT that wallpaper. What were they thinking? I'm not really sure, but it was awful. The whole bathroom and shower area had it, too. Whew.

So we stripped wallpaper, textured, painted, took up the carpet in the bathroom and put tile down. I painted our brass candlestick lamps RED (of course) and our mirror frame (in the bath) BROWN. Got a couple of new shades. Made a new cover for our side table. And a new picture over the bed finished it off.

I'm so very happy with it. Enjoy:

And that, my Friends, is a WHOLE lot to be thankful for.