signs of sweet times

***edited to read: for the first time ever, i'm linking up to beautiful life friday

melissa asked the question: what's your labor of love?

i wanted to have special rooms at my house for my grandchildren. somewhere to play & nap & of course, potty & bathe. i needed a special space for guests, as well.
my daughter(change is good @ corrielap.blogspot.com) & i have spent the last couple of months turning 2 bedrooms & a jack & jill bathroom into what we hope will be a special place for the grandchildren & guests.

we crafted, we repurposed, we got creative with burlap & i had a lot of fun sewing up some birdie toile (see my 5/27 post), too. what resulted is our labor of love.

it's a beautiful life here at life is good***

once again, it's time for





my daughter lost her job at the beginning of march. to say it was devastating, is putting it mildly.

but sometimes in the midst of a bad situation, God gives you a special something to remind you of how much He loves you & that in spite of how it seems, He is with you.

He has given us the gift of time these past few months. corrie & i have had so much fun together working on the grandkids/guest rooms & she's helped me do a lot of crafts & art projects. that is, in between our playtimes with eva, her soon to be 10 month old daughter.

corrie's always been very artistic but lots of other things pushed all that to the background. she's enjoying rediscovering her artistic side & i'm enjoying watching her do so.

this is a sweet painting she did for the doorway to the grandkids' room.


i'm lovin' it & i'm sure they will, too.

come on in & i'll show you the rest.




the quilt & picture above bed are from home goods. i can't believe how well the quilt goes with the birdie toile pillows & how beautiful the picture is!

the birdie relax night light is from cracker barrel!






there's those birdie toile curtains, again.

the table & chairs were mine. my mom bought them for me when i was 3 (in 1954!)

my sweet hubby made the cowboy peg thingy when he was 9 or 10 (i just noticed the cobweb on it! yuck.)
the big monkey face is a placemat & the small one is a potholder. they're from target last summer. i just slit them open & stuffed & sewed them shut.


here's some close ups of the signs we did (we do love our mod podge):






all the plaques & signs were made with 1/4" mdf board that i asked my hubby to buy & cut up for me. a 2'x4' piece was 4 something. i still have a stack of them left.


look! more burlap :)







next on the tour is the bathroom:


birdie towels from cracker barrel

these birdies are really placemats

more birdie toile (i know, i know. how tacky to have a ring on the wall, but ya gotta keep it handy)



the cutesy shelf is also from.....you guessed it! cracker barrel. we found all this stuff on our way to south carolina in the spring & had to cart it all the way there & all the way home.
gotta jazz up the wipes container, too!




my sister thought she was going to sell this in our garage sale, hah!


on the other side of the bathroom is the nursery/guestroom:

the iron bed was my great aunt's & the cedar chest was my high school graduation present (1969). now it's doing double duty as a changing table. there's a non-skid pad underneath.





the crib looks so bare without the black toile bumper pads (or a baby).





well - that concludes the tour of the grandkids room/guestroom/bathroom/nursery. one of my sisters & a friend of hers came to stay overnite 2 weeks ago & gave it the good housekeeping stamp of approval. i hope you will, too.

it was a lot of fun to put it all together. i'm sure you noticed that all of the words were verbs. we thought hard & long about what words were the most important verbs we could pass on to our little ones & place before them as they play & nap.
i hope & pray that they will learn these words & that they will be meaningful words for them & that they won't think of them as commands but a promise of good things in store for them in the days ahead.

maybe i'm just a silly grandma but i want so much for these 4 little ones. better close, before i start crying. i get so sappy thinking about them.

here's the latest of the 4 of them.





henry & eston were at the table. eva saw some ice cream & came crawling up. we had corbin's dad put him in the picture & then couldn't get dad to get out of the picture, hah!

in closing, here's a little sign on the inside of my front door. no, i didn't make it, but i do pray it for all who enter & leave - & for you, as well.


(gotta go now - & read all the posts for this week. you should, too!