Redecorating, Repurposing, Rearranging, and Reading

My inspiration for this fall.

With our house getting appraised on Thursday, I went on a cleaning spree yesterday.  While cleaning, I decided to move furniture around and redecorate our house.  I ended up getting rid of our kitchen table and chairs and opening up our dining room table to eat on.  There is so much more room in the kitchen!  I love it.  I also took everything out of the china cabinet, cleaned it out, and put all our crystal underneath so that I could put some other things on display.

Christmas idea

I also moved furniture around in the living room and re-purposed the fireplace.  I took out the logs, the grate, and the screen and put in some cloth.  I will be filling it with gourds and pumpkins for the fall.  We always come back with a ton from our annual Rinehart Family Cabin Vacation, so this year I have a plan for them!  At Christmas I will switch out the gourds for Christmas candles, evergreen branches, sparkles, and fake snow.  During non-holiday times some plain candles would look nice.  I can thank Pinterest for giving me all these ideas.

Non-holiday idea

When Sebastian saw everything I was doing, his first reaction was, "What a mess!" After his initial impression he fell in love with everything I did.  He likes eating in the dining room now, though he told me we should move the microwave and refrigerator into the dining room.  What a goof.

In unrelated news, Sebastian read his first words yesterday!  I introduced him to the "at" family and the "an" family.  He was reading pat, bat, mat, pan, man, etc.  He even read a mini-book called Zac the Rat.  He was SO proud of himself.  I was so scared to teach him to read, but he has made it so easy.  He is eager to read, and I probably could have started him a while ago, but I was putting it off waiting for him to get older.  My plan is for him to be able to read independently by the end of this school year.  I have no doubts that he will. I would love to see him read to his little sister.