Much Better

Second post of the day.

I spent the day moving all my sewing and embroidering supplies and furniture out of my horse room and into...

... my other horse room! Honestly, it was supposed to be a library but somehow those plastic and china ponies snuck in there, too.

There are several sets of shelves and two china cabinets in there full of horses, so I am still surrounded by part of my collection while I sew and embroider.

The other room seems so much less cramped now.

No doubt I will fill it up again - with horses!

Shelf Juggling

Last year I undertook a major project to replace my mishmash of shelves with matching Billy shelves from IKEA. It was a long and arduous process, but I was pleased with the result. I kept the old shelves, and Craig and I turned two of the spare bedrooms into libraries for ourselves. 

We are both retired teachers, me at the elementary level and he at the university, so needless to say, we have a lot of books - books which have been in boxes, some for as long as six years. But as you can see, my library is no longer just dedicated to books. Horses began creeping in almost immediately. I resolved that after the holidays were over, I would work to get things better organized in there.

I wanted to hang these paintings that had been hanging above my old shelves and were displaced by the Billy shelves.

Two teacher friends had recently gifted me with more paintings and I wanted to display them, too.

 My Grandma and Grandpa Honeywell's portraits were displayed along with their old Bibles on an antique writing desk that had belonged to Grandma Honeywell. I wanted to keep it in my library, and had an idea as to how to make that happen.

First, I moved in the lone Billy shelf that I had not used in my horse room. I planned to get my Hartlands out of boxes and display them again on it. That's the gorgeous cherry woodcut TWH, first on the shelf. (I measured and there is room for a second Billy shelf of the same size without blocking the light switch. I may order another one soon.)

Billy shelves are just a little short for longer models like the Pacer, so I moved those into the library to put on the older shelves.

I also brought in the Hartland boxes and unwrapped those and put them on the shelves.

 There is still lots of room on them should I find any more when I am out antiquing.

I didn't open Grandma Honeywell's desk (lift up that top and it expands into a larger desk with lots of cubbyholes to squirrel things away!) but I did place my childhood lamp (an antique kerosene lamp owned by my Great Grandma Honeywell, Marilla, that was converted to electricity when my mother was a baby) and put the two newest paintings on it.

I still need to hang the three large paintings, but I have called it quits for the day. I am almost done, though, and very happy with how things are looking.

Lynn's Library

Now that the reshelving of my horse room is complete, I am setting up libraries in two of our spare bedrooms - one for Craig, and one for me. Our kids are all grown and have been out of the home for years, and we only use the spare bedrooms for guests a couple of times a year - why not use them now for our personal book collections?

I am repurposing my old model horse shelves for the libraries. I kept three for me and gave Craig the rest.

Craig retired four years before I did, and he was a teacher, too, although at the university level. His extensive personal library was kept in his office on campus, and when he retired, he brought 75 boxes of books home!

 Many of those boxes have been sitting in our garage while the others were upstairs in his home office. But there simply is not enough room in that office for all of his books.

Now he can spread out and enjoy them again. I know the feeling - books, to me, are like old friends. I am so excited to have a place to put mine again.

This week I have been deep cleaning the house in preparation for my pony party/live show, Happy Trails II. But I have also squeezed in some time to put my own books out on my repurposed shelves.

The shelf on the right has my sales items out on display for Happy Trails II. The other entrants will set their sales items out on the shelves in Craig's library. That way there is no need for anyone to bring extra tables.

My books have been mostly boxed away and in the closet of my new library room. It was so much fun to open them and see some old favorites. In an upcoming post I will show you some of the gems that I had forgotten I had!

Puzzles with a Pony

Do you happen to notice the family resemblance in this picture?

 Er, to Cambria, not the stuffed pony!

Last week Jessica took Cambria and Titan to their local library. She told me that Cambria grabbed the stuffed pony, put it in a chair and got it a puzzle, set one up for herself, and then did puzzles with the pony!

I'm not much of a puzzler, but a pony and a library full of books? I'm all over that!

 There is definitely a family resemblance going on here!