I want to prepare you all that for a time on this blog, I am going to be giving a tour of my house and the things that we have done to improve it.  I love my house and I am proud of the hours that we have put into it to make it the still rough-cut gem that it is.

I also want to talk about my house because it will help me get back into the habit of blogging with some regularity without forcing me to think about whether or not I want to discuss something personal.  My house is pretty neutral territory as far as I’m concerned.

I’m also in my house a lot.  We only have one car that my husband uses to commute to and from his job.  I go weeks at a time without leaving this house.  Yes, I go crazy but it does help that I am a homebody at my core.

Today I’d like to start with my bedroom.

After a long day of being stuck in this house with my two precious little boys and their millions of toys, I look forward to when I can go to my room.  My room is my happy quiet place.

When we first toured this house with the realtor, it was that finished attic that made me really fall in love with this house.  It looked terrible back then, but I knew with a little imagination and a lot of hard work it could be a great room.

We started the work not long after we moved in in November of 2009.  We got it cleaned up and had started painting doors.  Then I started feeling sick.  Then I found out I was pregnant.  Painting stopped.

In my sickness I was forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor in a room that eventually became our office.  At the time, it looked like a hoarder’s room, stuffed nearly to the ceiling with little things that cannot be placed until the large things are unpacked.  So my husband and father-in-law bust their kindly asses in getting that room finished for the poor, depressing, sick pregnant lady.  And I am so grateful.  I love that room.

For me to properly explain how it is awesome that my bedroom is basically on it’s own floor (story) of my house, I’ll need to explain my house.  I’ve never seen such a strange layout before, although I am admittedly inexperienced with this.  My house is like to smaller houses pushed together like a “T”.  Each of the two smaller houses is two-story, but when pushed together, the stories don’t line up, so I technically have 4 floors to my house, but each floor is small because it is part of one of the smaller houses.  Does that make any sense at all?  The bottom floor of my house only has the laundry room, family room and a small powder room.  The next floor has the living room, kitchen, dining room and sun room.  The next floor has a bathroom, the boys’ bedrooms and the office.  The last floor is my bedroom and bathroom.  When I say it in terms of floors it sounds like  I live in a mansion, but I don’t.  It’s just a quirky layout that I actually adore.

Now it’s picture time!  I’m going to show before and after photos.  The before photos were taken before we actually bought the house, so you can see it as we saw it then.  The after photos I just took about 10 minutes ago, so they are very recent.

This is a before image of the stairs that lead from the “third floor” up to my bedroom.  Notice how there are only 7 stairs?  All the flights of stairs leading from one “floor” to the other in this house are about 7 stairs.

Yellow paint makes for a happy Somer.  Almost all of the main living areas of this house were gray when we bought it.  Now they are almost all yellow and this is a much happier looking home.

This is looking into the room before.  Those curtains were infested with spiders (I nearly died of a heart attack) and the walls and ceiling were painted the same dirty peach color.

My bedroom.  I love my sleigh bed.  It’s like actually being IN a bed rather than on it.  I also love that quilt more than any piece of clothing I own and it is the reason for the splashes of pink around the room as I am not normally a fan of pink.  the color on the walls is called Pink Chocolate and I adore it.

Also, I did not make my bed just for the occasion of photographing my bedroom.  Making my bed is a sort of mood thing with me.  I am happier when my bed is made and my room is clean.  At the end of the day I can go to my room and slide into the crisp sheets like I am in a hotel almost.  It’s a small pampering thing I do for myself.

And yes, that is a treadmill in the back right.  And yes, it does get used…sometimes.

There was this weird padding velcroed to the wall covering an access panel to a tiny storage space.  Since it was so tiny, we covered the space and dry-walled the space so it is a normal wall now.  These panels were also infested with spiders.

The angled door to the left is a small closet with shelving.  The door to the right is a walk-up to the small attic space.

A little white paint makes a big difference.

Here is a look inside of the small closet.  I have not yet dealt with that hideous wallpaper.  This was originally going to be a linen closet but….

..it has transformed into the “present closet” where I hide birthday presents and Christmas presents.  I have two birthdays coming up so that is why the closet is currently stuffed.

This is the space where there were two small sliding-door closets facing each other.  These closets are useless and provide no really useful storage.  Although we regretted losing the light of that southern-facing window, we closed it in…

……and…..

….made it a small walk-in closet.  It is stuffed with organizational shelving and hanging rods.

There is a small bathroom attached to this bedroom.  It has a sink, toilet and stand-up shower.  It is tiny and ugly, but it is also clean and fulfills it’s purpose.  We haven’t done much to it, but there are big plans in the future for it.

I had never seen a corner toilet before this.  It is old and you need about 20 lbs. of pressure to push the lever to flush it.  And, yes, that is a stainless steel painted plastic toilet seat.

Now for a few other picture of my bedroom as it is now.

I think it is always neat to see what a person keeps on their bedside table.  Here on mine I have the remotes for the tv and cable box (I go into a psychotic froth when Jessie uses the remotes…he goes TOO SLOW), hand lotion, hand sanitizer, lip balm, a book, a clock, a baby monitor, a box of tissues and a vintage-looking phone.  Is it just me, or do cordless phones start to get ugly?  I love old looking phones and I loved this one when I saw it.  I almost got the white one because, as I’ve said, I’m not really a fan of pink, but the pink somehow struck me as looking more antique-y.  You can also see my grandmother’s cheap green cross draped over the edge of my bed in the top left.

I keep a shadow box I made of Lukas’ first birthday.  I will be making another for Ruegen after his birthday in October and hanging it beneath this one.

This is my dresser.  In this area, among other things, you will find a Nintendo 64, a can of mace, a stereo, and a bottle of linen spray so my sheets and pillows smell fresh every night.

I put those masks on the wall originally as a joke on Jessie.  He gets creeped out by faces looking at him at night.  They were things I used to hang on the walls of my bedroom as a teenager.  There is also a fake plant, my great-grandmother’s sewing box painted green, and my jewelry box.  The big picture…

..also belonged to my great-grandmother.  Don’t let that fool you, it had a Hills sticker on it.  So technically it is junk, but I am still very fond of it.

That’s about all there is to that room.  Next I’ll entertain you with a story of terror, painted over wallpaper, and IKEA furniture that made me hate allen wrenches more than I previously did…which was a lot.

I am very fond of my brother.  I love it when he calls me or texts me in the evenings.  We talk about books and movies mostly or we reminisce about days gone by.

We were texting tonight I was poking fun at him calling him a jerkface and I suddenly remembered how when we were kids we would twist the other’s name to be ridiculous and annoying to the other.

His name is Brandon.  I called him Brandy, Brandumb, Brando, B.J., and even blowjob a few times.  When we were little he would scream at me to shut up but as we got older he learned to giggle about it.

He called me Somer-Bummer, Somer-Dumber, and my personal favorite, Sunburn.  Sunburn still makes me giggle with pride because that one is pretty good.  Creative.  Smart-assy.  Annoying.

When he was a toddler, he would get my name and “supper” mixed up.  He called me Supper all the time and it drove me crazy.

As adults, my brother and I like each other a lot.  I know a lot of siblings aren’t so lucky.  I know I’m lucky and I am grateful to not have feelings other than love and adoration towards my brother.

I hope my boys have something similar, but that kind of stuff always works out in weird ways, doesn’t it?  I never thought as children that my brother and I would get along as well as we do.  When it comes to all out brawls, we could have sold Pay-Per-View tickets.

I know more people who DON’T get along with siblings.

I’m lucky.

And nobody can call me “Sunburn” except my brother or I’ll have to pour  bottle of ketchup on your head.

In a small one-bathroom house, that one bathroom is sometimes the most important room in the house.  Especially with 4 people living under the same roof.  It wasn’t so much the case for us.  We were always pretty well-timed with bathroom time and rarely had to argue over someone using too much time.  Oddly, the one thing in the bathroom that we DID have to argue over was the bathroom mirror.

There were only two mirrors in that house large enough to be used for vanity use; the small mirror above the bathroom sink and the mirror on the dresser in my parents’ bedroom.  He used both.

He would spend close to a half hour some days posing and staring at himself in these mirrors.  He would turn this way and that examining himself, admiring himself, worrying about his body.  Then we would hear the words, “Honey, do I look big today?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger was his idol.  I’m not proud to admit that I’ve seen the movie “Pumping Iron” at least three times.  Sometimes he would go into a frenzy and make frequent visits to the gym and sometimes he would slack.  There were whispers of steroids.  There were protein shakes, dozens of supplements to take every morning, revealing clothes to showcase his physique, and always with the damned mirrors.

“Honey, do I look any bigger today?”

Being skinny and weak looking was a major fear of his.  He wanted to be impressive.  He was a walking, talking pile of machismo wannabe and desperately needed a mythic physique to prove to the world that he was wonderful.

He was constantly comparing his body to other men.  Tall men, lean men, large men, they all seemed to intimidate him.

He was not a very tall man.  Not quite six feet tall and I think it bothered him.  Tall men intimidated him.

Although he worked hard in the gym to get his body looking a certain way, he was not athletic.  Athletic men intimidated him.

He felt he wasn’t bulky enough to be truly impressive.  Large men intimidated him.

He was constantly asking for reassurance.

“I’m bigger than he is, right?”

“My biceps are much more toned than his, right?”

“My legs are much bigger than his, right?”

“I could probably bench more than that guy.  Who cares how fast he can run!”

I think when we think of body image issues and self-doubt we automatically think it is a problem belonging almost exclusively to the female sex.  I beg to differ.  He may not have worried so much about being fat or double chins, but he most certainly obsessed about his body and the way his physical  being impacted people upon first sight.

The next time you make the rude assumption that only women obsess over body image to the point of being annoying and/or unhealthy, come talk to me.  You are SO wrong.