Longest Post Ever?
I finally found my camera and (even better) cord to upload photos. Let's start at the very beginning, shall we? My mom's old storage room. You entered through the downstairs (at that time, only) bedroom--past the closet. We used all that storage area to create 2 new bedrooms for the boys.

Your basic cement floor and walls--no windows at all. Seeing the frames go up was wonderful and allowed us to start picturing what the bedrooms would look like.

Zinabu's room on the left, Carver's room on the right. In between we added a linen closet and small landing area.

Lily's room now. This was the existing bedroom in the basement, so the only work here was sealing off her closet that used to enter into the storage area. She loves blue. Loves it. I plan on painting some big circles on her walls in coordinating colors, and a big circle with chalkboard paint.

Lily's craft supplies. She is not into dolls or girly toys at all. She loves all things dog (um, you should know that by now) and crafts.

A reading chair! Every girl needs one.

Zinabu's room! Hard to believe this was once a cement room. When they put the windows in it was amazing how beautiful the room became. It doesn't feel like a basement room at all, because the windows are big. His reading chair--and you can see I went with an orange wall. The other walls are a light grey. I love the colors.

A beautiful view of the trees from Z's window.

Zinabu's bed and old desk. We have an old school map of Africa we'd like to frame and put on the wall.

Quite possibly my favorite features of the entire house. Double closets in both boys rooms. One holds clothes. One holds toys. Full of shelves and hanging rods, it makes me want to stand on a mountain top and sing Julie Andrews songs and spin around with joy. I am, uh, a bit of an organizing freak and get excited about closet space.

Carver's room. It's actually a big room that looks dwarfed in this photo. He has a ledge that runs around half his room, and he loves to put Star Wars action figures up there in various poses that reflect light saber duels gone bad. His room is also grey with one orange wall.

He got some built in bookcases that used to be the entry to the old storage area. On the other side of the bookcase is Lily's closet. Carver is a voracious reader, and when he's not reading with his eyes, he is listening to an audio book from the library. I love that he has a fantastic book collection already. It was with great sacrifice on my part that I allowed him the right to keep the Harry Potter books on his shelves.

In my room, the bathroom is being worked on. At least we have a toilet!!! David and I inherited the smallest bedroom and smallest closet, but we gain a bathroom. Remember at our old house ALL 5 OF US SHARED A BATHROOM!!!!! David and I feel like we won the lottery! (Cue more Julie Andrews.) Zinabu wanted to know what the plunger smelled like. What?

I am tired, but I am content. Tonight my mom cooked dinner for all of us. We love being together. And because we've renovated a lot of the house, it feels like my house too. It feels like we're living with my mom, but not that we're living in her house.

We're pretty happy.