Just one more topic to add.

In the blogging world, a niche blog is one that addresses a certain theme: crafts (generally or specific, like knitting), cooking, parenting (generally or specific, like kid's activities) and pretty much anything else you can think of to Google. When starting a blog, having a niche is a good thing, because people interested in that topic will find you, and BINGO you have an audience. Like my friend Sarah - her blog is kind of niche - frugal decorating/crafting. And she is doing so well!

Then there are those of us who stubbornly take a tougher route. Not content to just write about our families for family consumption (which is a perfectly decent blogging goal, of course!) we try to write generally about our lives and hope that someone we aren't related to might be interested. I refer to us as diary bloggers. Dooce (Heather Armstrong) is one of the most famous, and I love a couple more that are rather "big" (as in their reader base), but there are probably a zillion of us little guys out there. (By the way, I haven't yet mentioned that my amazing sister waited in line for an hour to get me a personalized autographed copy of Heather's newest book! She is so awesome. Thanks, Ruthie!)

I keep thinking that my blog would grow by leaps and bounds if I could define a niche for myself and stick to it. But I love to write about different things - movies, my kids, projects, books, rants, etc. And here's one I haven't even touched on yet - home decorating! Oh, I've talked about our remodeling/painting jobs ("our" meaning "Aaron's" of course!) but that's big stuff. I'm talking about details here.

So, I took a bunch of photos today. Don't worry, you won't get it all at once. I'll sprinkle the decorating posts in throughout all the other random stuff I write about, so as to not kill off the male portion of my readership.

The two photos below are from what used to be the "formal" living room of our house, which is now called either the projector room (for Aaron's pet electronic hobby) or the playroom (for obvious reasons.) Eventually the "play" part will be in the basement, and we'll have a theater room! Anyway.

I love my gallery of wedding photos. The two frames in the first photo are from our wedding, and the saying on the wall is from Uppercase Living. Let me say this now: I did not choose the phrase lightly. Putting words on my wall is a serious undertaking for me - my house is pretty much bare of plaques and sayings. This may seem unusual for someone so full of words (and I'm not just referring to this blog!) but I think it's because I have to REALLY like those certain words to be able to look at them everyday. And a lot of saying just strike me as cheesy or cliche. So I'm not sure that my house will ever serve as a demo for Uppercase Living, but I may end up with one or maybe two more. We'll see.

The other 3 frames are photos from Aaron's brother and my sister and brother's weddings. I bought all the frames and matts (custom cut) plus one more for my other brother, at the same time to ensure that they would all match. Aaron was NOT impressed with the bill, but since they look so nice (and were all half off at Hobby Lobby) I think he's come around a bit. In each frame is a 5x7 of just the immediate family - parents + sibs, or just sibs. Below is an 8x10 of the entire family, with spouses and children. I love being able to see every day all the people I love most! (Well, except Ben - but he'll be in the one missing wedding.)

The toy storage is the Trofast system from Ikea. I labeled all the tubs with both the words and a photo of what it should contain. It's very preschool, but those teachers know a thing or two about getting kids to be independent!

And you thought we were done! The table below is in our entryway. Notice the lovely green wall? Thanks, honey!

The lamp was on clearance at Target several years ago, the runner was in the dollar aisle at Target (probably for $2 or so, go figure!) and the pots are from Mom's house. I love a little bit of Asian influence in my decorating, and you may not be able to see it here, but the flowerpots have a bamboo design on them. Perfect! Close up of the frame - which is an Everyday Display from Creative Memories. Everything is held on with those round black magnets, so it should be easy to change it, if I ever get around to it! I printed the letters out in an outline font and then cut them out - with a scissors. It was after that project that I decided to buy my very first craft knife.

So there you go! My first post on decorating. And to those of you who are following despite my scattered topics, THANK YOU! Even more thanks if you don't share my gene pool! (Family, you know I love you!)