mudroom.

Are you ready to see my birthday present?? The one that has been making me so crazy happy?? 

I love mudrooms. Really, really love them. 

Our "someday house" is going to have an awesome one. One that you walk in to, right off the backdoor. It is must for my farmhouse someday. 

So... we decided to try to turn our breakfast nook/toy room into our very own little mudroom...

These white benches are built into the corner of our breakfast nook. I love them. It's one of the many things that made me fall in love with our house. But... we never eat here. Once we had a little person in a highchair, (8 years ago) we just didn't fit well out here anymore. We always eat in the dining room. 

So the table just ended up being a catch all and looking like this most of the time. Isn't this lovely to look at when you first walk in the door? 

Miss Gretchen had also figured out that she could reach all the fun things on the table by climbing up on the benches. (The little white shoe shelf gave her just the extra step she needed to be able to climb up.) So that created a whole new mess. 

A few months ago, we took out the table. It gave us a little more room, gave us a spot to sit while tying shoes, etc. and helped (some) to eliminate the catch all pile. (Although a lot of it just moved to the benches.) We still had a coat rack for the kids' stuff and shoe boxes for Sophie and Lawson.

 I love this organizer shelf with cube boxes that I got at Target a few years ago. But the clutter and mess still spread to the other side of the toy room.

So... I drew some plans... Corey did a little building... Lawson and I did some painting... and I suddenly became crazy happy...

The kids and I each have our own cubby. (Corey gets the little coat rack right inside the backdoor. I told him I wouldn't share mine.)

I was trying really hard to not buy anything new, but reuse things we already had. Sophie and Lawson kept their shoe boxes, but I bought one for Gretchen and I. We had four purple boxes in Sophie's room, holding books and random things. I spray painted 3 of them and then stuck their Easter buckets in there, too. The initial tags were 99 cent cardboard disks at Michaels. I painted them, covered them with scrapbook paper and my neighbor, Amy D, cut out letters on her super cool Silhouette machine. (Thanks again, Amy!)

I'm thinking I need some fun, colorful pillows for the bench now!

I'm pretty sure this may be my favorite birthday present. Ever. I am LOVING them!

And... just to keep it real... in case you think it always looks this clean and organized... this is all the stuff that I had to remove from the toy room, benches and little red table before I took these pictures...

Don't go thinking we're completely clutter free...

But you can pretend it looks like this all the time. That would make me really happy.

p.s. Just pretend there is a strip of white crown molding near the ceiling. Someday... 
p.p.s If you look close, you'll see little shims wedged under the cubbies and toy shelves. Our floor out here is really sloped. 100 year old houses tend to do that. Corey is working on something a little nicer looking, but I didn't want to wait to post these.