Early to Bed, Early to Rise

So for the past 2 weeks I've been getting up at 5:20am to go running with my neighbor. Ok, not everyday, but almost :)

Last week, the first few times were torture--I crawled back in my warm bed minutes after getting home. Gradually it got a little easier when the alarm went off to get myself out of bed and out the door. Now that I'm on my second week (and actually getting to bed before 10pm), I practically pop out of bed before the alarm goes off (unconfirmed).

So I get home at 6am and I've got all this time. What to do to fill it? Well, mostly I plan. For instance, Tuesday morning I planned out how I was going to redo the kids' closet when they woke up. Here's the before (all cleaned out, of course.)

Actually, this isn't a true before photo. There used to be a dresser that was too big and a book shelf that was awkwardly placed along the side of the wall. Not very user friendly. I ended up just tossing Joshy's clean clothes inside and slamming the door shut before it all fell out. Shudder shudder.

So Kraig built me some shelves.

I used Kraig's sawsall and delicately trimmed off the overhanging lip on the dresser. It fits so much nicer now!

I also covered the shelves with fabric so that they wouldn't snag the clean sheets and bedding I was going to stack on them. This is some left over fabric I had from curtains I made for our home in Heber. In fact, it might actually have been the curtain :) Here it is almost completely restocked with clothes. Bulk diapers ended up on the empty shelf.

Next project was the windows. My parents put beautiful shutters on all the windows in our home. I LOVE the shutters. They keep the heat in and the cold out in the winter and the cold in and heat out in the summer. Sorry, this is a really bad photo, but it's the only "before" I have.

Since the time change (and the bane of my existence), Andy's asked me every night, "Mom, it's not dark. Why are we going to bed?" The shutters do a great job, but a little bit of the fading dusk light still comes through at their 7pm bedtime. So this was my solution: I got out the curtains I bought in Heber (for the exact same "daylight savings light blocking" reason) and hung them over the big window. What do you think?

Too big. I didn't like how the length of the curtain hung on Andy's bed. I envisioned him pulling the curtain rod off or tearing the curtains. So I trimmed them down.

It worked out perfectly so that with what I'd trimmed off I had enough fabric to make a matching curtain for the little window on the other wall. Sometimes I really feel like a seamstressing genius. I did this after my run this morning before the rest of the family even woke up. Three cheers for getting up early!

I was worried that the curtains would keep too much of the beautiful daylight out, but I think it will be just fine, while still softening the boys' room a little.