The “Simple” pleasures in life!

He stood in the doorway shaking his head at me. “You really are something” he said. I really didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d been married for thirty-one years and so him deciding I was “really something” wasn’t big news…at least I thought. “Are you happy?”he asked as his blue eyes smiled down at me.

“I am! This is so exciting!” I glanced around the room at our work and couldn’t help but turn to hug my husband. “Thanks!” I said with complete joy in my voice. It didn’t take much to make me happy, but this…this was big! After a life-time of marriage, we finally had our very own beautiful master bedroom! WHAT? Did I say BEDROOM? You heard me right…before me stood a room I had designed in my head, and put together with my own hands…and my husbands. But a bedroom? I know, weird. But being happy over this made me “really something” in the eyes of my husband.

You see, when we were first married we lived in Alaska and arrived there young and broke. By the time we scrapped up enough money to buy a dresser, we could only afford a plain pine set by Sears and Roebuck sent by way of barge. You couldn’t really call it a bedroom set made for a king and queen…but we weren’t picky. We took pride in staining it, and the set would be our furniture until our children came along. I’m not sure how it happened, but our daughter ended up with the pine, all painted white and pink… and we ended up with…an antique dresser from my husband’s grandparents (I don’t like antiques…) a bed with no headboard, and two round cheap screw-in legged tables for our bedstands. When we finally moved into our current house ten years ago, we took our son’s armoir and two night stands and bought him a full bedroom set with the thought that he’d take them with him when he left college. You might ask, where were our clothes? They were piled up in our closets. Let’s get real here…it sucked! Half the time I couldn’t even reach my clothes, all five feet of me. And my husband? Just one shelf could barely hold three of his long 6’3 jeans. But we persevered because we thought we would only be in the house two years. You heard me…we thought two years. We are now on our tenth year and I finally said to my husband, “Can we just do it…let’s do something for us. Forget the kids…let’s get something new just for us.” AND WE DID! Holy Cannoli!

Being me, I refused to spend a fortune on the furniture…not that I’m cheap, but we still don’t know if we might be moving in a year. The military is kind of weird in that way… So we found what I was looking for at Ikea, and I set out to build my furniture and design the room. Every day my husband would arrive home and I would update him on my progress. I painted the whole room (think two and half car garage size!) My husband put in crown molding, and then we proceeded to buy accent pieces for our retreat. How it all came together I will never know since I did everything backwards from the way it should have been done. (Not my normal MO.) But now I stood here with my husband thrilled at what we finally had…a true master bedroom like the rest of the world. Am I happy? You know it! Will we move next year…probably…all because I finally got my master bedroom!

I’m sure my husband thinks I’m nuts that a bedroom could make me happy…but I’ve lived the life of a military child and wife and this is something to smile about….really…it is! It’s the simple things in life that bring me joy.