I don't know about anyone else, but my dining room has gone through so many iterations that it doesn't know if it's a craft room, a dining-ish area or a "no touchy" room- only for looking pretty.
It's a debacle, I tell ya.
Last November, I started to embrace the dining room as a place of seasonal decoration.
My, I had fun decorating the buffet.
I even made a runner out of an old burlap seed sack.
(Side note: It was during that time that I learned that burlap no likey to be washed.)
Then, some tragic happened to my buffet...
See those pretty orange pumpkins in the picture above?
They rotted right through the burlap sack onto the buffet.
Words cannot express how horrified I was. I always, always wanted a buffet and to have these gourds leave a permanent mark made me quite upset.
But then something kind of neat happened:
I let go of the buffet.
I let it be a piece of furniture for the benefit of my family. I stopped making it a place of storage for just china and other things I don't use much. In fact, I went through my buffet and started USING things. Like candles. And pretty dishes.
And then, I emptied out the left storage area of my buffet and...
...let my precious Morgan have it for her sewing stuff.
I can't even begin to tell you how thrilled she was to have a place in the buffet. Her own place.
Even Eve caught on... She knew there was something special behind this door.
And she really wanted to know why sister kept going inside.
I'm still not happy that my buffet will need to be restained, but I'm glad for the way this stain loosened my grip on the buffet's purpose. I'd sure love to hear stories from others about how children have helped them redecorate or re-prioritize their life.