Jacob's Birthday Present, Part 1

I mentioned months & months ago that we wanted to set up a desk area for Jacob in our room so he'd have a quiet place to study.  We reorganized and rearranged and moved the black computer table upstairs to use as Jacob's study/homework area, but that's as far as we ever got.  We weren't ever able to find a cheap chair (we didn't really take the time to look too hard), and the table became a dumping ground for anything and everything that we didn't have a place for.

Jacob's birthday is on Saturday, so I decided to fix up his study area as a birthday present!  I spent over 4 hours cleaning and then reorganizing all of the crap... Yes, it was that bad.  So you can get some idea of how awful it was, I took a few pictures!  I forgot to take a picture right before I started cleaning, so I took a few on my phone about an hour into the cleaning process... every pile on the floor and on the bed was crap that had been thrown under or on top of the table! (Please don't judge us!)

The next thing I needed was a good chair.  I called around to a bunch of used furniture stores to see what they had, but they were all asking 30-35 dollars for a cushioned desk chair, which was still way more than we could afford right now.  So I sent a message out to the freecycle world, not really expecting a response, but I got one!!  I am super excited about the chair... it's in perfect condition, it moves up & down for different heights, and it's cushioned & really comfortable.  And did I mention I got it for FREE?!

Finally, I used wordle.net to make a print to hang above the table (I got the idea from this website).  I used Jacob's name and a bunch of words & phrases that describe him--most were serious but a few were silly--and then I had it printed at Walmart into an 11 x 14.  The print took me FOREVER.  The website is awesome in that it does all the hard stuff for you--all you have to do is type in the words you want and then customize the colors & font and all of that stuff.  But it makes the print into a pdf file that you open in Adobe Reader.  To print it at Walmart, I needed a jpg.  I am NOT good with computers and converting files, so it took me a good 3 or 4 hours of messing around to finally get it to do what I want.  But I finally figured it out!  I framed it and hung it up, and I just love how it all turned out!  And the whole thing only cost me 11 bucks (for the print & frame).  I can't wait for Jacob to get home today to see it!!!!

Once I get our bookshelf cleaned off & organized better, I will probably move some of the things on the table to on top of the bookshelf, giving Jacob more table space for books & stuff.  But that will have to wait a few days!