Emily's room

This post was going to be about finally finishing the endtable for Emily's room.  She had borrowed the end table from the porch to arrange her many special things a few months back and Leila had asked me to make her a replacement table.  I decided to make this one - from a design in Thos. Moser's book on Shaker furniture, with some simplifications.  It took me longer to finish this than I dare admit, since it was still in pieces for Christmas, but I am quite proud of it.  The drawer sticks a little and I compromised and screwed the drawer together instead of attempting the called for dove tails.

But, when I went to take pictures of the endtable, I was drawn in to Emily's intense decoration of her room.  When I was about her age, I shared a room with my sister Anna.  We put the bunkbeds in the center of the room and hung curtains on the bunkbed to divide the room so that we each had our own private spaces.  I moved my rocks and microscope into the closet and decorated it with pictures cut out of my Ranger Rick and Boy's life magazines.

From Emily's room

Emily has built on the same decorating bedrock, but out done anything I had ever attempted. Most of the pictures are from the National Geographic, but include bits and pieces from the Economist, the Scientist, the New Era, candy wrappers, part of an eggnog box, crafts she made in school, for holidays, and a large environmental poster.

The hanging bats were from Halloween and haunt one corner

Her cartoon characters, doodled on scraps of paper during church and school.

From Emily's room

This is my favorite drawing she has done.  It may be hard to see, but it has animals throughout and the letter T is a tree with monkey's hanging from it.  The ocean bubbles up around the word "Earth."

The arrangement of of faces without eyes is a little odd  though, especially since the eyes are distributed between pictures from magazines in the rest of the room.

It makes me feel like the walls are watching me.

As the years go by, she becomes more and more herself and I am happy to see her transform.