One Room Challenge

Today begins a challenge within a challenge. Besides my third consecutive day of blogging, it is also the start of the One Room Challenge Linking Party. 

The One Room Challenge (ORC) is a semi-annual tradition, in which 20 designers & bloggers transform one room in six short weeks. This is the first time that it has been opened up to linking participants. 

I might not have considered playing along since our house is not really our house anymore and we haven't yet moved into our new home... But my "blogging fairy godmother" asked me, and since this is just the first babystep toward that dream of being in the ORC, I made a plan.

As with most of my plans, I called my mom. She has been a big supporter of Cosy Carolina since the outset. In fact, she was the one who always said I should become an interior designer, but in a fit of teenage rebellion I studied something else in college, and now here we are... 

Over the past ten years, my parents have experienced LOTS of life's hardships: breast cancer, my grandma's Alzheimer's diagnosis/moving in with them/passing away, retirement from my mom's very stressful job, and the excruciating divorces of both their kids.

Doing something nice for them by re-designing a room feels like my little way of giving back. 

This is the breezeway/laundry room. It is the room behind the door in the first picture with my mom above, and exists between the main house and the family room addition where they spend most of their waking hours.
 
They have an absolutely beautiful house, built by my dad and decorated over the years by my mom. Together they have talents most of us wish for: carpentry, sewing, crafting, painting. You name it, they can probably do it or figure it out. Which is great for this project, because I am three hours away.

My plan is to spruce it up without a lot of big changes. We'll be organizing, decorating, and making things a bit more functional. I hope that you will check back next Thursday for the progress report.