She's her father's daughter

If we were a royal family, my husband would go down in history as Fred the Terribly Tidy, and our daughter would be Princess Annabelle the Organized.

Annabelle's favorite book in recent months is Organizing From the Inside Out For Teens. She brings it along to amuse herself on long car rides, and she reads it in bed at night, until she drifts off to sweet dreams of a big sale at the Container Store.

Fred and I have put most of our efforts these past few months into getting the downstairs fixed up, while Annabelle has worked tirelessly in her room, organizing and reorganizing her numerous collections. A couple of weeks ago, Fred and I decided to turn our attentions to helping Annabelle finish her dream room, and it's finally DONE! Fred sanded down the pink paint on the formerly pink and white furniture and replaced it with a cool blue to match the new Island Paradise theme, and here's the finished product (you can click on each picture to see it a little bit bigger):




Annabelle is developing quite a reputation for her organization skills. At school the other day, her teacher handed her a stack of papers from her desk and said, "Here, Annabelle, can you straighten out this mess for me? I hear you're really good at organizing stuff." Annabelle just beamed when she told us this story later.

I'm hoping that maybe Annabelle can help me straighten out all of my various messes one of these days!