Memories Are Made of This: The Pink Room

With all the moving and transitions our family has had in the past few years, sometimes I don't seem to know which end is up! My car hasn't been in the garage in over 3 years because the garage is now a storage unit. But I am not complaining. This has been a very interesting time in life and with these transitions came some wonderful things. First, Mom moved to Florida. I can't imagine now life without her living here! Madeline left Philadelphia after 5 years and came back to Florida as an engaged woman. She is now a happily married expectant woman! Jimmy moved into a condo nearby and Joseph and Ashley decided to stay here and live in Florida rather than Tennessee where they had been for so many years. Needless to say, the mess in the garage and the constant shifting of boxes and moving pieces here and there is a small price to pay for having all my kids and my mother within a 5 mile radius of me!

When Madeline got married and moved out, we gave her the furniture from her room. We now had an empty room that became storage as well. I had intended to re-create the bedroom of my youth in that room by putting the twin beds that I slept in as a child and painting the walls pink. I thought that would be a great memory for me.

One day we were emptying the storage unit and moving some furniture to Madeline and Eric's townhouse and then we moved the rest of the stuff to our garage and to Madeline's old bedroom. We knew we wanted to sell some of the stuff, disperse some to everyone, and ultimately use some of it. We figured if it was all at our house we could better go through it and decide what was what. So, we closed our account with the storage unit and suddenly 2780 Hyde Park Place was THE storage place. In the moving process, Madeline saw the old Victorian loveseat from Mom's living room on Lynhurst Lane in Shelby. She was oohing and ahhing over it and saying she wish she had a place for it, knowing that she didn't have a place nor did it suit the décor that she and Eric have. I am not kidding when I say I had totally forgotten that piece. I didn't realize we had even moved it from Shelby to Florida. The discovery of this love seat started a total re-thinking of what to do with Madeline's old room!

I decided to make the room a sitting room that would serve no purpose other than to look pretty and to allow me to use some of the pieces from Mom's that I couldn't bear to get rid of but that had no place in any other room in my house. Hence, the new sitting room. I had intended to paint the room pink when I was going to re-create my old bedroom from childhood, since that was the color of my room, of course! The sitting room would be fine to be pink as it suited the furniture I was about to put in there. We now just call this lovely, useless room The Pink Room! (or sometimes Leo's room since he loves to sleep on the floor in there!)

I realized one day that the pieces I decided to put in there were quite eclectic and from several different rooms from Mom's house. Imagine if you will, an antique marble-topped chest from her family room, two floral chairs from her guest room, an end table from her master bedroom, the huge sideboard from her dining room, the Victorian loveseat from her living room, and the carved screen from her living room. There is even a little throwrug that was from......get this.....her bathroom! There is a wooden wastebasket that had been in another of her spare bedrooms, and lamps from upstairs, the guest room and somewhere else I can't even remember! There are white birds from her living room mantle, an oriental stature from her spare room bath, some small porecelain boxes from her powder room, a charger plate from her guest room, and a handcrafted stool from her bedroom. The needlepoint pillows on the loveseat were actually in Mom's living room and her breakfast room!The pictures on the wall are from her master bathroom, her spare bedroom, her living room and out of a cabinet or drawer! There is also a picture from her master bedroom and a small mirror from her upstairs. Almost every room in Mom's house is represented in this one little room. Amazing really! If I were reading this I would be throwing up my hands saying that it must look atrocious! But in fact, it is very lovely and it makes me smile when I go in there.

It was fun putting this room together. It even gave me a better place to put my cherished porcelain clock that Jessie gave me. It looks amazing in this room. I was able to leave the same carpet and window treatments that were already in there and voila! Instant sitting room!

I am holding on to these prized possessions thinking that maybe one day one of my children will have the type of house that would accommodate these pieces, and if not, I will simply continue to enjoy my little pink sitting room! The light in there is great and I have decided it would be a great place to sit and read or cross-stitch. In reality, come January, I imagine there will be a pack n' play set up in the middle of the room and a diaper changing pad on the Victorian loveseat! But that's okay. My granddaughter will love it and she may be the one who in actuality ends up using this furniture in HER house one day.

Whatever the purpose of the room... or what we call the room... or what pieces are actually in the room.... I actually can conjure up a lot of memories from this!