sleeping with the window cracked

Ooh! Last night was the first night of the year where we cracked the bedroom window a bit to let some cool breeze in while we slept. Heaven.

When we lived in Arizona I would wait all hot hot hot summer long, from May through most of October for the first evening when the night breeze finally got cool enough to turn off the air conditioning and sleep with the windows cracked. There is something extra magic about outside air, the smell of it, the crisp cold breeze, the sounds of leaves and birds and bugs, sleeping in clean sheets with your toes peeking out and the special equilibrium of being snuggled under lighter blankets and having your face on a cool, cotton pillowcase.

Here in Oregon we crack the windows all through the summer. We don't even have air conditioning here and there are a couple of days in July and August where we will pull out the fans and sweat through some warmer evenings with no covers at all and the fan positioned behind a roasting pan, full of ice, blowing on our hot toes.

But for now, I am rejoicing in the first of many months of crisp, yummy nights and am thinking my project for next month will be overhauling our bedroom, which has been nothing but a bed topped with piles of blankets and an old rug on the floor and a dresser piled with clutter and all of this with piles of clothes on the floor and  no decor or rhyme or reason since we moved in last fall. If I do, I want to figure out something like this...

I found this picture on Pinterest and can't find the original source... or I would source it. I swear!

Anyways, just light linens, a comfortable amount of clutter, some inside plants... a chair (although I'd like to have a cozy chair for reading). I'd like a few more bits of color too, but just here and there. Having the insanity of kids and kids' things all around me makes me want to make my bedroom an oasis from things, things, things. I'm sure you understand. And my budget is going to be really small, so a lot of this will be getting creative with things we already have and getting lucky at the thrift store. It is also my birthday next month so I may try to find a nice comforter set somewhere and ask for that as a gift. That's the plan, Stan.

Hope everyone's having nice, fun weekends. We are jam-packing two birthday parties and the start of our garden into this one. I've been really awful about taking pictures lately but am going to try to take some today for sure, so hopefully there will be some cutest kids/outside springtime/garden pics to post up on here soon!