Window Seat Decorating

If there was a club for people who struggle with having too high of expectations, I would be the president. I’ve been known to have my expectations dashed when it comes to everything from birthday parties to relationships. I tend to build things up in my head only to be brought back down to reality with a THUMP.

I’m really trying to be better about this and believe that I’ve come a long way in lowering my expectations. But sometimes, well sometimes, the expectations get blown out of the water by a reality that is just way better.

I’ll never forget when we were touring our home for the first time, trying to decide if it was the ‘one’ for our family, and I walked into the bedroom with the window seat. My husband said, “Who will get this room?” And I looked at him like he had lost his mind because to me it was BEYOND obvious that our daughter would get the room with the window seat.

She wasn’t even 1 year old at the time but I could just envision her sitting there serenely reading ‘Anne of GreenGables’, maybe while twirling a strand of hair and occasionally stopping to simply gaze out the window and wonder when she’ll meet her own Gilbert Blythe.

But, soon, the window seat was found to be the perfect place for a stuffed animal tea party or to set up a Lego village. The lid has been lifted to reveal the perfect hiding spot in our family games of hide-and-seek and it’s served as the road for many a plastic horse-drawn carriage.

I realized that my original expectation for the window seat was perhaps based on my own sense of what it should be rather than the potential of what it could be. Frankly, this seems to be a common theme in many areas of my life.

Where I just saw a place to read, my daughter saw a place to play. A little nook where she could get lost in her imagination.

What I’ve realized in my journey towards embracing lowered expectations is that by doing so you leave TONS of room for being surprised. If you start out at zero then anything above that feels like a win, right?

And this has definitely been true when it comes to the window seat.

Because a few weeks ago, I awoke early in the morning and noticed that the light in the room seemed a bit different, a tad bit brighter. They had predicted snow and I hurried over to peek between the blinds where it was confirmed. Snow!

I stepped into the hallway to see if the kids were awake yet. A quick peek confirmed that my son was still asleep but I could see that my daughter’s door was closed all the way, a sign that she was already awake since normally she sleeps with it open.

I quietly turned the handle and saw something so precious, so sweet that I didn’t want to move for fear of ruining the moment.

There was my girl, sitting on her window seat with the blinds pulled up just gazing out at the snow-covered landscape.

The image of her in her PJ’s with fuzzy bedhead hair framed in the window will be forever emblazoned in my mind.

I couldn’t have predicted it. Couldn’t have conjured it up. Because like most things in life, it’s the sweet, unexpected moments that make the biggest impact.

And frankly, at this stage, I’d rather her be sitting on her window seat and dreaming about snow angels than dreaming about meeting her own Gilbert Blythe anyway! 😉

Thanks for meeting me at the fence today,

Sources

All pillows are from HomeGoods

Scrap fabric garland gifted to us and originally seen here