Friday, October 9, 2015

Home Sweet Home

We moved!  Ok, so we officially moved on August 2nd, but I'm just now getting around to taking pictures of everything.  At first I thought I would take pictures after the painting was done and the furniture was all arranged, and then I thought I should wait until we had the artwork on the walls, then I thought I should at least wait until the entire house was clean, and finally I threw up my hands in the air and decided to take pictures of the way things are right now.  This of course means that the breakfast dishes are left out on the dining table, dishes are sprawled across the counter because we are trying to address a small rodent issue, the library is full of the morning's schoolwork, the patio has black-walnut hulls littered around, etc., etc.  I haven't hung hooks or artwork in any of the bedrooms yet, and there are a few more "moving in" things on our list.  But we are not in any hurry, and we are trying to enjoy the process of making our first home reflect us.

The lady who lived in the house before us was an avid gardener, and she loved flowers.  We have been enjoying countless bouquets of fresh flowers ever since we moved in.  Each month something new starts to bloom in some quiet corner of the yard.  I hope I can learn how to take care of them all so they don't die :)

This is the view from the front steps, and the children can often be found with their nature notebooks and binoculars here.  The morning I took these we had seen a group of downy woodpeckers.  I don't know that "flock" would be the right word to use, but there were three or four playing in the dogwoods.  We watched them fly between the mailboxes and the quince trees.  It was a fun surprise.

This is the view from the screened-in porch - which is one of our favorite places to hang out.  You can make out the terraced garden beds out the back.  It was such a gift to move in to a garden-ready home.  The kids each planted their own row and we already have some beans coming up.  I planted greens and cilantro and broccoli, which are slowly popping up.



Off to the side is the bunny shed.  We had 8 when we came, 2 died for various reasons, we "processed" 3, so we have 3 left.  We are still trying to decide how many more to process and how many to keep.  We shall see, but there's a lot of talk of kittens and chickens for the Spring.

This is the entryway.  Both of these prints are so special to me.  The wispy one on the right was made by my talented sister-n-law Charlotte, and the one of the left was bought to remember the baby we lost in early September.  The day before we closed on the house we found out we were expecting another little one, but the baby seemed to be developing slowly all along and finally went to be with the Father around 10 weeks.  I like seeing these pictures right when I walk in the front door, and remembering God's faithfulness to our family.

This picture is from the living room and shows the dining and kitchen areas.  It's hard to see, but the table is a mess and the counters are stacked with dishes that I don't have anywhere to put.  We found evidence of a mouse (or mice) under our kitchen sink, so we are trying to clean up and fill in holes and figure out what to do.  In the meantime, I couldn't bear to keep the pots and pans down there:)

This is the living room.  I love the huge window facing the front.  We often watch the birds come and go from that window.  We've always wanted to hang up our stringed instruments on the wall, and one day we hope to do this on the wall behind the piano.  For now we just have stacks of instruments :)

My sister-n-law Bethany helped organize our art on the mantle.  I'm thinking of collecting some ferns and pressing them and having them framed for over the computer.  This will be a long process though.  The walls are all Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Grey - in memory of our year in Maine.  

After we lost the baby, my Mom, Dad and sister came up to help with the children while Hubry was in Peru, and while they were here my Mom suggested we paint the wood paneling.  Several full days of work later, and the room was totally transformed from dark to light.

This is one of our favorite things about the house.  An old-fashioned pencil sharpener that actually works.  It could use some blade-sharpening, but it is so much nicer than all of those new-fangled sharpeners!

We are using the library as our school room for now.  It faces the front of the house as well, and it doesn't have furniture in it yet (aside from the table), so there's lots of room to roll around in between lessons.

This is the hall bathroom / guest bathroom / kid bathroom, etc.

This is the guest bedroom.  Our first guests (Aunt Bethany and Cousin Caroline) stayed here for 5 weeks and just left us to head back to India on Monday.  It is a bit sad to see the room so empty..
We painted it Benjamin Moore Quiet Moments, and I loved the shade of blue so much I have the same color ready to paint our bathroom.

This is the view of Songbird from the top bunkbed.  I just had to climb up and take a look around :)

We bunked the beds and got an extra twin from my parents so all the kids could sleep together.  They are finally at a stage where they love sleeping in the same room - which is a comfort to them.  It also makes traveling and camping so much easier since they are used to all being thrown together.

The kids' room from the other angle.  We painted it Sherwin Williams Intelligent Grey and I love the color for a shared boy/girl room (not that you can really tell what any of these colors look like with all the glares) :).

This is our little sanctuary.  I really agonized over what color to paint the walls (I knew the royal blue wouldn't work with our quilt), and I love love, love the soothing shade of green we chose.  It is a discontinued Martha Stewart color through Sherwin Williams called Sung Green.  I didn't choose any paint colors that I hadn't first seen on someone else's wall.  I'm just not good at visualizing what a color on a tiny paint chip will look like spread out across a wall.  But color and ambiance is really important to me (can you tell???)

All the closets were super dirty when we moved in and looked like they had never been painted.  Since the previous owners lived here for 40 years, you can imagine how bad they looked!  My Mom, sister, and friend Melanie tirelessly painted rooms and closets the day before our furniture arrived.  Then Hubry ripped out the old wooden shelving in our closet and re-did it with so many more shelves.  I love the way it turned out, and I eventually hope to do the same with a few of the other closets. The house doesn't have tons of storage space, so having lots of well-placed shelves in the closets can make a big difference.

This is the happy gang taking tea on the screened-in-porch.  We love this space and imagine adding hooks for hammocks and swings and strings of lights, and, and... But really, we love it just the way it is!

There is also a nice open space downstairs where the kids can play and warm themselves by the wood-burning stove, but I forgot to take a picture of that...

We are so thankful to have such a lovely place to call home, and love how close we are to the mountain trails of Kennesaw National Battlefield.