Three years ago, we painted Lily's room a very bright, vibrant coral color. It was the color of her choosing, and I have to admit that I painted that bright color on those walls quite reluctantly, me being a student of more subdued, neutral colors and finishes.
We finished later in the evening, after dark, and the coral was even brighter with the artificial lighting and a pink haze just seemed to hang in the air in that room. My sister even noticed the glow from her home which is about 150 yards away and in the woods!
I think I even told Lily that she better like that color for a long time because I was not planning on repainting anytime soon. I am not at all a fan of painting. I've done a ton of painting in our fifteen years in this home, but it's really far from one of my favorite things to do.
And then she came to me this past February, asking if she could use her birthday money to buy paint for her room. Well, of course, she could spend her birthday money on that, but that also meant that mom and dad were going to have to be recruited to paint. And it's only been three years! That wasn't what I had in mind when I said it would be awhile before we painted again.
It only took us six months to actually get around to the painting part of it. I did have major surgery in March and we were away several times in May and June, but we finally leaped in and painted last week. We let the paint cure for a week, and tonight Brad hung everything on her walls and she spent some time getting everything just right.
It turned out quite cute, and she was the sole one in charge of the decorating. She shopped our house, bringing in my great-grandma's old Singer sewing machine to use as her desk, pulling an old painting from a basement closet, and snagging an ammunition-box-turned-side-table as one of her nightstands. She may have robbed me of a few other goodies, but I was glad to give them to her. And when Brad walked in on her hanging her "happy lights" tonight, I heard him laugh and say, "You're just like your mom."
And I'm quite okay with that.
We finished the living room to the point where we could get the furniture all put back in place. We still need to attend to a few details such as face plates, wall decor, and curtains, but I'm giving the paint another day or so to cure. I've learned that lesson the hard way in the past.
We were going to start the kitchen and dining area over the weekend, but we decided to take a much-needed family break and spend some time resting and playing. This week is going to be broken up a bit due to some traveling, so we're going to hit the kitchen hard next week and tackle everything at one time. I'm currently hem-hawing around regarding the paint color of our kitchen cabinets, so I want to at least have that finalized by the end of this week.
The plan for the kitchen is to paint the ceilings and the walls. I'm going to paint the cabinets either a shade of white or possibly a light gray. We bought butcherblock countertop and a white ceramic farmhouse sink (I'm sooooo happy about both of those purchases.) I'm having Brad remove one of the upper sections of cabinets from one side of the kitchen window so we can put open shelving there. And we will be installing a white subway tile back splash.
The weather was perfect over the weekend. We spent time outside. We picked and ate many blueberries straight from the bushes. We spent time weeding the raised beds. We visited with family who were in from Texas. We played with our animals, and the kids visited and played with their cousins and spent lots of time in the pool. We made sushi. I listed a bunch of homeschool material online. I spent some time knitting my shawl and spinning some merino. It was very unusually laid back for a summer weekend.
I love old things. Old farmhouses, old quilts, old pottery, old
paintings, and on and on. And I especially have an affinity for old
wooden furniture. In fact, it's one of the main reasons I go to thrift
stores and antique shops.
Being that our home is only
1600 square feet however, it's not like I have an endless amount of
floor space to put all that lovely old furniture I find while thrifting.
I do have to be quite choosy, and it often means leaving behind pieces
that are very hard to leave behind.
I think that one of the reasons I want an old farmhouse so much is so I would have lots of room to fill it up with old furniture!
When
Brad and I built our home, we were a mere twenty-two years old. We had
just started out in our careers, and so we built what we could afford.
It meant that I scrapped the first two plans I took to our builder because they were out of our budget. I
guess that we were both raised with the wisdom of living within our
means. Besides, my ultimate goal was to be a stay-at-home mommy once we
started having children, and I knew that this wouldn't be possible if we
were tied to an outrageous mortgage.
So our house was
built nicely, but very simply and economically. And we basically picked
the most affordable options when it came to cabinets, counter-top,
hardware, lighting, doors, etc. And when it was all done it was a wonderful thing to own our
own home, and we had done it in such a way that it wasn't going to overwhelm us
every month when the mortgage was due.
Now that we have
been in our home over thirteen years, we are beginning to do some
updating here and there. Right now it's just small things. We have some
other bigger goals in mind that we are striving for financially, so
we're dealing with the smaller, more affordable updates currently, but,
Lord-willing, will begin some bigger renovations over the next several
years. Basically, we want to add the character and charm that we love so
much in older homes.
But for now, I like to bring
those older, charming pieces into our home by means of furniture
pieces. We've bought many older pieces over the past several years. Some
I have refinished and some I have left in their original state. And it
has happened that these pieces bring me more joy than any new pieces of
furniture we own. I think of the homes and the people that owned them
before us. I wonder if they had children like we do.
Right before Christmas, I was in a
consignment shop that I like to stop into frequently. Brad and I had
been talking about replacing the hutch in our dining room with a larger
buffet with the hopes of Brad eventually building some old barn-wood
shelves to hang above it.
I found a large buffet at the
consignment shop, got measurements, called Brad to make sure it would
fit in the space we wanted it for, and then ended up buying it because
it would fit perfectly. The drawer space is amazing, and I love the
little white ceramic knobs and dovetailed drawers. The carpenter that
built the piece had also used wooden dowels to hold the piece together
rather than nails as you find in most furniture today.
So
now that buffet sits in its designated space in the dining area. I
changed out all of the hardware except for the ceramic knobs. It holds
my extra dishes and has some of my favorite things displayed on top. But
I think my most favorite part of this piece has turned out to be all of
those little drawers. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all of
those little spaces when I first brought it home, but I've since decided
it would make the perfect place for my note cards, stationary, stamps,
and other writing supplies. It's become my make-shift lady's desk.
Up
until this point, I have always stored my writing supplies in a plastic
bin in my closet. I love how everything is so organized and looks
pretty (I do appreciate pretty things.) Now I'm just going to purchase
some charming stickers and maybe some nice pens to complete the
collection.
P.S. - I am having a 35% off sale in my Etsy shop. Use the code NEWYEAR35 to receive 35% off your total purchase of all of my listed items. The coupon expires this Saturday.
Perhaps the gazillion photos you just scrolled down through explains the title of this blog post? No?
I'm finding that the best way for me to blog right now is every couple of weeks. Oh, I could sit here and ramble on every day about my very ordinary life, but I fear that I would bore you with the redundancy. Gardening, animals, laundry, dishes, cooking, baking, preserving, knitting, repeat. And, golly, carrying a big ole' camera around while I work and live life gets a bit cumbersome. That's one thing I miss about the simplicity of my little point and shoot camera. I seemed to document more life in the stillness of photos because that little silver camera slipped right into my purse or pocket.
In between all of the ordinary moments, we've been trying to tuck in some extra special ones as well. First of all, Brad and I went on a kayaking date last week. I wanted to take my camera but, again, was afraid to lug it around in the kayak. I resorted to taking my little ipod that takes pretty inferior photos, but I was able to capture a few of those moments. We put in on a nearby lake and just enjoyed each other's company. It was won-der-ful! I see many more such dates in our future this summer and fall.
We have also enjoyed a couple of visits to another local lake that has a little beach on it. We're not taking a beach vacation this year, so the kids have enjoyed those little trips to enjoy the water and sand. And I felt like a complete freak, sitting in the sweltering heat in my bathing suit knitting a wool hat. I know people were staring at me, but I suppose that you get to a certain point in your knitting journey when you don't really care that people find you strange for knitting hot wool hats on a day so hot that the sweat just pours off of you.
And speaking of knitting, I'm been enjoying finding moments here and there (hence the beach knitting) when I can work on making items for my shop. I think I'll be approaching my business a bit different this year. Anyone that sells on Etsy will understand the time-zapper it is to list items on there. It takes a lot of time and it also takes money to promote your business so that people will even see it. Unless I want my hat to be on page 678 of knitted hats, I have to dish out money to advertise. And I'm not complaining about that, I'm just focusing a bit differently this year. My first priority in life is to be a wife, mom, and homeschooler. Spending hours listing items on Etsy on top of all of my other responsibilities means that I'm borrowing time from elsewhere. So this year, I'm looking to focus more on local sales (our fall festival, my open house in December, and Facebook) to sell my products rather than trying to reach a large audience online. I think that there will be a season in my life that I will have more time to commit to my business (which I do really love), but I just have this unshakeable feeling that now is not it.
We are buried under a huge lot of chickies, people! I think I've mentioned before that I do have a bit of a soft spot for animals, and I went a bit crazy with the chicken purchasing/hatching this spring. I've already agreed with Brad that we are done getting more animals, but in the meantime we needed more space for our hens. We tossed around the idea of giving some of the one-year-old hens away but couldn't find any takers (honestly, though, I didn't try very hard because I am highly attached to my chickens.) So the only other option was to expand the coop. I felt really bad that it was one more thing Brad had to add to his schedule, but he was a real trooper and turned it into a father-son project. Brad and Ian worked on it from early morning to evening this past Saturday. I rather like how it turned out, and I LOVE how big it is now. I think it will be so much easier to clean out because I'll actually be able to move around in it! The chickens are still adapting. They were so confused that first evening. I had to laugh. Chickens like routine. Chickens like familiar. Kind of like me.
Oh, and I'm so excited, and I'm sharing this here because then hopefully I will stay committed to it. I'm knitting my first sweater! Well, I haven't started yet, but I did get the yarn (that pretty purplish-yarn up there.) I'm intimidated, but I know that, like everything else in my life, the best thing to do is just jump in and start. I'm sure I'll learn many new knitting skills as I work on this sweater. I'd like to have it done to wear it this winter, but I'm not making any promises on that one!
I mentioned that we're not vacationing at the beach this year. Brad and I knew that once our kids got older, we were going to start changing our vacays up and trying new things. Beach vacations really are easy when the kiddos are young because you mostly just go to the beach, the kids build stuff in the sand, and play in the water. But now that our kids are older, we're excited to take more active vacations and explore this grand country of ours! We just recently booked a cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine for this fall. Have any of you ever been there? We have heard so many great things about it! I love New England! My favorite vacation EVER was during my senior year. My uncle and aunt were living in Boston at that time, and they took us on a week-long tour through all of the different New England states. Oh, did I fall in love with that part of the country. I could so see myself living there if it weren't for their horribly horrid winters.
Friends, thank you for using a few of your very precious moments to stop by here. I have been so encouraged by your comments and emails. They mean so much to me!
Amber
