A house tour

I tried to get Colin to be my tour guide of our house.  This is starting at the front door:

He was shy about it, but I felt like a video gave a little bit better idea of the layout of the house. It's basically shaped like a 'H', with the front door on the side of the house. The living spaces are in one line and the bedrooms are in another line, connected by a itty bitty hallway with an odd cabinet.



With the exception of a few things to hang and the great contact paper project that needs to be finished, I'm finally feeling settled and done with the house.  It was a ton of work!  Here's why: every.single.room needed a complete overhaul.  I will say, that this is the first time that we committed to truly making the space work and how we want it, instead of just making due.  We were diligent about saying goodbye to anything and everything that didn't have a home or that we didn't want to try and find a home for.  It's been amazing to see the house go from empty and dreaming about what it could be, to crammed full of boxes and playing tetrus with all of our belongings, to a lovely home.

Living Room:

Real life=mom cleans the house how she wants it and tells the kids to not move or touch anything so she can enjoy it for 10 minutes...which is why the boys are watching TV :)

The bay windows in this room really threw us for a loop.  I envisioned really cool things with it, but nothing worked for a family of 5 that might want to all watch a movie together.  The couches we had overpowered the room and camouflaged in with everything, thus they were gifted away and we   bought this new couch online (we like to live life on the edge) and it has worked great for us so far.  We rearranged this room 1,000 times and then laughed when it ended up basically like it was in Arizona.

The theme was; out with the old, big thing...in with the new, small thing.

The (cheap Walmart furniture) china cabinet we were using would stick out into the hallway here, so it was out and in came this lovely punch of color.  You can see the little hallway in this picture and it stores all our games and extra kitchen supplies.  I'm not sure what the intended purpose for those cabinets was, but they're too small for linens and too far away from the kitchen for essential supplies.

Dining Room:

Our rugs looked ridiculous in this small house, yet we needed something under the table.  It was a hard task finding the size of rug we needed!  The debate is still out on the windows.  We feel like it needs some kind of treatments, as the room is still a little echo-y, but apparently Californians don't do window treatments...that must be why the builder made all these crazy windows.  Don't you love that 80's chandelier?!?!

We seem to have a thing with weird nooks in our rentals.  This nook was the home of many random things over the last few months, but Ben wins the prize for coming up with a hanging plant.

The kitchen:

The smallest one we've ever had.  Smallest, but with updated appliances, so I'll take it.

The den:

This room.  I knew it would be the heart of the home and that has definitely been true.  We've added a bookshelf each move and we moved those suckers around the house 3 times!  Ben is on strict orders to not buy anymore books.  In the early days of unpacking, the kids were watching a movie in the living room and we were sitting by the fire on the floor, when the idea came to Ben to create a space for us; a place to sit and talk and sip some wine in the evenings or to drink coffee and read our Bibles in the morning.  We put a lot of work into this space and waited almost 2 months to see it come together, but it has been amazing to use the space like we dreamed.

The kids bathroom:

Alison's room:

Her queen bed took up the entire room, so she got a new twin bed.  She had that bedding picked out since we found out we were moving and had a vision for what she wanted in her new space.  I loved seeing her put it all together.

Three desks don't fit in the school room, so Alison had to move hers into her room.  We still need a new desk chair, but so far she hasn't minded the new workspace.  Her favorite part is the acrobatic stickers on her closet.

The boys room was the easiest and maybe the most fun.  We agreed to let them get new decorations because moving stinks and it's important to love your new home.  They wanted a shark theme, which was surprisingly easy to accommodate.  My favorite item is the middle shark decoration...we were walking through Hobby Lobby and Eli all of the sudden stops dead in his tracks and gasps.  He digs out this piece from somewhere, I'm not even sure how he saw it, and said, "THIS IS PERFECT!"  Colin equally loved decorated their space and picked out a little cactus and star fish for their bookshelf.

 

P.S. they did an incredible job saying goodbye to a LOT of toys before we moved.  It made this space easy to move into.  

We did have to buy them a rug so they can play Legos and not lose all the pieces in the shag carpet. 

 

School room:

It has been an adjustment having just the boys in the school room, but it was either that, or not be able to walk into the room.  Kent, I'm sure you are laughing right now to see your old armoire in yet again, another random place, not being used for what it's intended for.  Well, this beast in our small house didn't fit anywhere else and is now our craft/pictures/school supplies cabinet. 

Master bedroom:

We finally got new bedding!!!  The comforter we had was literally disintegrating but Ben refused to get a new one.  I guess the Target here has magical powers because we were just walking through one day and Ben randomly throws in this bedding.  I didn't even question it...it's not falling apart, so I'm good.  Another downsize adjustment was our closets.  We went from a huge walk-in plus another small one we used for storage to 2 tiny, sliding glass door closets.  Ben handled purging a ton of clothes and shoes well, but missed the chair in the closet that he would sit on to put his uniform boots on.  The end-of-bed chest did just the trick for a little extra storage plus boot putting on seat.

We do have a bathroom, but it's not picture worthy.  The absolute hardest part of moving for me was buying new bath rugs.  Somehow we moved in with ONE rug...where did all the rugs go?  I have no idea.  You would think picking up a new rug would be easy, but apparently not.  I think I bought a zillion different rugs before settling on what we have and I can't even say I love what we have...but does one ever really love their bath rugs?  I'm not sure.  Maybe I over analyzed it; I want it to feel nice and look nice, but don't want to spend a lot of money on something that is just going to catch toothpaste and hair and be lost by movers in a few years.

So far, I've actually liked living in a smaller space.  Cleaning it is immensely easier!  I was actually able to delete a whole category of our chores and I've noticed that the kids want to keep their space picked up more/aren't overwhelmed by the job when I ask them to do it.