MSM: Turning a house into a home

Most parts about moving are a pain but there is one thing I really do enjoy - redecorating. Even though I have the the same furniture, art and knick-knacks, everything looks new again in a new environment. I get all the fun of redecorating without having to spend money on new stuff.

And I really like our new place, it is one of the nicest we've lived in. The cabinets are new and made of oak, the walls and counters and appliances are all white and not dark brown or 70s gold - yes, my countertops at the last place were gold, as was the oven. It is very hard to make gold and brown look cheerful.

And we finally have enough space, actually we have more than enough for now but I have a feeling Nigel will take up the rest easily enough.

Things are still in progress, decor wise, but here are a few pictures of my favorite things:

Kitchen hutch and bar area:

I love all my little jars and pretty cookbooks lined up (my uglier but still useful cookbooks are in one of the drawers underneath with my canning supplies and tupperware). The basket holds our cloth napkins and Craig finally has a little bar area! Although right now we don’t have anything to put there other than the Maker’s Mark and we aren’t opening that. But it’s a nice decoration :-)

My Cross Collection:

Flowers in bathroom:

After saying I was going to get these printed months ago, I finally did last week and actually framed them. The pictures were ~$7 total and each frame was $3 at Wal-mart so in all the project was less than $20 and added a nice pop of color to our guest bath.

Rainbow bookshelf:

I started organizing our books by color a few months ago and love it! Not only does it look cool, but it is really practical. Even if I can’t remember the exact title of a book, I do normally remember the color of the cover and spine and can find it easily.

But don’t be fooled into thinking this is all of our books, the shelf continues below but it is just the brown to white colors – boring! Plus I keep some things by subject still: my bible study and devotional type books over where I do my morning studies, my marriage, pregnancy, parenting and homeschooling books upstairs in our room, and the beginnings of our children’s collection up in the spare bedroom plus Craig has more in the basement in boxes. We have too many books but none that we can get rid of.

Spare Bedroom:

I think this is actually my favorite room, or will be once it is done. Since we are planning on keeping the baby with us, at least for a while, we turned the extra bedroom into a guest room/office/craft room (next to the bookshelf and dresser is a desk but it was covered in fabric and crafty stuff) . I love it because almost everything in it means something: The quilt on the bed is my favorite of all the quilts I’ve made. The furniture was my bedroom set growing up and most of the little knick-knacks are things we gleaned from our parents home. I need to make a better sham (one that actually matches) and a dust ruffle but I still have the fabric leftovers from the quilt so that should be possible. Plus it still needs something on the walls. I’m not sure what but I’ll know it when I see it, hopefully at a garage sale or thrift store :-) I’m not in a rush.

PS: This post was my first made in Window’s Live Writer which Amanda recently informed me about. It’s pretty much awesome!