"My Country Phase": Just An Interjection

Just real quick. Because I just have this little bit to say.

I've mentioned a few times that I went through a "country" phase. I'm aware that when I've mentioned it, it's been in kind of a disparaging way. That's not nice. And, it doesn't really make complete sense. Little Miss Mason Jars Everywhere would like to clarify.



I still like some farmhouse type elements. Some fresh, modern country. Not so much eggs in a wire basket (I don't have any chickens... yet) or lace curtains, but lemonade served in mason jars and straight pins in vintage enamelware country? Yes. I like little bits of that. A lot.



I like a mix. I've stopped trying to name it. I'm just going with it. The country phase I've referenced was more old-school. Like lots of barn red. American flags on all kinds of stuff. A little primitive. Homespun fabric. Cinnamon candles. Bows? I'd say that part of country is no longer an influence in my personal aesthetic.

But I live in Ohio. I was born here. And I will always love the country to some degree. And old-fashioned hospitality. And cooking from scratch. And milkglass.

So, that's the deal.

Please enjoy the photos of my very lacy and flowery former living room.

The next post will be more of the house tour.

Good night :)

It Just Takes Time

I was getting ready to blow-dry Shug's hair tonight after her bath, and she plopped down on the ground in front of me with a daydreamy look on her face. "Mama", she began, "Mama, I miss the old house. It was just so... cozy, and I miss it". I pulled her up into my lap and snuggled her close. "Sometimes I miss it, too", I admitted. Then we talked for a little bit about what she thought she missed most about it. She couldn't pin it down exactly, but I think - after listening to her for a bit - I think I know what she means. Guess what, Shug, I feel the same way.

Every once in a while, I look at photos from the five years we lived in our previous home and find myself looking at the rooms in the background. It's funny, because it's not like the house was ever really decorated. It was comfortably furnished, but the years we lived there were busy years, and I didn't spend much time or money on it. It was a great house, but not because it had fabulous interior design or because the rooms were drop dead. It had great light, high ceilings, and plenty of room, but the physical features of the house are not what we miss. What really makes me miss that house a little is all of the memories we made in it.



The kitchen, especially.

It was never even painted, for pity's sake, but I have such a warm place in my heart for that boring, builder-grade, cookie cutter kitchen :)

We celebrated birthdays in it :)

We had Thanksgiving dinners in it (that's Mom in the pink!)...

Made gingerbread houses (that's Sissy)...

Threw wedding showers...

Made messes...

With all our hearts...

Punkin and Little Dude spent their babyhood there...

It was our art room...

And our first classroom...

It was the heart of our home for almost five years...

So, Shug, sometimes I miss it, too. See, I love Home, and I really don't do well when I don't feel like Home is established and familiar and cozy. I think maybe I've been trying to hurry up and do as much as I can to this new house to try to make it Home more quickly. Paint, curtains, trim... all those things are nice and I'm thankful we can have them, but... they won't make this house Home. That just takes love, and learning, and smiles, and birthdays, and silly faces, and messes, and - time. It's coming along, though. You'll see. Before we know it, this house will be the best one, yet.

One Year Frenzy-versary Part 3: You Put A Contract On It?!

I shared a few weeks back about how we had first come across this house, and how we were not at all thinking of moving at the time. We first saw the house on a Sunday in early November (the ninth, actually, my birthday). After determining that we could, technically, swing two mortgages for a while we decided to schedule a showing with a realtor. The way that I remember it, we saw the house with the realtor two days later on Tuesday.

It wasn't so much that the house was gorgeous. The house we were living in at the time was only 4 years old and much nicer, really. We were the only ones who had ever lived in that house. We bought it when it was 4 months old. It had 2800 sq. ft., lots of light, everything was brand new, and the subdivision pool was only a short walk away. There were walking trails, a fishing pond, and shops built at the entrance. It was a quiet neighborhood, nice families, a gazebo on the main boulevard, for pity's sake. In a lot of ways that whole housing development had the Charmed Life thing going on...



So, what were we thinking leaving it all behind? Well, it's a little complicated to explain if you haven't been in our shoes, but our house was 30 minutes away from the rest of our life. Literally. My sister and her young family were 30 minutes away. Sam's job was thirty minutes away. Our church was 30 minutes away. My closest friends were 30 minutes away. Everything else in life (except for our house and parents) were in the same town, 30 minutes north of where we were living.



We had moved to Ohio from a suburb of Washington, D.C. At the time, living 30 minutes away seemed like a dream. What a luxury to only have to drive 30 minutes! Sam had all too often commuted an hour and half one way in Virginia. My closest friend there lived 45 minutes away! After a few years of living in Ohio, it was becoming clear that not everyone in our new home was used to that kind of driving. Friends confessed that our house felt like a looooong drive away, and the two hours on the road each Sunday (a morning and an evening service) were starting to feel long to us, too. My sister had gotten married and moved away the year before. She had also had her first baby in early October. I missed her. With four kiddos of my own in tow, 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back was a little hard to work around with regularity. This "new" house was a 2 minute drive from her home :)

We weren't considering buying this house because it was bigger, prettier, fancier, or better in any way other than its location. We wanted to buy this house so we could be closer to so much that is important to us. Family, friends, church, and closer to work could mean less time driving and more time home. We knew that by moving to that town and by owning an older, less attractive home, there would be some losses materialistically speaking. But, those losses didn't even begin to outweigh the gains for our family as a whole. 9 foot ceilings gave way to a 25 year old tri-level... in just the right place.



In just a few words, we knew life isn't all about big houses and stuff. They can be nice, don't get me wrong. A part of me does wince a little to look up from these photos of our previous home only to be face to face with our real life home - damaged wood floors and sparkly gray toilet seats from 1983. There's so much still to be done, I can wonder why we made the choice we did. Ultimately, though, I know it was the right one. These few years of WORK making this house more our own will be nothing compared to all of the benefits for many years to come. Ours was a case of giving up the good to get the better.



So, after getting a quick preapproval for a loan and after having some "financial people" double check our numbers for us, we put a contract on the house. I can't remember exactly when, but it was within 10 days of that initial visit. It was quickly enough that, when we told our friends and family, they all unanimously responded with the proper level of shock. "You put a contract on it?" We did. And, after a little going back and forth to get the price down to where we could swing the cost, our offer was accepted.

It was about 10-14 days after we first saw the house on November 9th. That means it was around November 19-23rd. We were scheduled to close at the beginning of December, so packing started immediately. Crazy, crazy.

Happy Frenzy-versary :)

P.S. We like to keep our actual city of residence on the down-low. If you live in our area and have a pretty good idea of where we've lived or are currently living, please do not name the cities in your comments. Thank you!!!

One Year Frenzy-versary Part 1: Late October 2008

Have I ever mentioned how quickly we bought this house? Or how we weren't even looking for a new house at the time? Or how we had not placed our current house on the market at all yet - nor were we intending to do so? Have I mentioned that the entire purchase and most of the move happened within four short weeks?

Frenzy, y'all. That's about what the activity level was like from my birthday in early November 2008 up until oh, I'd say...now. The Frenzy-versary is just a look back at Fall 2008 and early Winter 2009 and all the craziness that ensued ;)

Today's post is the last photo I have in my computer files from before November 9th - that fateful birthday (yes, I found our house on my birthday!).



This photo was taken in this week of October 2008. We had friends over to bake a geography lesson. See, if you homeschool you can both bake and eat your geography. In the younger grades, at least. Here we are making Continental Divide cookies.

In the background you can see that nothing is packed up. All is happily chaotic in my kitchen with seven children (some of which must have been napping at this point) enjoying the dough and paint swatches on the wall. I was still decorating that place! I had abolutely zero clue we would be living in a completely different house before Christmas.

Wild.

A Blog Test: Big Pics from Flickr

Just putzing around here tonight, y'all - trying to see if I can upload larger photos onto the blog through Flickr. I could through Blogger, too, but I'm only alotted so many gigawigs per month or something. Just a test :)



Previous house. I was always bugged by the random strip of tile running alongside the living room carpeting. Really, though, who's going to rip out brand new tile just because it bugs them a little? I did like the southern exposure of this room, though. And the higher ceilings. This photo was taken just after the carpet guys cleaned up and we put the house on the market. Praise the Lord it sold so quickly!



Woah! Too big, Flickr!

Here's the living room of the new house. This was taken a month or two after moving in. I was selling the sofa and both loveseats on craigslist. This photo is compressed in Photo Manager and then selected as "medium" from Flickr.



Same photo uploaded straight to Blogger.




Test complete. "Medium" from Flickr it is. Thanks for reading :)

Goodbye, House

We closed on the sale of our house today!!!

I am truly thankful. I know we are tremendously blessed to sell so very quickly in this market. Still... there's always a bittersweet aspect to leaving a home. You have lived there. You have loved there. And now, well, it's someone else's. That part is always a little strange to me.



Strange and, if I'm honest, a little hard. But, we're closer than ever to family now. Closer to friends. Closer to where we've really been investing ourselves over the past five years. It's a very good move for our family. So, goodbye House. Goodbye nine foot ceilings. Goodbye brand new tile. Goodbye gleaming white bathrooms. Goodbye fresh, bright windows.

Goodbye House.

*sniff*

With all of those perks, though, that house couldn't give us what matters most to us in a home - people to share it with! So, no more sniffs. That's enough of that. There's no time for sniffling when we have so much thanks to give! It was too far away from everything! Now, we're 2 minutes from my sister's house and our closest friends live just 5 minutes away. We're warm and safe and healthy. Plus - now we get to make our new house into a home! There's plenty to do, for certain, but we're doing it together... and we have time :) With the second mortgage gone (praise God!) things are going to start happening around here - and soon.

That will really be fun to see :)

Downright Balmy

Forty six degrees in December - in Ohio - is downright balmy, don't you think? Warm enough, at least, to get the last bit of the deck stained. We're hoping to get the house up on the market right after the holidays, so it was a big bonus that Sam was able to finish up. He and his dad built the deck last summer, and the staining part was broken up over several months from later this summer until just last week. But, now it's done. And now we plan on selling it.

Bittersweet, eh, babe?

Really, though, Sam was actually enjoying himself out there. Everytime I poked my head out into the cold to check on him, he was grinning from ear to ear. Partly, I think it was just because he so thrilled to be finishing the deck before that big For Sale sign went up. And, partly, it was because he was chattin' it up with the Lord the whole time. Nothing says 'spiritual encounter' like a good can of deck stain.

All in all, this deck could also be seen as a good practice deck. (There - that makes you feel better, doesn't it honey?) Good practice for building the new deck at the new house. We already have our mental imaging capabilities in motion on that one. There's plenty of room for... ahem... imagination. Here's what the back of the new house looks like now:



But, we seeeeeee a new deck. And we can see the woods all cleared and pretty. We can see a lot with this new house that isn't there yet. That's the fun of making a house a home, right? Like the pretty little blog header says, we'll be starting from the outside and working our way in. As soon as we sell this house and have some dough, that is ;)