around our house at the end of summer, 2016.

 

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile you know that I like to do a little house tour every summer, because first of all: it’s fun! And also in order to chronicle the way our home evolves, bit by bit. I forget the little details if I don’t take pictures, and while this is my favorite it’s ever looked, there are memories in each of it’s stages, things that make me smile (and sometimes groan).

Mostly things that make me thankful that this is where we wound up putting down roots.

We’ve owned a home for three years. Wow. Sometimes I still can’t believe we’ve managed to stick in one place this long. If you’re wondering why that’s an accomplishment, our track record was 10 homes in our first 9 years of marriage.

The outside looks exactly the same, and is patiently awaiting it’s new roof and it’s master bedroom addition (if only the rest of us were as patient). You know that our single Big Project this summer was Judah and Amelie’s bedroom makeover, which you can see here. Below is a photo to show you the way the room looks often these days:

 

 

And for my second piece of disclosure: this is what my kids were doing while I scurried around snapping photos, and this is why the house looks particularly neat. Yep, we’ve discovered the PBS Kids app on the iPad and we love it.

 

 

 

 

I’ve done virtually nothing to our living room this year except purge books, buy books, add a couple of house plants, and, mostly importantly, buy throw pillows! I waited quite awhile for this luxury, because: 1. For awhile I couldn’t find what I liked, and then, 2. We adopted two little boys and I knew any decorative pillows/blankets would end up a jumble on the floor.

But finally, this is the summer of new pillows (all from Target), and while they sometimes do still end up in a jumble, they also make our living room feel just a bit more cozy.

 

 

 

 

You can see the door to our current master bedroom off the living room, and one day I felt compelled to switch the furniture around so that the bed is against the far wall. Here’s how our bedroom looked last year:

 

 

 

And here’s how it looks today:

 

 

 

 

Not only does the room feel much bigger now, but David corrected one of my DIY fails this summer. When I bought and painted the unfinished pine IKEA dresser I didn’t realize I needed to seal the knots first, and they all bled through the white paint almost immediately. So David sanded everything down, added a coat of Kilz, and gave it all a couple fresh coats of paint. My brother Danny found me that Pepsi crate from an antique store and I think it’s so fun.

We do miss our string lights in the reading nook and I keep meaning to put them up again.

This bedroom will eventually be Amie’s, and she loves to roam around and notify me of the changes she plans to make and the things she wants to stay the same (hint: she wants the wardrobes and the gold chair).

 

 

 

Our kitchen and dining room are almost the same too; I just like to declutter and shift things around.

 

 

 

My school supplies for this year included a new set of curtains, lamp, and clock for the dining room. I log many hours in here and now it’s a space that feels bright, peaceful, and pretty.

Dining room before:

 

 

 

And after:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judah and I found the brass unicorn at our favorite thrift store, His House, one day, and just had to have it because, well, it’s a brass unicorn.

Finally, the little boys’ room. Poor Noah slept in a crib until he was nearly three and a half. He was a good sport about it, and since it’s our last crib ever, I wasn’t in a hurry to transition. But when we did Judah and Amelie’s bedroom makeover, the boys got the bunk beds.

On my to-do list for that weekend was to post the crib and boys’ changing table dresser to Craigslist, but David asked me if it would be easier if we just set them on the side of the road. It felt blissfully easier. They were picked up within two hours.

Here’s the boys’ room last summer:

 

 

 

 

And here it is now:

 

 

 

 

They love their bunk beds so much, and just as with the big kids, I did away with top sheets and gave them a duvet. It makes laundry and bed-making simpler.

They also got Judah and Amie’s dresser, which matches all the pine in the room. What can I say? We buy a lot of IKEA pine furniture. It’s so durable and makes wear-and-tear virtually invisible. Sometimes I think of painting it, and then I feel like I need to go take a nap.

A note about knotted curtains: I love big, tall, sweeping curtains that brush the floor, but we have such small bedrooms in our house. When I washed them this summer, I tried knotting them instead and love the more open feel (I also love that they aren’t perpetually dusty from the floor).

I’d like to move the robots down at least 12 inches or find some different wall art, but all our original paint was ruined in last fall’s flood. This means there will be no more touch-ups. I guess I’ll wait until we repaint the room.

 

 

 

 

And that concludes this year’s glance around our house. Just for fun, here’s what it looked like right after we moved in.

Now, I’m ready for a break. I’ll tweak things I’m sure, but my mind needs a rest from new ideas and all my design blogs, and I just want to spend the fall living in our house. We have some plans for the front and back yard as the weather gets nicer, and I can’t wait to be outside more.

Happy Sunday!