Feeling At Home

I have loved our old home from the minute I set eyes on it, but I confess it hasn’t always felt like home and for the first 1 1/2 years of living here, I would frequently fight of a nagging feeling of homesickness for our previous home.  Those wall held so many memories of my children.  It smelled like home.  This old house didn’t feel like “home.”

But over the last several months, I have felt a change.  As seasons have changed, old memories have come to mind, and now, that we have lived here for two years, some of those memories are of things that happened within these walls.

“Remember that time we pressure washed the house?”

“Remember that time Dad and I painted the dormer in March and I was so scared?”

A we head into our third year of ownership, I look forward to more house projects- renovating the butler’s pantry, creating a powder room and yanking up the worn carpeting on the stairs and upstairs hall are high on my list.

“Remember that time we had a bat in the library, except it wasn’t in the library and was in our bedroom instead??”

“Remember card nights in the porch?”

“Remember when we finally finished painting the house and the next week it snowed 14 inches?”

And in the middle of all of the improvements and projects, I know that more memories will be made.  Birthdays, holidays, hardships and other little life moments tucked in the midst of it all.

Birthday Gift

My husband knows me so well.

Case in point:  This is what was glowing above my kitchen sink the morning of my birthday:

It is a pendant light that came out of the Dakota Hospital For The Insane!  Isn’t that deliciously scandalous?!? (For a light).  And I just love the simplicity of it.  Some day, perhaps soon, we will buy a shade for it, but I want to take a little time to figure out what would look best.

 

These pictures also give a glimpse at a modest kitchen re-do that we are just beginning.  It started with finding this kitchen cabinet.  This winter I am going to be painting the trim “Spotswood Teal” and I have already painted the walls “Frostwork.”  It is a sad fact that 100% of our woodwork is painted, and some day I hope to strip some of it, but one day it occurred to me… painted woodwork doesn’t have to be WHITE!  I am loving this new bold trim. What do you think??

First Snow

We had no sooner washed our paintbrushes and the weather turned on us.  I didn’t even get the rest of the backyard raked before it was buried in snow.

But our old girl is all painted, and looking mighty pretty dressed in a coat of white.

Inside and out, Lance and I have discussed how we feel our house (and maybe Victorians in general) seem to glow in Wintertime.  

The very last thing we painted were the steel storms around the dormer windows.  Some day, we’d love to fully restore the windows and have storms made, but for now we decided to recreate the look by painting the storms dark.  I think it makes a HUGE difference for the good.  And now you can also see our updated color scheme witht the “Oyster Bay” on teh shakes intstead of the lighter “Silvermist.”

We did not yet paint the storms in the back of the house, or the lower sides.  Next year!

And now with the all of the outside work done (for now), we can have fun playing in the snow!

All the way until after dark and mom calls us in for supper.

I’ll leave with a picture of our house taken in the 1960’s after a spring storm.  Again, confirming that this house shines in a storm.