You know when you
religiously randomly search Pinterest for home decor, and you find this house you just fall in love with and you follow their blog and they are just a perfect family with a beautiful house and you just feel like you will never live up to those kind of expectations? Yeah, me either.
I love those homes. I aspire to have a beautiful home like that, and I also use them for inspiration like so many others before me. But then I look around my house. I don't have an older house with "charm and character" (too many House Hunters episodes watched), or a farmhouse style home that looks great filled with wood planked walls. We have a starter house. A cookie cutter house that millions of neighborhoods around the good ol' USofA are made of.
But because there are a million of those neighborhoods, I know there a million and a half people living in those kinds of homes just like us. Everyone wants their home to be nice, to be loved, to be something you enjoy spending time in instead of searching for ways to make it better. I am working towards that "better" home right now. And I want to share our "before" (even though we've lived here for five years so its really in between) photos.
This post is hard to write for me. When I went back through the photos that I took LAST year (because I swear I planned on sharing them) I was very saddened. Our house looks very messy, unorganized, and kinda just plain ugly. But I stopped myself from dwelling on the photos. Our house may look messy, but to me that means it's well lived in. Our house may be unorganized and ugly, but it is truly loved. Or maybe not loved, but it encases a family who does a lot of loving (get your mind out of the gutters people!). I do like our house, our neighborhood and where we live.
So without further ado, here is my house, in all its horrible glory. (These are all like horrible "before" pictures without the "after" to make you smile.)
The Kitchen:
Our kitchen is our main hub, where we walk into the house (who uses front doors?) where we eat, where we craft, where we do our bills, where we dance our silly butts off.
The Living Room:
We actually remodeled the kitchen and living room five years ago. We moved our basement stairs from the kitchen to the living room, and they still haven't been finished (two kids will do that for ya).
The Main Bathroom:
Scary huh?
Little Misses Room:
I change her room around at least once a month because I am just never happy with it. I'm beginning to think I actually just don't like those stripes anymore....
Little Man's Room:
His room is different now because he is no longer in a crib, but I am having a hard time decorating his big boy room (could it be that I'm just sad my baby is no longer a baby??)
The Master:
Shudder, just shudder. I loathe that room, I really do.
The Basement:
wow. that. is. bad. It's completely different down there now. I'm talking there's a couch and tv, a playroom and a craft-ish area for me. We're getting there.
I'm not happy with the way my house looks because I want it to be an extension of myself and I feel like I am a little more put together than those photos above.
I do want to note, we have updated a few things, like the main bathroom, the basement looks COMPLETELY different (and cleaner) and the living room has been rearranged. None of these updates are permanent ones, call them "phase 1" updates if you will. We have big plans, but big plans usually call for big monies. I want to make a detailed list of what we want (or what I want) to do in each room soon. And I hope posting it for all the internet world to see will motivate us to get some things done!
Thank you for taking the time to read this scary photo post! It means a lot to me and I can't wait to continue the journey of making this house our perfect home with you!
xo Stacie
