little house tour

So I thought I'd take some pictures of my home on Saturday (oh the things I will do to avoid having to work on my thesis). If I was smart I'd break this up into a few days of posting but I won't be able to post this week since I'll be spending all of my time working on nailing this job audition thing. These pictures aren't staged or anything fancy and they are just with a regular non-fancy camera but since I always love to see people's homes and I've had a few requests, hopefully you enjoy them.

First up, here is my living room (and the picture above obviously):

One of my favorite things about this room is this big comfy chair which can fit both me and Doug (picture below). We got it for a steal because it didn't have the back cushion so we just improvised with a big pillow.

I also love this little vintage suitcase I got at a second hand store. Its just a little detail in the room and very few people ever notice it. I love to have places to store unsightly things and this little suitcase fits the bill with old man style, so of course I love it.

But probably the first thing anyone ever notices is the giant picture of our cat on the wall. And then they always comment on the mustache we put on her picture during our mustache bash and never took down. Its nice to let people know right off the bat they we are strange folks.

My least favorite thing about this room is that I don't have a coat closet. So in the winter time it looks like this:

Here is the view into the dining room.

This is my favorite part of the dining room. Doug uncovered the brick chimney in the room and I love its quirky prominence in the room.

I would've taken more picture of the dining room but my husband was working at the table, so here is a view for afar:

I like our kitchen. I would definitely upgrade some things if we were going to live here for a long time but since we aren't, I love what we've been able to do to it on the cheap. There are two things in this kitchen that I am grateful for almost everyday. The first is having a curved faucet. This was a inexpensive faucet (about $30) but having a tall curved faucet that pans can fit beneath makes a big difference for me (and the sink is deep which I also love).

The second was some under cabinet lighting my dad put in when he was here last. They are just plug in cheap things but they make a world of difference. If I knew what a difference they make I would've had them put in a long time ago.

I also love the little things that make my kitchen special to me, like this little sugar bowl. It was my grandmothers and so was the blue recipe box in the background. I love having things I use each day that remind me of my heritage.

Oh and the radio in the window sill of course. My dad listens to football games on the AM while he does dishes when he's here (he never uses the dishwasher - I'm not sure if he knows how, to be honest). I don't use the transistor because, well, I'm not actually eighty years old, but I like having it there for now. I'll probably move it soon and put some plants in the sill. I also want to get a bigger kitchen rug...

This is the guest bedroom. Its a bit of a work in progress but its comfortable.

This is a drawing that commissioned one of the girls that I oversee in the youth program at church to make for me. I was her first paying customer. :) Isn't it incredible? She is only 14! I will cherish this piece forever.

And here is the other side of the bed and the galley wall of uterus death (inside joke for long time blog followers)

I don't have all the pictures in yet but you can see a few here (and if you're curious is was the largest picture frame on the far left with the picture of a church in Florence that tried to kill me). I love how they turned out. They are all pictures we took on our Europe trip last year.

One of my favorite things in this room (besides the beautiful drawing and personal Europe photos) is this chest that I use as a side table. It was my great (or maybe great great) Grandfather Hallock's war chest. My father gave it to me and its an incredible piece.

Here is our bedroom. I didn't do big pictures of the room because its still in progress but here is Doug's side of the bed. I like how his side is so rustic and manly. He found this stump in our favorite apple orchard. He brought it home and sanded down the top. I wish it was taller but it works.

This is the top of our dresser. I want to get a nice runner for the top but I like having our change in a fancy glass sugar dish. It makes me feel rich putting, even when I'm just putting pennies in it.

I also LOVE the original doors in our house. Doug hates them because the handles don't work but I love the look so much that it never bothers me. They are about 110 years old.

Here is my side of the bed. I love this lamp and I love having flowers on my nightstand. This is in black and white because it looked better and because the nightstand is currently a hideous blue that I need to re-paint but haven't gotten around to it.

Here is our bathroom. I've posted it before but I've made a few changes so I thought I'd post it again. I changed out the yellow numbers for some framed antique book pages. These are bird and flower prints and the center one is a plate of various bird eggs found in America.

We redid this bathroom on the cheap. The only thing we really splurged on were these faucets which were about $75 or so a piece. Shah! But I really like having the extra space beneath that a tall curved faucet provides.

My favorite thing about the bathroom though is the honeycomb tile. We got such a great deal on this tile and I just love it.

Here is the main bathroom. I like this bathroom a lot too. I sort of wish I would've gone with a different tile but oh well. This bathroom was redone on the cheap too so it was a budget decision.

My two favorite things in this bathroom are the original plumbers placard that you can see attached to the window sill in the above picture (its the dark little rainbow shaped thing) and the tray on the little console. It has a lovely deer on it. Its nice.

Here is the former office turned sorta second guest room to perhaps someday turn into a nursery when we have kids.

So thats the tour. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope I didn't come off as bragging either. I get requests to post the finished product of things, like the paint color of our room or the galley wall and such, so I thought I'd just show where everything is at for now. And also I am totally procrastinating my paper. So.... back to work.

Have a great day!