The Hallelujah Home Tour

How’ bout we kick off 2016 with a FULL home tour, shall we?

Welcome to our new home!

I’ve done a Christmas Home Tour and even a video home tour, but up until now I have not posted a full-fledged Old School Blogger home tour of our new house. And yes, before you ask, it has taken me an entire year to decorate this house and post pictures. Somewhere in there I had a baby and lost my mind for a few months, but I’m back and ready to get back in the blogging saddle.

I’m calling this my “Hallelujah Home Tour” because
a.) I’m saying “Hallelujah!” that I finally got enough pictures assembled inside of a blog post to be able to call them a full home tour of this new place.
and b.) Moving into this house has been one of the biggest blessings of my entire life.

It’s been SUCH an incredible year for us here.  We are literally right next door to my parents, who have been lifesavers during the newborn phase of Caroline’s life. The fact that my mom can ride her little golf cart over to our house and step right into our garage is awesome, but that is just a piece of the puzzle.  There’s so many more great things that I love about this house…

First off, I love the neighborhood. There is also an incredible group of friendly women in this new neighborhood who invited me to join their bunco group where I’ve made some new friends, AND Garrett has a new pack of buddies that he is able to run around and play with in the afternoons.  Every afternoon after school he heads out to his new trampoline in our shady backyard and jumps to his heart’s content. Usually I look out there to see a few other kids have joined him as well.  It makes this mama’s heart so happy to hear him laughing with other kids who live just down the street.  That is something we didn’t have at our last house but it is a HUGE deal to me.

Come let me show ya a few other things that have me saying “Hallelujah!” on the regular…

This post, like most of my posts, will be full of randomness. Brace yourself.

Our foyer is the perfect place for my apothecary cabinet.  It makes my smile every time I see it.  Favorite piece of furniture, ever, hands down….

Into the living room there are MASSIVE vaulted ceilings that I’ve never had in a house before.

When we first moved in I wanted to add rock to the fireplace all the way up to the ceiling but now that I’ve lived here for a while I’m reconsidering that. I worry that the rock will be too heavy for this light, bright happy space.  It’s on hold for now. 

Right now I have to focus on baby-proofing this entire place.  Caroline is six months old and already trying to army crawl her way across the living room floor while on her play mat.

Since there is no way to pen her in with a baby gate in this open-plan house, this is gonna be a major undertaking.  I figured I better get some pictures up now before all the breakable stuff gets shoved in a closet.

My awesome coffee table plus all that décor under about the 4 foot high mark?  Yeah it all has to be replaced with something soft and squishy and teethable.

Goodbye, birch logs; my old friends…. See you again in a few years.

Hasta luego, fiddle leaf fig.  It’s been real.

At least all the stuff inside my blog prop cabinet will be safe from curious hands.

So, here’s another big change I made when we moved in here. The dining room became my home office, and the kitchen is now our only dining area. Honestly? This has been the best idea ever.  The only time we used our old dining room was for fake-blog posts where I pretended to have fancy dinners with overflowing tablescapes. I think we might have eaten actual dinner in there once, when I hosted Thanksgiving that time.  Otherwise? Useless.

This is way more functional for our little family. Thankfully the old china cabinet fits perfectly in here, along with our table and chairs, so it’s not been a big issue at all.

There’s even room for some extra funky junk in the corner… just how I like it.

This kitchen, like most kitchens, is the heart of our home.  Every night our family gathers here to watch the “Mama cooking show” while Garrett does homework and Jeremy feeds Caroline in her high chair.  Some days I feel like a waffle house short-order cook behind the service counter, but it’s been fun to be all together at that kitchen island. I’m so glad that it’s not elevated like it was at the old house.  I love it being countertop height all the way across. It’s a lot more welcoming for some reason.

One of the things that was a downside for me when we first toured this house was the fact that there was no window above the kitchen sink.  But, now that I’ve lived here for a year and had fun decorating those shelves above the sink for the holidays, I am happy to have shelving there instead of a window.  The room still gets plenty of light from the bay window over to the side, so it has not been nearly as big of a deal as I thought it would be.

On the other hand, I was super excited about getting a  cast iron farmhouse sink when we moved in here and it turns out that I hate it!  Well, hate might be a strong word, but I would not put in another one if I have a choice.  Oh how I miss having two separate compartments to wash dishes on one side and rinse on the other.  You have to do all the washing AND rinsing together in this big ol’ sink, and my dishwashing bubbles get so diluted they are almost pointless. For the first few months of living here the original dishwasher never worked properly so I was constantly going to battle with the giant single sink o’ dishes. Thankfully my handy husband installed a pretty new stainless steel dishwasher for me at Christmas so I don’t have to wash as many by hand as before! There’s another Hallelujah!

Here is my Dining-Room–Turned-Home-Office.  Usually it’s WAY more piled up than this but y’all get the special treatment where I actually clean my house and pretend it looks like this at all times.

It totally does not, by the way.

But here’s the best part.

As I sit at my desk and work, I can look out those big windows to the lake that is right across the street behind my parent’s house.  When G runs over to visit Grandma, I don’t even have to get up from my desk to watch him get to her doorstep.

How many “Hallelujahs!” can I get in this post?  Cuz the fact that I have a home office with a window to the world is a very big deal.

Over in the corner I have a place to display all of Garrett’s artwork that comes home from school.  See that amazing drawing of the lady? He drew a picture of ME for his 1st grade art project! I was blown away.

These drawings make me so happy. He is so talented. 

It’s also where I keep all of my essential oil inventory displayed so I can see at-a-glance what I have on hand and what I need to order.  I love this little cabinet and tiered display stand! They are both perfect for my out-of-control essential oil habit Young Living home business.

This is the first and last time this file cabinet was ever this clean. And yep. Still missing knobs.

Let’s head over into the master bedroom. This is right off of our living room on the main level similar to our old house.

I absolutely LOVELOVELOVE all the light in this room!  We have a screened-in back porch right outside those double doors with a hot-tub that has rarely been used since I was pregnant or recovering from a c-section for 75% of the time we’ve lived here so far.  It’s a nice thought, though. I’ve considered selling the hot tub and going for a big bed swing out there.  That would likely get way more use.

Our master suite is in desperate need of some wall décor, but for now it’s comfortable and calm and a happy place to wake up every morning.

I chose the old stand-by paint color for the whole bedroom/bathroom/ closet area.  Restoration Hardware Silver Sage is my BFF.  It’s just so easy.

The only other room in the house that is blog worthy right now is Caroline’s nursery.

And, as it happens when you have decorating ADHD like me- things have already changed quite a bit in this room since these photos were taken.

We have actually moved her room downstairs and Garrett has moved into another bigger bedroom upstairs, but that change just happened in the past few weeks so I don’t have any pictures yet.

So, since these pictures are already available I’ll just leave them right here until I can get a post together about the updates that have happened.  Stay tuned!

I will try my best to keep updating this post with new rooms as we get them marked off the neverending to-do list.  For the first year that we lived here we have been so focused on fixing the Big Ticket Items that are soooo not sexy to blog about– like a new roof, two new HVAC units, a new dishwasher, new toilets, and a major re-routing of the septic tank field lines. Like I said. Not sexy.  But oh-so-necessary.

Between all that and being up all night for months with a new little human attached to me, it’s been HARD to think about decorating at all, much less blogging about it!  But, slowly we are sleeping longer at night and I’m getting into a much better daily routine.  We are coming out of the fog and back into the light.

Life is good, y’all. I hope yours is, too.

We are so very blessed to live here in this season of our life.  I cannot stop saying “Thank you, Lord.” for all the good things that have come our way this past year. It’s amazing how things work out when you let go of the reins and step out in faith.  Quitting my job, selling our house, having a baby… maybe it’s all been a part of the plan all along…

How ‘bout one more Hallelujah! just to put a great big exclamation point on all the great changes that have happened to us in 2015, aka the year we won the Life Change Lotto.