So yeah...WELCOME!
Our street is absolutely fabulous! We are now completely spoiled and never want to live anywhere but a cul de sac for the rest of our lives! Our house is the one with the white bench under the tree and my black car in the driveway right there on the far right of the photo.
It also doesn't hurt that we have this fabulous green space at the end of the cul de sac where the kids spend a good deal of time finding bugs, making forts and plotting out elaborate games of pretend. Callie (and all the other dogs) love to play catch out here, and it is the perfect place to run around and get some energy out. There is a 2nd basketball hoop across the circle, and the hoops have gotten some good full court use!
And this is it...our home sweet home. It is a very tall house and has been known to be pretty intimidating to the 3, 5 and 7 year olds coming for playdates, but some of the kiddos think it looks like a castle, so that has to count for something, right! I'm not gonna lie, the stairs are absolutely killer on grocery day (and every other day really), but we have some beautiful views from our windows.
The entryway and "study" are the rooms filled with boxes and unphotographed, so we are going to jump right upstairs to the bedrooms and come back to those in part 2. :)
Morgan's room A.K.A. the room we kick him out of whenever we have guests. His room is the smallest of them all, but has the best view and the most light. His friends like to write messages in chalk on the street so he can read them from his bed when his rude mom makes him go to bed earlier than everyone else. Oh the woes of being the oldest and having a strict bedtime. ;) I should mention here that none of our kids have any toys in their rooms. They barely go to sleep with no light, a door locked from the outside and no toys, so you can probably understand why their rooms look so bare.
Chloe and Brynn's room. There is an extra mattress in here for Morgan when he gets kicked out of his room. Really he LOVES getting kicked out of his room, probably in part because it is like a big slumber party when he sleeps in the girls' room and because he loves it when people come to visit. (hint hint! His bed will also be available for visitors in Arizona and we fully expect you to take advantage of it!) The gray dresser is part of a set that our neighbors were just getting rid of (solid wood in perfect condition) and asked us if we wanted it. Of course, we wanted it and I painted it and added new hardware and now am in love with it. I'd also like to point your attention to the lovely wall color in here (ha!) This was the color of every single wall in the entire house and all of the ceilings before we started covering it up one room at a time - the kids' bedrooms obviously weren't the top priority for new paint.
Ellie's room + the other guest bedroom. This is the only bedroom in the house with pictures on the walls. From this room you can see the Portland temple out the window. Plus you get that adorable little chubba bubba in the crib as your roomie! We easily fit another queen sized bed in there with room to spare.
The master suite is ridiculously large...I guess maybe I just don't spend enough time in my room to appreciate it! The pictures don't really do justice to how much space is in there.
This is something I do appreciate though! We scoured craigslist after we moved to find a good king sized bedroom set (not the mattress, just a frame I could refinish) and we found this Cal King frame and nightstands for $150!! It took forever to paint them, and I am on the hunt for some columns to add some height to the 4 posts, but well worth it! We got our mattress from Amazon.com and the UPS guy was really confused when he dropped it off because it was rolled up in a 20x20x84 inch box that weighed 110 lbs. I agreed to help him get it up to my front door if he would help me get it up the stairs inside the house.
And then there is the master bathroom...love the bath, love the counter space, love the storage, hate cleaning the stinkin' thing! It takes forever and actually has enough floor to require a mop. Weird! I joke about it, but really, it is bigger than our kitchen was at our house in SLC.
The closet is equally large and is about the size of the girls' room was in our house in SLC. It reminds me on a daily basis that I don't have enough clothes to have a closet that big. So, to fill the void, I stash my photography props, fabric stash and seasonal wear for the fam (swimsuits/winter gear) in there. We have also created a little Callie corner in there with a pile of pillows and soft blankies for her to snuggle into. The Callie corner serves a double purpose because Brynn goes to sleep in there whenever she and Chloe won't settle down at night (which ends up being most nights). I know, we are the meanest parents ever. ;)
The closet is also home to the weights. Clearly, those are mine and I lift them regularly. ha ha. (ok...really, I have to move them out of the middle of the floor one at a time and only a foot or two at a time when Seth leaves them in the middle of the floor.)
Well, that is a pretty good start, right! As you can see, I stink at decorating and our bedrooms pretty much consist of beds and dressers only. I promise I did put some effort into decorating my house, but that effort ran out by the time I got upstairs and then the possibility of moving came up and I decided to put it all on hold anyway. I guess it is good that we started with the least exciting part of the house because it can only get better from there. :) Next time I will take you into the kids' bathroom (if I can ever keep it clean long enough to snap a picture) and then downstairs to the playroom, the kitchen and great room, the office/study, the entryway and the most popular place in our house: the stairs!
Excited?
