House Tour + Insta-gratification

It's been a good long while since I posted an old school straight-up mommy blogger style post. And I'm sorry for that!

I'm still trying to find the right balance to keep you, my faithful old friends, satisfied and entertained without traumatizing my new audience at CNA. Because let's be honest, I'm not going to radically alter my voice or content, but some trauma you have to ease into.

The new blog is almost up and running, the design is going to be beautiful, and I can't wait to show it to you. In the meantime, I'm still "here," and so I figured why not post a little fluff to pass the time?

Oh, also, I finally embraced the modern world and joined Instagram yesterday. Welcome to the 90's, Mr. Banks. (And you all were right: it's the most fun of all social media.)

So something that I really, really love (because I'm a creeper?) is seeing other people's homes. I'm a would be decorating junkie and an HGTV addict, so there's nothing more fun to me than seeing somebody else's style/space and being able to envision them more accurately in their natural habitat when I'm reading their words. (If you're trying to decide if you're disturbed or flattered, go with flattered: I want to see your living room.)

Anyway, do you want to see my house? It's been enjoying a little TLC while I KonMari'd the shit out of my wardrobe/kitchen/bookshelves/decor, and I'm much happier with the way it looks now as opposed to 2 weeks ago. Much.

It's still not perfect, you know, because it's a work in progress. But it makes me happy to coax it along; I get a rush of satisfaction from finding a new spot for a tired piece of furniture or a neglected vase. Cheapest of thrills.

So, here you go, a virtual tour of casa del coffee:

First up, the living room/front entry way.

I just bought gorgeous (and cheap!) long white curtains at IKEA and I'm dying to get them up around that bay window. I have aspirations of hanging them high and wide and framing the gorgeousness of all that natural light that floods into the front of our southern facing house. And since we have a blackout shade we can close at night for privacy and light control, I was free to go with my heart and choose impractical ineffective and oh-so-lovely white. 

The oriental rug was a wedding gift and, while beautiful and expensive, is totally not my taste, but it's here and it's lovely and so I work around it and let it do most of the heavy lifting in terms of pattern/color in this room.

Next up, the family room. The blankest of blank canvases right now because I just spent an afternoon "quieting the space" ala Myquillyn and now it's sitting pretty and plain and waiting for the right touches, not just putting up with whatever I happened to have on hand the weekend we moved in. Not that there's anything wrong with going ahead and throwing something up on the walls, but after a year of not quite right, I'm happy to let it sit semi-undone for a bit while I figure it out.

(I should have disclaimed this sooner, but me + my iPhone 4 are do not a professional photographer make, and I'm not really that skilled on the layout end of things, either, in terms of uploading images. So if this looks like the work of an amateur, at least I'm transparent.)

Most of our stuff is thrifted, and here's the big fat caveat with that: it takes multiple visits to multiple thrift stores over multiple weeks and months to arrive at a "finished" product, at least for me it does. So even though I've found some amazing stuff over the past year and a half since we moved in here, it did take lots of time and patience to get there. Not thrifted: the white china platter (wedding gift), the leather couch (our first repatriation purchase upon arrival Stateside, American Furniture Warehouse), and the round framed mirror (Walmart. Shudder.) Everything else: Goodwill/Saver's/Homegoods/mom and dad's hand me downs.

Next: the opposite of a gourmet kitchen. But whatev, it's a decent-ish size and I have a huge pantry, and my husband is really gifted in the charism of doing dinner dishes before bed. So I've got no complaints. Wait, no, I do have one; the heinous "white" linoleum hanging onto the beleaguered floor for dear life. At least it's not carpet?

Heading down the hall we find ourselves in the master bedroom. It's big enough to fit our king sized bed (the luxury!) but not really big enough to fit anything else, and that's fine by me. I keep it as visually uncluttered as possible because I feel 100% less stressed when it's clean and calm.

(How do I get such amazing shots? I'm telling you, it's the 2 year old camera phone and the steady caffeinated hand. #gifted #blessed)

Oh, I forgot, here's a shot of the basement which contains two semi finished guest rooms, an avocado green full bath with some missing ceiling tiles, and a laundry room and play room. 

That stairwell, my friends, is the reason there's zero toy clutter on the main floor. (That and I'm ruthless with the donations. Ruthless.)

Moving on to the nursery wing.

How cool is the boys' dresser? It weighs 200 lbs and our landlords didn't want to bother taking it with, so we inherited it. Legend has it the original owner/saint decopauger is now happily tucked away in a convent somewhere, none the wiser that her lovely original piece now primarily houses Pull Ups and filthy pajama pants.

And my favorite space in the whole house? (Well, at least until this past weekend's decluttering fest); Genevieve's room.

We don't have a dining room because we're not fancy like that. Actually, it's because I opportunistically transformed the space into my gym/home office while nobody was paying attention. I'm sure if we were trying to fit teenaged boys around our kitchen table we might need this space, but for now I'm super super lucky I can use it this way. Nothing fancy, but it's a happy place that lets me get my work done.

And finally, some random shots of the front porch and our front yard, where the children frolic as I survey my kingdom from behind the storm door or the bay window. I'm sure the neighbors can't handle how hands on my parenting is.

Okay one last shot: Evie can stand! If anyone is still hanging on after this endless stream of blurry cellphone pics, you deserve to see something cute.

What about you? Up for showing a little behind the scenes of your home? Maybe you could throw a little something together and drop a link down below? I'm all eyes, because the only thing better than Pinterest is personalized Pinterest, you know?