{p, h, f, r} The New House Edition

I have been wanting to post pictures for awhile, but it just hasn't happened.  Over the weekend, we finally got the house blessed and I took the opportunity to snap some shots as we walked through the house.  I am linking up with Auntie Leila.

pretty

 I really like my pretty bedroom that is now no longer the overflow storage room of the house.  In our old house, there was no storage so if there was anything that needed to be kept out of the way or away form little fingers, it got piled in our room.  Auntie Leila always encourages ladies to keep a pretty room, and that I am doing.  I especially like the pretty quilt that my grandmother had bought for my mother who never got to use it.  I think they would smile seeing it in this beautiful room.  

 

I am trying to figure out what color curtains I want for this room.  My mother in law purchased the ones up now just to cover the windows until I decide.  She picked them up dirt cheap at the Christmas Tree shop.  What do you think?  Green? White? Off white?  Taupe?  Another color?  I just can't seem to find the right fit.

happy

 

We were very happy that Father J could come bless the house and spend a Sunday afternoon with us.  I set the table for coffee, tea, and apple cake fresh from the farm.  Some little person was very excited to have Father over, and a little impatient for that cake.  Can you tell?

funny

 

Well, Hubby and the rest of the family find it funny that I like my 1950's bathroom so much.  My favorite color has always been pink and this reminds me so much of my grandmother's pink bathroom.  When we first moved in, we had some major plumbing issues to contend with, including the leaking fixtures in the bathroom.  The plumber suggested I replace the whole shower unit because, "after all this work, you'll still have a pink tub!"

I told him leave my pink tub alone. I like my pink tub!

real

Hubby requested the workshop be blessed since Buddy does some crazy projects in there, hence everyone just out of frame.

This is our family room/playroom/classroom.  It has been a Godsend.    It is still very much a work in progress.  We had to replace the flooring and all the trim. The trim still needs to be reinstalled.  Then we have to replace the ceiling tiles.  Once the trim is up, we can arrange our bookcases and unpack our 40+ boxes of books.  However, just for some REAL perspective, if you moved our 1950's bathroom downstairs and attached it to this room, it would be the same size as out entire old house.  What a difference it is in a larger home!

 

 

There are parts of the house that I didn't include in this mini-tour.  I left out the children's bedrooms for their privacy.  There are also those parts that are a little too real, if you know what I mean, to broadcast across the world wide web.  The two areas above, I posted to get some feedback.  The first  is the stairway down to the family room.  Before we moved in, we pulled up from the stairs a very old, very dirty carpeting that was full of all kinds of nastiness.  I'm not inclined to replace it with carpeting because there are no electrical outlets that would allow easy and thorough vacuuming of the stairs--hence why they were probably so dirty. However, with the amount of foot traffic the stairs receive, I don't see paint holding up well.  Any suggestions or ideas?

The second photo is our future mud area.  Once the door is replaced (It is covered with a curtain because Buddy knocking and glass don't mix, so you really don't want to see our little patch job.) with a door that has a keyed lock, it will become the main entrance for the children and I since it is just off the car port where I park.  It will help keep their shoes and belongings out of the living room--along with the mud and snow!  The gate leads to downstairs.  I am not sure if I want to keep it.  I'm trying to decide on a color to paint it that will brighten the area up but stand up to muddy shoes and children continually passing through.  I'm all ears!

Praying Us Home

I know that I have been MIA for a couple of weeks now. Please don't take it personally, school began, we are days away from closing on a new house, and efforts to clean out my parents' home have reached feverish level because we are rapidly running out of time.  Needless to say, free time has been an enigma of late.  However, I wanted to jump on to share a little something I wrote and say hi.  I hope to get up a couple of more posts this week--pray for me, there is too much to be done and not enough time to do it, but all things are possible with GOD!

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The closing date on our new home is fast approaching and I can't stop thinking of my grandmother. The last time I visited her at home, she asked, "Dolly, did you find a house yet?"

I explained that we hadn't because all the ones in our price range weren't what we needed or needed way too much work. She patted my hand and kissed me, "I'm going to pray that you find a good house that is just what you need."

 A couple of months later, we had had a house hunting day set up but I wasn't in the mood to go.... My heart was too heavy from packing up my grandmother's treasures and visiting her home for the last time. I was ready to give up, we weren't finding what we wanted and had started looking out of state. But, we went for the appointment anyway. A house had popped up on our realtor's list at the last moment, once we had visited the ones we had originally planned, we headed there for a quick look to end the day. We arrived at that house and as soon as I walked in, I knew it was home.

We checked out the bathroom and it was bitter-sweet. It was so similar to my grandmother's and I had to fight back the tears as I remembered how my heart broke when I walked through hers the day before for the last time, it had always been my favorite room.

As we looked around the kitchen, something caught my eye. The curtains in the living room--the only curtains still up in the house--jogged my memory. As I had been cleaning out my grandmother's cedar chest, I kept coming back to this one pair of curtains. I didn't know why and couldn't figure out why they were speaking to me. They definitely weren't her prettiest curtains. After picking them up for the fifth time, I decided to take them and maybe I would figure out their significance later---and there they were, the same curtains!

My grandmother had prayed us into the perfect house for us. There were so many little things that reminded me of her. When Mama told you she would pray, it was a promise not a platitude. She embodied St Paul's call to pray without ceasing. She didn't pray when it was convenient and go on with her life--she prayed in spite of her life. I'm so thankful that my grandmother was willing to go the extra five miles past what would have been considered more than enough, that her children and grandchildren were her all, that she was there when she had better things to do or it wasn't easy for her, that she lived every moment of her life for everyone else. I'm thankful that she taught me that vacations, pedicures, new clothes, nice furniture, and splurges for me don't make a life worth it. It's giving all that you have and more to your family--that is the gift that lasts generations.

Bishop Barron always describes true love as the willing of the good of the other for the others' sake.  In other words, all is motivated by the benefit and cost to the other, the loved one, not measured by the benefit and cost to self.  By that definition, my grandmother was the truest human definition of true love I have ever known.

I miss my grandmother terribly, every day. This house is her last birthday gift to me. But, I know that she is still looking out for me, her Dolly and always will. If I ever amount to half the woman she was, I will have lived an extraordinary life.

Remembering Home

With cleaning out my childhood home and house hunting, the concept of home has been on my mind a lot. Where is home? What makes it home? What happens when home is no longer your own?

We have been evaluating foreclosures and pursuing real estate listing--often getting side tracked with the absurd, such as the home that is listed so cheaply that it obviously is barely standing but has "tons of potential for those with vision" and the $8 million estate with 15 bedrooms and it's own lake.  So far, nothing has felt right and the homes we have seriously considered have all fallen through for various reasons.

Source

Searching for home has reminded me that this isn't my home. My husband has a saying, "Not our kingdom, not our home."  It can be frustrating but it is true.  While we debate floor plans, lot location, number of rooms and affordability; we must remember that our ever lasting mansion is already under construction.

I know that I, for one, am not always the best contractor for that mansion. Like our searches on Zillow, I get sidetracked looking at what I don't have and getting puffed up about what I do. I get agitated by the interruptions to my all important search and make myself and my goals the center of the known universe.

This year, I am trying very hard to see where I am forcing Christ out of my life and serving only myself. I am trying to be more deliberate about every word that I speak, and what choose to do and fail to do. I am trying hard to be a better contractor, building up the walls of holiness and laying floors of truth and beauty, instead of tearing down what others have created.  My search for home will not be complete in this life, it will only be fulfilled in the next--however, I can only stroll those golden streets if I have first labored for the sake of the Kingdom while still a world away.

Please join me tomorrow for Pretty-Happy-Funny-Real and Friday for Giveing Up to the LORD for Lent. God bless.