Beach house

So when I vacation somewhere, I have this thing about really wanting the place where I stay to reflect the “feeling” of the vacation. I also want the place I stay to be sufficiently beautiful so that I am constantly looking around and thinking how lovely it is, rather than being distracted by décor that is not to my taste.

Really unworldly, right? But this means that I like to spend a gazillion hours trying to find something that I love that evokes the tone of the vacation, like the pioneer log cabins we've stayed in at Nauvoo or the gorgeous log house in the Smokies. For this trip I really wanted a beautiful, cool, beachy-but-not-kitschy home.

 And oh, this was such a winner! I think I took a photo of just about every single piece of furniture, art, etc. It was like my perfect Pinterest beach house dream board come to life...the lovely British woman who owns the home has absolutely impeccable taste and spared no expense when she renovated the place last year.

 Seriously, This is like my beach house paradise. The colors were so cool and calming and the entire house was just this breezy, beautiful, wonderful place. The homeowner also had left us a GIANT goody basket full of all sorts of treats and water toys, and then she also had these scented air pump thingies everywhere (I can't remember the brand name but they automatically dispense air fresheners every 20 minutes or so, so the entire house always smelled amazing!). I just constantly felt so relaxed by my surroundings.

I was half-jokingly telling Neil last night that I want to go back here for Thanksgiving because I want to use the double convection ovens to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

And is this not the most idyllic backyard pool you can imagine?

We ate every single meal out at the table in the Florida room overlooking the pool. I have got to have a room like that in my house some day...it was heated and cooled, but still has all of the feeling of a gorgeous sunroom with tons of light and the most comfy couches ever.

Loving the laundry room

 


I've managed to do about a million house/craft/whatever projects this year and have blogged about, oh, very few of them. I'm under no illusions that I will ever be--or want to be--a DIY or home or organizational or style blogger, but the changes I've made in my laundry room lately are small enough and yet have such a big impact on my sanity that what the heck, it's going on my blog (even months after the fact).

So when we originally bought our house it had this dismal little room between the garage and main hallway that had washer/dryer hookups, some really horrible broken wire shelving (have I ever mentioned that we bought a foreclosure? We did) and the walls were primed but unpainted. Sadly this room did not take top priority and after we bought this really sketchy washer/dryer from some friends (we repaired both machines sooo many times and it took about 2.5 hours to dry a load of laundry) we took down the ugly shelves, put up some cabinets and hooks for coats, and left the room alone for a few years.

Before Isaac was born Neil and I spent a weekend moving around the washer and dryer and painting the room. We painted it the same shade that we had used for most of the other main living areas in the house but it looked really horribly yellow in that little room.



Earlier this winter our washer finally gave up the ghost. I was SO thrilled! Seriously, I was practically skipping with joy. The dryer was so barely functional that we just replaced them both at the same time and I spent waaay too much time in there gloating over the glories of laundry that would magically be done in less than two hours.

At the beginning of the summer I painted the trim & baseboards (mostly...you can tell that I still haven't painted behind the machines yet!) and Neil built a nice wide shelf to fit over the washer & dryer. I picked up some lovely little baskets at Target and labeled them with everyone's name for their laundry and man oh man, those have been LIFE-CHANGING. No more teetering piles! I printed out a few quotes that I found especially inspirational and put them up on the walls, and Neil replaced the ceiling fixture so the room is now nice and bright instead of so dim that you can't tell if that's a stain on your shirt or not.

And a couple of weeks ago when everyone was back to school I spent naptime painting the walls the same shade of gray that is in our master bathroom and kitchen. I love love love it (it looks weirdly green in this next photo, but it's not).



Last but not least, a couple of things that really make this room delightful for me--the new rug which is a) much more in keeping with my style than the brown garage-style mat that was there before b) actually fits the space (the old one was too small) and c) does a fabulous job of scraping off shoes! nice and bristly while still being soft to bare feet when you're folding laundry--and the "lonesome sock" box that I made by cutting down a cardboard shipping box and then Mod Podging scrapbook paper all over it. I also painted everyone's coat/backpack hook a color of their choosing which has completely eliminated all of the arguing about so-and-so using more than their fair share of hooks (painted it about six months ago and it's worked like a charm!)

I love these kinds of projects. Fairly small cosmetic and functional changes (although the washer and dryer were neither small nor cosmetic!) that have a huge impact on my willingness to do a chore that takes up a ton of my time. :-) Now I actually look forward to folding laundry because it's such a happy place for me AND I know that all of my folded piles won't get knocked down before the kids get around to putting them away!

lately...

Oh, but we've been busy lately!

Last week Neil was presenting at the MSEC conference in Detroit. We missed him like crazy but we were so proud of his work & the recognition he received for his research! While he was gone we worked hard to keep ourselves busy (as Abigail said, we had to do lots of things so we could forget how much we missed him!).

We had a pizza party picnic at a playground one night, went to an origami class another night, spent a lot of time at the library, and the three oldest kids had an AMAZING time every morning attending vacation Bible school at a local church near our home. 

VBS is a really big thing here in the Midwest and we must have gotten mailers from six or seven different churches. The kids had a total blast and I was so impressed with all of the teachers & lessons. The kids focused all week on learning about Christ (their theme was "discover, decide, defend") and they read up on scriptural evidence of Christ's divine ministry. They had a secret agent theme and so the whole week was focused around searching for scriptural clues, etc. Very cute and so fun. On the last morning they had a cute program where they sang the songs they'd been learning that week and then dumped green slime over their teachers (the promised reward if the kids raised a certain amount of money for digging wells in Honduras). One of my very very favorite things about where we live is the opportunity that my children have to get to know so many good people of different faiths who have different beliefs than we do but are still trying their very hardest to be the best people they can be. 

A few other things we did while Neil was gone:

I painted our bathroom walls (I did the cabinets last summer but it took me an entire year to find time for the walls & trim!)

I made this map that I am SO in love with--it combines some of our very favorite imaginary lands like Narnia, Middle-Earth, Prydain, Neverland, etc., along with smaller locales like Treasure Island, the Enchanted Forest, the Hundred-Acre Wood, Miss Rumphius's house, the Little Brute family's cottage, Mr. McGregor's garden, etc. 

And...I continued to work on the laundry room. It's getting closer to being done! Mostly just painting left to do. 


After Neil got home, we did fun things this weekend like pick 18 lbs of strawberries (we made some delightful peach/plum/strawberry jam!)

At some point during the weekend we ate ice cream for lunch.

And on Saturday night we went to a local wolf preserve to listen to a string quartet play along with the wolves (it was called "Howling Mozart"). We meandered around and visited the wolves, checked out the bison, and wondered what the foxes would say if they woke up (ring ding ding!). And then we roasted some marshmallows because hurray, they had a fire going for just that purpose! Our family ended up on the park's Facebook page later that night with all of our roasting sticks in hand.

 Nathan was having sooo much fun yanking Neil's hat/hair/head around.

 Can you spot the bison? There was the cutest little calf bouncing all over the place.

And back at home with our own wildlife...Lukie and his beloved Yoda chicken. Pants optional, chicken required.

 Did I mention that Tottles is walking around everywhere? Because he is. And he is the most darling thing. Last night we were out looking at the chickens together and they were all clucking happily and I heard him whisper, "Bok bok bok...bok bok bok." So sweet and dear. He has been running a fever the last couple of days and so he wants to spend all his time cuddling his mama.

 More chickens--Abigail and our chicken-falcon Gloria. This bird is awesome.

 And Pomegranate--whom we heard crow four times yesterday! Oh boy...literally. The kids have been debating whether we should give Pomegranate to the zoo, give him to some friends to eat, or eat him ourselves. Neil and I would like to keep him around for a bit and sort of see how things go, but if he's noisy, then...he will be moving on to greener pastures of some sort or another. He's such a beautiful bird that I'm so sad he turned out to be a rooster! He has these gorgeous glossy black feathers that shade to deepest green in the sun. This is what he will look like when fully grown. Gorgeous, right?

A few more random images from our summer thus far...

 

 Jules sticking up our scaled solar system--it stretches all the way down one hallway. Luke solemnly told Neil at dinner that "I made dee ast-er-oids." So cute!

 This is how the kids spend literally half of their free time--digging up weeds in the garden to feed to
the chickens. Um, hello, why did we not get chickens before?! I haven't had to weed at all lately!

 No, we hadn't been biking--that's just how Isaac rolls.Abigail, as always, has turned out some really amazing stuff on her Rainbow Loom. Yesterday she started making some characters from Frozen (pictured are Anna and Elsa; she followed a video tutorial for Elsa but made Anna on her own) and then today she decided that they needed some companions, so now we also have Christophe and Hans. Plans for Olaf are in the works.



Canning apricot/strawberry jam, apricot jam, and apricots...yum yum! The kids are such good helpers--seriously! They work like crazy and make things go so much faster.