Our Peaceful Place

Welcome to our home!  I am so glad you came!  :)  We are blessed to be renting this house from another missionary family who will not need it for the next five plus years.  It’s incomprehensible, in the most wonderful way, to think about not having to move for that long!  

When you walk through the front door (which is to the right of my purse), you enter the dining room.  The table remains my favorite piece of furniture!   

Still to do: The curtains are going to get a little lengthening treatment so I can get away from the high water look (and also hopefully raise the curtain rods a bit so that the ring clips are not competing with the window trim).  Stay tuned!

The dining room and living room are actually one long, skinny room.  This is the furniture I had to work with for this small living space but I was not happy with the lack of color, pattern, varied wood tones or scale (the sofa is much too bulky)!  Alas, that is life when you buy furniture for one rental and have to find a way for it to work in the next.  :)

 

So first, my super talented friend (and now sewing teacher) Brenda made the chair slipcovers and I used a painters drop cloth to cover the coffee table. 

 

Even though it didn’t feel right, it stayed this way until the weather got cold and we moved the couch right in front of the fireplace for staying warm! 

Then it dawned on me: putting the arrangement on the diagonal took away the improper balance of weight in the room!  It felt so much better!  Eventually, I hope to get 2 side chairs (with my Christmas money??) so that we aren’t sitting on hard dining room chairs for visiting with our friends!  :)  But for now, it works and all it cost was less than $15 for the chair slips. 

Still to do: Sew some little pillows to put on the chairs for color and verve .  It’s all a bit predictable right now!  :)  Also, hang some family pictures!  It’s driving me crazy that we only have one picture of family hanging on the walls! 

Across from living room on the left is the entrance to the TV room.  We’ll skip the toy mess and move on.  :)

Next you come to the main bathroom on the right.  The brown shower curtain was one I had on hand.  It was ok, but it just felt like it went a little too well with the 70’s tile, so I used some of my birthday money (thanks Dad and Mom) to buy this fabric.  After a couple of sewing lessons, I completed my first big project!  I’m happy with it. 

Because the ceiling is low, I wanted the shower curtain to go to the ceiling to make the room look bigger, as well as hide the shower head, etc.  Unfortunately, it needs to be a few inches off the floor because of the water drainage. 

I’m hoping to find a pretty burnt orange rug to warm up the space a bit and eventually I think it would look much better to have burnt orange/rust/umber walls too.  The current paint color works well in the rest of the house, but for some reason (lighting?) it doesn’t look that great in here. 

I’d also like to replace the tan towels with burnt orange (if I don’t end up painting) because that would really help the paint color to look less “off” as well (I always have so many plans for my Christmas money!!).  For now, it’s fine!

If you continue straight down the hall, you get to my kids’ room but I didn’t take photos of that either.  Hardly anything is done in there.  I still have beds to paint, hang their names, etc.  The do have their Pottery Barn Inspired Transportation Art hanging though.  :)

Then to the left at the end of the hallway is the master bedroom.  You can see I did a little rearranging since this and this.  I wasn’t happy with the headboard so this is what I came up with for now. Often in the past, I have used a window for the “headboard” but I could not get that to work for me this time because of where the windows are located!  Oh well!  Eventually, we’ll figure out a headboard, maybe even by filling in the other one with some bead board or something. 

The desk was formerly my hall table but it was a lot prettier than my other desk and fit the space better too so it got a coat of white.  I absolutely love it! 

     

The location of the bed is totally impractical for opening the windows, but I’m more “form” than a “function” so for now it stays! 

Still to do: Some sort of art or pictures! 

I’m sure you are wondering about the kitchen…I’ve got a project brewing there (hint: it has to do with the Sermon on the Mount) and I want to finish it first!  But I do have plenty of cabinet and counter space which is such a blessing! 

So, now that we have the house tour out of the way, we can sit down for a good latte and visit a bit!  You KNOW you are always welcome here!