Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real: Yes, We're Still On About The House Edition

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life.  Every Thursday at Like Mother, Like Daughter

More photos of the house.  I'm sorry, I seem to have two settings: my house and my sisters' kids.  Well, what can you do?

Lots of overlapping this week!  You'll see what I mean...

Pretty

We begin, friends, with the entry.  I love this entry.  It was the first thing I was excited about when I first toured this house and I love it more each day.  Things are beginning to fall in place, decor-wise, as I should have known they would.  And the mantra of the house has become, "Well, it doesn't NOT go"!

There's also a healthy touch of REAL in this photo as well, if you look hard enough.  That gold frame on the left is empty.  It held my illustrious family tree but the glass got broken so I had to take the tree out and pack it away very carefully for the move and now I can't remember where I so carefully packed it.  But we decided to hang the frame anyway.  The green lamp in the library, seen on the right has no globe.  It ALSO got broken.  And so there it sits, waiting for someone to get her act together and remember to go buy some glass things.

Also, I wish that field hockey stick was a walking stick but I suppose it's more honest.

This is what greets you when you enter into the entry.  The Vicar's dresser.  We plan on keeping scarves, mittens and other woolly things in the drawers off-season (as soon as I find and unpack them) and I'm looking forward to having some sort of lovely seasonal display here year-round.  But we'll see.

For now, we've got things that sing SPRING!  Mom painted that painting when she was very young and always protests that it's not good enough to display when I bring it out each Spring.  But I think it's beautiful and I love it!  The rest of the things here were either gifts or yard sale finds.  And those lilies are just starting to unfurl and perfume the house with their heady scent!  It's delicious!  They make me happy (overlap)!

Passing through the entry, you come into the kitchen.  I was very unsure about this room but it's really coming together and I'm starting to enjoy it!  I still miss my old kitchen (especially Mrs. C *sigh*) but this kitchen is a lot more efficient and, somehow, easier to keep clean.

The above is the hutch that used to be in our dining room at the old place.  The moment I walked into this room for the first time I knew that wall was perfect for it!  I love everything about this.  Everything here is both beautiful AND useful.  I use everything you see.  Well, except the wine.  I haven't used that yet.  The bottom cupboards are perfect for storing potatoes, onions and seldom used things like pitchers and water bottles.  A whirling dervish friend of mine came over two days ago and helped me unpack my pretty things and arrange them.  It would have taken me months--MONTHS--to decide where to put those things on the walls.  She did it in mere moments!

Her greatest achievement was in the living room.  This was my least favorite room in the house, up until Tuesday.  I was completely at a loss as to what to do in there and so I had left boxes unpacked and walls and tables bare.  Then Miss Dervish came in and whipped that room into shape so fast it made my head spin.  We've decided that she is what we call an orchestrator and I am what we call not one of those.

She loves to arrange and decorate and says that as she can't exactly sell her own house and buy a new one to play with she is more than happy to come over and play with mine!  And I need all the help I can get!  So we make a good team.

Happy

We were both thrilled to discover that the old window The Vicar trash-picked for me a few years ago fit this spot next to the fridge like it was made for it!  That area is across the room from pretty much everything else in the kitchen and, thus, is destined to become a sort of message center.  It's where I keep my cookbooks and, below, those appliances I don't use every day.  And behold!  The Vicar and I each get a junk drawer!  And that makes us both happy!

Sometimes when I look through the photos on my phone, I find shots obviously not taken by me.  I would never take a photo of the dog.  I'm just not that kind of person.  These were, clearly, taken by Calvin and, I must admit, they're pretty cute.  This old dog makes him very, very happy.

 Funny

Also taken by Calvin, the phone/camera hijacker.  He found an odd, narrow piece of metal pipe somewhere in the house this week and discovered to his joy that it is precisely the right size from which to shoot Nerf darts in the manner of a blow dart.  So he gathered a bunch of said darts and affixed thumb tacks to the ends.  Naturally.  As one does.  When one is a twelve-year-old boy.  And then he went around shooting at all manner of things (NOT LIVING THINGS) and taking photos of his triumphs to show his friends.  He thought this shot of the dart stuck into the cereal box was glorious.

He is a weird, funny kid.

Real

And now for the Real.  For this portion we are going to have to revisit a few areas:

Back in the kitchen.  There are definitely elements of Pretty and Happy in this shot of the back door, due mostly to the plant that was a housewarming gift from our senior pastor and his wife and the pretty things hung on the wall by Miss Dervish.  Oh dear, that may be her blog name now.  I'm not sure I've thought this through properly...

Anyway, I took this as an example of Real because, really, it's just a glorified catch-all space.  We've got dog biscuits, Christmas candles, the pitcher I use for a watering can, medicine for Nutmeg's ears, a red box containing my immersion blender and the Tupperware container I use to store bread dough (usually--not now).  I need baskets or tins or something to conceal the fact that this is a catch-all.  But for now, it's just really random.

And finally, a return to the living room.  This is what it REALLY looked like before I started staging it for the Pretty photo.  Ok, maybe it's not that bad, but I felt guilty.  I don't think we're supposed to clear away the pizza boxes and arrange pillows or zoom in so the thermostat doesn't show for these shots.  So, there you have it.  I feel better.

Well, I suppose it's possible that next week I'll manage to find some contentment outside of my house.  But I highly doubt it.

Until then...