Feeling at home in an "unfinished" space

Since we bought a house ONE YEAR ago (!) and shared a generous photo of the front door, our friends, family, acquaintances and fellow bloggers have asked to see pictures of the space and I've categorically avoided it. When people come over to our house, I'm often apologizing for the lack of furniture, excusing our hand-me-down couch, and generally making people feel uncomfortable with how much I appear to hate how things are set up and plan to change everything when we have the time/money/ability.

Recently, I started to hear these excuses come out of my mouth as my guests did. And I looked around and started, just a little, to see our house not just as potential, but as our haven, here and now.

I even cleaned off my church pew bench for the picture!

Unintentionally-styled mantle featuring our name in wooden letter blacked out, pine cones
leftover from Christmas and commentaries, of course! and no furniture :'D

 I don't want to make excuses and spend time wishing it looked prettier and better and that I had better and more consistent taste. (On different occasions my style can be described as eclectic, vintage, industrial, rustic, craftsman, mid-century, blah, blah, blah. Don't fit me into a box! and all that).

 

And I don't want to spend any more time wishing we had the money for stuff to hang on my wall and white ceramic animals (kidding!) and giant potted plants and to remodel the bathrooms and landscape the back yard and make a dreamy outdoor dining space with market lights, and, and, and...I hope someday we do have money and time and that I can make a decision on some of those items. But I also want to enjoy our house NOW.

I embrace that we have ratty, hand-me-down furniture, because we have a baby who is messy and climbing and slobbering and will eventually be jumping and catapulting and spilling and generally destroying all the nice things I have and would like to have. and we'll probably have another one or two of those destructive, imaginative fun-making creatures and they'll ruin even more of my prized belongings.

Speaking of my baby, his room is my favorite.

My baby model slacking on the job.

I hope E and any future babies will be able to have fun piling cushions on the ground and jumping off of them, and making forts with my throw pillows and hand-knit afghans and that they won't remember their mama yelling at them to "don't touch that" and "be careful with that" and "If you do that again, you'll..."

And for that, I will sacrifice having instagram-worthy photos of my home. At least for 20 years or so.

This post might make my husband crazy, because he has been telling me all of the above, in not so many words, for the past 10 months, but hey - that would have been too easy, right?

a pastor works here. and a kid makes huge messes here.

(this is the ikea bekvam kitchen cart that I stained and painted)

That oven is original to the house and it works! My favorite thing in the kitchen.

please note my prize, giant zucchini on the counter.

The butler's pantry is awesome for storage but separates the kitchen from the rest of the house.

Master bedroom

How do you make your space a home, even if it's not magazine worthy?

(Also, serious question, how do you decide what to put on your walls? I am seriously gun-shy about committing to decor.)

theft.

The ironic thing was, E and I have always had this silly habit. Every time we walk into our house, especially if it's dark outside, we slowly unlock and crack open the door and call out "Robber? Are you there?" You know, to give the thief a chance to get away. The goofy little warning to the nonexistent thief makes me laugh away the nerves when arriving home alone.

Little did I know that joke would cease to be funny any more.

I would feel better if a window had been broken, but we still aren't sure where the thief came into our house, just that it was is in the middle of the day. And on April Fool's Day, no less. They made off with pricey, but [eventually] replaceable gadgets. Also, every single piece of my jewelry - except the wedding ring on my finger.

I can't really describe what I'm feeling. A lot of people have said being robbed must have felt violating. And yes, we feel violated, but it's not the most prevalent emotion.

I think what I'm still feeling, is something more like sad disbelief. Every morning I go back to my little bedroom nook by the window where all of my jewelry used to hang and I cannot believe that every last chain, bead, earring, watch is just...gone. I cannot believe someone could take all of those prized possessions (with no resale value!). The beloved things I had spent 10 years collecting - from a 16th birthday gift to my great-grandmother's heirlooms, and my expensive pieces like my mom's gold watch, my pearl necklace, and the earrings and bracelet I wore on my wedding day.

All I could think was: take my camera (they did), take the ps3 (they did), take the laptop (they did) but whhhyyy did you have to take my precious THINGS?

So while I'm still having a pity party, and finding out how emotionally attached I am to forever21 necklaces, I keep reading these verses to remind myself of the important, eternal things.

p.s. I'm grateful to Holley for sharing their house burglary experience and tips so I can feel a little more safe and prepared in the future. We can't replace any of the stolen items because we can't get renter's insurance - our house is apparently in a wildfire hazard zone.:-/

DIY: cable spool coffee table

I'm the last person that should be writing this post. I have almost no innate creativity and no experience working with power tools. But in week, I completed a home project I'd found on Pinterest (sadly, with no original photo source) and in the Design*Sponge book, that has been on my wishlist for a couple years.

I'm going to include a light tutorial, but please feel free to ask questions if you have them, and I'll do my best to answer! A friend (you just saw her beautiful wedding) and I worked on this project together. I had the inspiration/motivation to get it started, and she had the space, experience and power tools.

Here's what you'll need (I didn't have ANY of these tools or supplies before I got started. Most of you probably have some tools on hand already, but I'll include everything I used)

• Electrical cable reel (or spool). We picked up these spools at a local electrical supply company that literally had piles of them lying behind their warehouse. We were permitted to pick them up for free. (total score!)
• A power sander (like this, or a smaller version here)
• Cordless drill with screw-driving and drilling bit sets
• 1 inch spade drill bit
• Wood stain
• 2.5 inch screws
• Compass, or soft measuring tape
• 8 feet of 1 inch dowel rods (I used 5 pieces cut at 18" each and trimmed them up as needed)
• level
• wrench
• hammer

Ok! here we go.

This is what the spool looked like when I got started.  

(I had already removed a metal plate from the top)

First, hammer down the nails sticking out to make a smooth surface.
Then sand, sand, sand. My goal was to get rid of most of the stamped letters and paint on top and any other imperfections in the wood. I used the electric sander on the surface for probably an hour before it looked and felt like what I wanted. I lightly sanded the sides, the center cylinder, and the bottom up-facing surface, to protect from splinters. Then I took a piece of sand paper and hit some spots around the center hole by hand. 

Once it was completely sanded, I wiped it gently with a damp washcloth, then brushed one layer of Ikea's Behandla wood stain on it. I stained the dowels as well and left both to dry. (Because I was working on this project at my friend's, I came back about 5 days later, but an overnight dry would have been enough.)



When the stain was dry I started marking out where I would install the dowels. This would have been much easier with a compass, so that's what I included above. I marked out 5 places where I wanted the dowels, about 18" apart and measured them halfway in from the edge, which was 2.5". I marked them on the inside of the top, and on the bottom.



I drilled a 1 inch bevel for the dowel to sit in on the underside of the top (the table was upside down here).  I measured the space carefully and added about 1/8" for the dowel length, and cut it. Placing one side of the dowel in the groove, I used a rubber mallet to hammer the dowel until it leveled evenly. Then I drilled a small hole for a screw through the bottom of the table and into the dowel, and screwed the flat end of the dowel to the bottom.



I did this around each point and then wiped the whole thing clean.



After getting it home, I decided I wanted another layer of stain on the top so I applied that, and then sprayed it with an indoor wood sealant to protect from water stains. 4 coats and 3 hours later, it was finished. (I was ready to bring it inside, but it smelled pretty strongly for 2 days afterwards so it should have probably be left out in a garage for a few days to air out.)

Total cost (to me): $40
Total time: 8 hours



and then - ta da! We put some of our favorite books on display and I topped it temporarily with this decorative plate and bark balls from Ikea.

No longer home

I was in back in Chicago last week on business for a few days, but extended my stay to catch up with family and friends as we are going to celebrate Christmas with E's family in California this year.

Going "home" (I can hardly call it that anymore) has gotten weirder over the last two and a half years. I try to be realistic and not expect everyone and everything to be the same, but there's always an acute awareness that people have grown up, gotten older, and are moving into different stages in life (I'm the only girl from my former church who married in the last three years and doesn't already have at least one kid). Each time I'm reminded how relationships can dissolve unintentionally without the maintenance of weekly visits or chats, running into each other at family gatherings and church activities and in normal life.



I know its impossible to maintain all the relationships I had when I lived there. In a way it's probably abnormal that I've tried to keep up so many. My usual visits back home are packed to the brim with visits - coffee with a college friend, lunch with a childhood friend. Stopping by my old office to say hello to former coworkers, and dinner with yet another branch of my extended family.

This year I attempted to make make it less widely known that I was coming back, to be able to limit my visits a little more (It hasn't seemed to work for me yet). There are always people who surprise me with their interest in getting together, and others that force me to acknowledge we've moved on in our relationship.



It's easy for me to say that I don't miss back home, and for the most part that's true - . I love living in California. I love that E and I have had the opportunity to grow our marriage outside of the comfort and influence of my old circles of friends and family. I think its been healthy. But when I do go back I have to acknowledge that I'm a little sad about what I left behind. It's not just because I miss people and my former life, but because it won't ever be the same as it was. Visiting doesn't bring it back. It just serves as a reminder of what I don't and won't ever have.

So next time I visit my hometown, I won't be looking up every old friend, extended family member, coworker or mentor. I think I'll be content to remember that there are people who played a special role in my life at a specific time, and be grateful for it. And maybe it will be help me to be more present where I am, looking forward to where we'll go next. (a story for another day...)

I would love to hear from you guys who have moved away from home. What do you miss and what have you learned?

unexpected weekend disaster

I wrote my last post Saturday morning just before disaster hit.

Little did we know that instead of the 2 hours of cleaning/chores we wanted to do Saturday afternoon before playing outside in the beautiful 78 degree weather, we would spend 14+ hrs over the weekend cleaning.

Our predicament might not strike homeowners as too terrible (I'm always really impressed with how much the Nodakademics can tackle in their house!), but we are renting, and were certainly not expecting to have something like this happen.

On Saturday morning we discovered an unwelcome substance in the closet: Mold.

E had an old belt on the floor of his closet that was just coated in it. It had turned green and white, and was so disgusting we were gagging. You guys can all thank me that we threw it out so fast I wasn't able to take a photo of it.

Commence freak out.

And begin to empty entire closet. and find more mold.

(if you don't want to see any of these pictures, you may want to skip the rest of this post)

We ripped out the carpet pieces laid in the closet (our closets are about an inch raised off the bedroom carpeted floor and extra pieces of carpeting were cut for the closet floors and just laid in them), only to find this:

From then on it was just like a bad movie. We started pulling out things from our other closets, in our bedroom and office. And wouldn't you know. Every single closet was infested.

Things we don't often pull out--like luggage, old school books, board games, and old clothes. Everything smelled gross and musty, and a lot of things had mold spores on them.

Somewhere in the midst of this, we called our landlord. He said he'd have an inspector come out early this week (hopefully today?) to see if he could figure out where moisture was getting in.

Most of this mold has to be somewhat recent because it wasn't all on old/unused stuff.

Bu it just seemed like once we started looking, we found in places we couldn't believe we hadn't noticed it before (inside a kitchen closet, on the baseboards).

E's blazer

E was pretty upset that so much of our stuff was ruined, and wondering how it could have happened (we are sure it is nothing we did) and how we hadn't noticed it.

I got into "I'm a big girl, we can handle this" mode. E started unloading the contents of every closet, inspecting items. We started throwing things in piles: garbage, try-to-salvage, just needs a wash, and seems ok.

Anything that smelled I set out in the sun.

I started the laundry, adding baking soda and vinegar to each load, and hung things to dry:

(SO thankful for a sunny day!)

Then I made a bleach and hot water solution and we started sponging down every surface in the closets. Looking back, we probably should have gotten gloves and a mask, but I just wanted to get it done. Every fan on in the house, every window open.

I can't believe I'm going to share these pictures, but this is what the house looked like in process.

5 hours of emptying, scrubbing, bleaching, laundrying, sunning.

I had done about 6 loads of laundry at this point and sometime after dinner (E's mom brought us In 'n Out--life saving!) we just quit.

Which means yesterday was left to put our lives back together.

Apparently you can't find dehumidifiers in SoCal (who would expect humidity?) so we stocked every closet with cedar blocks and moisture absorbing crystals something like this.

I did more laundry and we started to carefully restock (it was a good opportunity to purge!), leaving the floors clear, doors open, and still running fans. Not everything is put back together, but we're getting there.

I imagine we'll be paranoid for a while(even if it turns out to be a fixable problem). E rotates the fans every night and leaves the ceiling fans on all day.

I feel like this is only a tiny taste of what home ownership will be like.

Have you had major home disasters recently? I would love to hear stories to make me feel a little better about ours!

For cooking and baking

The general theme for most of the gifts I receive this year were kitchen related. I couldn't have imagined a better theme!

I've been daydreaming for months about a Le Creuset. (although I just took her out of her box today!)

Without red meat this month I am not sure what to make in it. This post on The Kitchn might just get me started.

My brother-in-law picked my name for Christmas and got me this beautiful book:

I can't stop flipping through the pages and reading the stories--The intro really grabbed me " This is about food and women and listening".

The pictures take me right back to our honeymoon.

I'll blog any recipes I get brave enough to try (braised rabbit! truffle lasagna!) This is a cookbook I can definitely see myself opening again and again.

I'm making it a resolution to use cookbooks more often and not rely so heavily on the interwebs for recipes. It requires more planning (usually I do a search for 1-2 ingredients I have on hand and then modify a recipe to use what I have. I'm so lazy.) But there's something about a messy book on the counter while you're cooking (Julie and Julia anyone?) and I've been gifted some good ones.

I also received a huge baking stone, a chop2pot cutting board, and some folding chairs for when we have guests (when my family was visiting they sat in camp chairs!)

Did anyone else receive kitchen gadgets for christmas? What are your favorite things to use in the kitchen?

An Evening at Casa Latte

E has been a studying monster lately.

I miss him, but its a great excuse for some girly indulgence.

On tonight's menu:

(I know--Miley Cryus. but I couldn't help myself!)

I also finally cashed in on this giveaway from ages ago. Thanks again, Jenna! I'm excited to try the sugar scrub in the tub tonight :-)

This has been my absolute favorite beverage on the 'almost' chilly nights we've been having lately. Creamy hot cocoa with a splash of kahlua. YUM.

Hope your evening has been just as delightful!