Home is where I host tea parties are for little hands and teddy bears.
Home is where I use our “good” linens and dishes just for play.
Home is where I serve chocolate spread and crackers for lunch.
Love,
Jess
Join Emily, at Chatting at the Sky, for her photo link party about Glimpses of Home.
photo credit
When life gets stressful, some people eat too much, spend too much or sleep too much. (or all three)
Me?
I scan the MLS too much.
Not because I am sad or malcontent, just because it is fun!
I could pour over house tours online with glee and imagination for hours. I look at tiny houses, out-of-state houses, big houses and local-maybe-someday houses. I do love a good realty listing. I am the worst looky-lu ever! I have been known to visit open houses for fun, even when I am not looking to buy. I am forever taking the color copy listing promos from the mailboxes on For Sale signs. {tsk, tsk}
As a kid, I read floor plan magazines, while other girlfriends drooled over Leo DiCaprio in Teen Beat. Hey, I drooled too, but I had my priorities. Plus, I don’t think I was aloud to read the “trashy” ones with articles like, 101 ways to kiss your boy toy.
I digress.
I had floor plan computer software, a subscription to House Beautiful and a weekly claim to the Sunday ‘Houses’ section of the classifieds…all before I was sixteen. In fact, during my 8th grade “shop class” business lesson, I created a company called Happy Homes. My company would color coordinate a house into pure happiness, uh…yeah. Reality happened, now what?
House Beautiful magazine circa 1990's-ish
While, I consider myself a product of a happy home, I have been searching for the secret ingredient to happiness in my own home.
What makes a house a home?
Enter in Kimba from A Soft Place to Land. She has a knack for spray paint, family strengthening and keepin’ it real y’all. Do-It-Yourself projects mixed with fun tips for making your home…what else? A Soft Place to Land! Are you with me? Say, Yes!
Okay, but even Kimba seems to acknowledge the struggle between cute picture frames and meaningful frames of mind. To start keepin’ really real, she has started a new series cleverly named, Building A Soft Place to Land. I am totally hooked!
Join Kimba and get hooked too, as she learns, along with us, how to build the foundation for joyful homes, spray paint and all.
See what other folks are getting hooked on over at Hooked on Houses on Friday.
I am so blessed to have a warm place to call home during these cold winter months. I am safe, sound, and generally welcomed in my home (Lord help us! Mama is throwing frying Pans Made with Steel again!).
But, what happens when home doesn’t feel warm? What if home feels like the fangs of used books, junk piles and spoiled paint cans are ‘closing in’ for a bite? Or what if it curiously smells like old coffee and sharpie marker ink in the laundry room, on a good day?
It can stay that way.
OR
I can do something.
What a unique place, our homes, where we can define, design, and dally in a space without reason or with a million reasons. To me “doing something” simply means, taking a chance to make an impact while harnessing my behavior, teaching it to value what it is I am doing.
Here to Hoping…
Here is a photo taken in the middle of my “doing something” to the laundry room. I have been taking a chance, all day, amping up this room in time for The Masked Mommy’s first ever Laundry Room Pow-Wow that is on February 1st!
I am so excited to share at the Pow-Wow about my room, my hopes, and my first ever fabric mistreatments, with a bunch of other bloggers, that needed to “do something” with their own life direction (or maybe just a new decor 
).
1. Pile. Is it just my house or are your toys fertile and multiply? (kids’ room)
2. Sort. Plastic bins, plastic bins, plastic bins…oh sorry, I was busy rehearsing my organizing mantra. Isn’t my little helper so cute? Give, keep, sell…give, keep, sell…give, keep, sell…oops, there I go again!
3. Claim. This room is one 4 year old lying down by one 1 1/2 year old lying down. Nice square footage. I’ll take it; have my people talk to your people.
4. Gather. Move stuff around, aka fluff your nest, it is so much fun!
5. Conceal. Hi there attic! Wanna play hide-n-seek? Okay, you hide first. Good.
6. Learn. Making room for the play room includes making room for learning. The vintage ABC and 123 quilt was hung in my nursery when I was a wee one. Are the 70′s considered vintage yet? None-the-less, the vintage quilt, aka attic concealer, is a great tool for learning and general cheeriness.
7. Sit. {whimper, sigh!} Why did I let this a.dor.a.ble step bench be cluttered in old taxes and fall decor for waaaay too long? Well, no guilt, just pleasure now. I love the littleness of this space! Place a few books around to promote reading.
8. Add a family photo board in the playroom. It provides friendly faces to look at when Mommy puts the baby-gate up outside her own room and instructs everyone it is now “Play Time” just so she can blog. er…I mean, because when kids look at the familiar faces, it encourages family connectivity, creativity and community. Yeah, that’s it!
9. Relax and enjoy your hard work! Play!
