Lesson 75: House Highlight One

Two days after graduation we moved.

We used to live here.

Now we live here. 

You may recognize this new house from my terribly emotional goodbye posts to the best neighbors in the world. We mourned their loss for a year ... but, well, it's been long enough and now we live in their old house!

We literally picked up our stuff and moved it across the yard. No real packing was involved, just some loading up of clothes baskets followed by immediate emptying.

This is the third house Mark and I have occupied during our almost five years of marriage. (We also lived in a Swiss hostel for four months and in my childhood bedroom for six.)

From the start, I have loved to decorate our home! My daily thought process has typically gone something like this. "This room needs better lighting. Get out of bed, Katherine. I am so glad I bought this rug. It's super bright. Brush teeth. Baby's crying. Man, I love Hudson's nursery. The blue is perfect. Banana for baby. The furniture in this kitchen nook is not positioned correctly. I need to read for seminary. Maybe I'll just see if there are any sales at Ballard first." And on and on.

The first day after Mark and I finished seminary, I let out a sigh of relief and said, "I can finally decorate in peace." (As if two children have no bearing on my time.)

This new house is by far the biggest we've ever lived in, and it has the nicest bones. Most of the downstairs has its original hard wood flooring, which is stained a beautiful dark brown color. There is molding all around the ceiling and the windows are framed nicely. Every wall is painted a dark beige (which would not be my color of choice), that we are learning to work with it.

Though it's only been two weeks, much of the house is in order already, and I really like the way most of it looks. All this redecorating (and actually liking the product) has gotten me reminiscing about our past houses. From the start, I never wanted a Target / Ikea looking house. Both of these stores have actually improved in the past few years, but when I first started decorating, they were so generic! My greatest fear was a boring, Target house. (No offense if you like Target. To each his own.)

Thus, I tried to be creative, interesting, colorful, and so on.

As a result, I have done some really weird things to get the look I wanted at a price I could afford! Mark can attest.

I've decided to start a weekly series called "House Highlight" in which I focus on some small aspect of one of the homes we've lived in, including the current one. Some will be highlights which I consider great triumphs, strokes of genius, if you will. Others, well, will just be weird, cautionary tales, ideas for you to steer clear of.

I think it's going to be fun.

Lesson Learned: When it comes to decorating, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again!