Joyful Abode

So, things are looking a lot nicer around here, as far as home decor goes. Now that we’ve finally been home for a couple of weeks, we’ve gotten some pictures on the walls and everything!

Check out our guest room! Who wants to come visit??

The lamps don’t match, but that’s kind of lower priority right now.

One of our dining room chairs lives in here (and matches nicely). The basket on the dresser is full of soaps, lip balm, toothpaste, and other goodies for our guests. The dresser drawers (except for one) are empty for our guest’s clothes!

The elliptical machine lives in the guest room now (we’ve been going to the gym more than working out at home, now that we’re so close to it!) The beer bottles are gone now too (sent to my brother-in-law who brews beer, for recycling).

It’s a good thing the guest dresser is empty, because the (really big) closet is full! The right side of the closet hosts all of my Joyful Abode inventory. Blankets on the top; napkins, kitchen towels, grocery totes, accessories, and stationery on the next shelf; and lots and lots of aprons hanging up. On the floor, I have my light box stuff and my show kit.

The left side of the closet has some display and shipping things, plus all of my kids’ books, teaching books, and piano music. Plus about a million empty hangers.

The dining room is still waiting for the table we ordered… so we can seat 8 at the table and have nice dinner parties. But… I’ve recovered the chairs!

The chairs are covered with Modern Flora fabric designed by Jessica Jones for J.Caroline Creative. I chose 2 fabrics (peapod and herb) and did 4 chairs in each.

I also have fabric to make curtains for the dining room, also from Modern Flora. They’re “green sprig.”

Of course I also have plans for coordinating art in the dining room. Because it’s fun to do!

This is the left side of the dining room (if you’re standing in the front doorway). Our kitchen island has been re-purposed as a bar/buffet in the dining room. It’s so deep, too, that we’re able to display some of our family pictures on it without taking up the area we need for serving.

The baby gate is for the dog, of course… but she can climb over it now, so that’s no good! It still keeps her in the kitchen if we are home and keeping an eye on her, but she has to go into her crate when we leave.

This is the little hallway type thing leading into the kitchen. I guess technically it’s part of the kitchen. I strung up a clothesline for my favorite aprons here, so I can still see them every day!

More kitchen…

And more… no pictures of the inside of the pantry, but it’s HUGE! I’m not sure how I feel about the aprons as curtains here… it worked better in the old house with taller windows. Maybe I’ll take them down and make a simple valance or cafe curtain.

Zora’s crate is in the kitchen (in the little hallway part, across from the apron clothesline), since we spend a lot of time in there. She seems to be getting to like it.

Here’s the living room (those orange stickers are from the movers… we took them off since taking this picture). The TV console is our same entertainment center, with the top part taken off. Eventually we’re going to get one custom-built. It’s a pretty small living room.

This is our back patio (off of the dining room). On the table are my little herb seedlings from Meagan. I’m going to move some of them to bigger pots soon!

That’s enough for now! I’ll bombard you with more later, I’m sure. Right now the room that looks the least-finished is our bedroom… mostly because we’re still waiting for our bed to come, we don’t have a set color scheme yet so art is in limbo, and, well… I guess that’s mostly it.

So, here’s the timeline: We drove to Meridian May 16th, lived in the CBQ (base hotel) until May 25th. We lived in our empty house until the movers brought our things June 2nd. Then the guy was in California June 3-5 while I unpacked. June 6, we drove to South Carolina to stay for a week. June 14th we drove back to Meridian. June 15th, we got our puppy. 2 weeks later… we’re unpacked and settled, with the puppy mostly trained! Whew!