I was reading a blog the other day and she threw out a challenge. Grace over at Sense and Simplicity made the point that we all love drooling over the beautiful homes featured in magazine spreads. In fact I also did a post on that recently (read it here). We search the web, read shelter magazines galore, raid library shelves, talk to our friends and watch HGTV ad nauseum.
“I see a lot of advice about buying what you love and creating a home that is a perfect reflection of the inner you. Personally, I don’t think that’s entirely possible. Sometimes practicality has to win over the idealized version of perfection. And sometimes the imperfections are the very things you learn to love.” Stephanie @ BrooklynLimestone.com
Take a Step Back
Let’s all take a step back. No home is perfect (not even the ones in the magazines). We all have challenges to overcome and sometimes the budget or practicalities just make that impossible. However, we also have things we love about our home. A room, a corner, a treatment or project we’re proud of – there are places that make you smile. Today is about that. Let’s celebrate what’s right with our homes.
Terrie’s 5 Things To Love About My House
Since we’re just renting for now, one of the main attractions in our desert environment was this delightful back yard. No back neighbors peering over the fence and mountains in the distance. We love sitting on the patio and enjoying our outdoor space.
Our back yard and mountains in the distance.
I love sitting on our patio!
I love my stash of books and accessories.
Something I look for in any house we buy or rent is a wall long enough to have my row of bookcases. I know they could be broken up (I actually have 5 and one is in another room) but I love the impact of books and accessories all together. I wrote about my process to accessorize a bookshelf in this post.
A really deep mantel makes accessorizing fun.
I’ve never lived anywhere with such a deep mantel. And I love it! It’s so much easier to be creative and use large accessories when you have the depth to accommodate them! I also shared ideas on how I work through decorating my mantel (you can read that one here).
No headboard? I tried my hand at painting.
I finally purchased new bedding for my guest room (we had an Asian themed room for a long time and I was ready for a new look) but there’s no headboard. I painted the room a medium aqua that’s an interesting combination with the lighter blue bedding. The bedding has viney flowers that look very sketchy and hand drawn. I thought it looked like a design I could copy, so I bought one of the little $5 sample paint colors in a rich brown and painted these branches swooping down from the corner of the room. I added little lime green dots like berries here and there along the branches. I like having an expression of my creativity in a room.
I really like how our dining room turned out.
We are lucky renters – we were allowed to repaint any and all rooms we wanted. So I repainted the whole house in colors we like. Most of the main living areas are this light aqua color (remember our post on aquamarine?) but I accented with this kind of cinnamon color. And wonder of wonders, I was able to find these perfect drapery panels to blend the colors together. I feel happy every time I’m in this room – which is every day since the kitchen is just out the photo beyond the wine rack!
“Our home should be beautiful because of what it represents, not because of what we have or know about design.” Melissa from The Inspired Room
It was actually pretty easy to come up with these 5 things I like about my home. Hey Cindy, since you just built yours, is it hard to narrow it down to only 5 things you love?
Cindy’s 5 Things To Love About My House
Since we bought the lot, built our house “from scratch,” and moved in less than a year ago, it’s hard to narrow my choices down to just 5 things I love - plus, it’s still a work in progress! It’s said “Home is where the heart is…” and my husband and I now say “There’s a lot of heart in our home…” We’ve done a lot of the work ourselves and I feel very lucky that we were able to create the home we dreamed of. Right now the top 5 things I love about our house are:
The views – there is a view of Lake Chelan from every room in our house.
Fall view of sailboats and vineyards from the living room.
Winter view of the lake from the game room table.
Summer view of master bedroom deck with lake behind.
No matter the season, seeing water feeds my soul (I’ve always felt this way) – and I love watching the landscape change through the year.
Room for family & friends to stay
After living in the Seattle area for years and years, we left family and friends and moved three hours east (over 2 mountain passes!) to Central Washington. Luckily we’re in a resort town that draws a lot of people due to the lake and wine country. When family and friends visit we want them to stay with us comfortably so we have a “casita”… a little house for them.
Guest bed in the casita - any suggestions for the filling the vase on each side of the bed? I'm leaning toward curly willow at the moment.
Guest kitchenette includes sink, dishwasher drawer, and a small fridge (the white edge is a future spray paint project and I need to create art above the sink!).
One of the bathroom sinks in the guest casita.
Sliding barn door provides privacy to the casita's tiled shower room.
The casita includes bedroom furniture, a kitchenette with a dishwasher drawer and refrigerator plus a bathroom area with his/her sinks and a shower. An outside door to the “his” side of the bathroom serves the pool. A large closet in the casita lets me store all my craft materials so I can set up a table in the casita for crafting when no guests are with us. At least that’s the plan – we finished the casita (well, almost finished!) just before Terrie arrived in June and it’s been occupied almost every weekend since then – so no crafting yet!
Outside living area
Between the house and the casita we created a covered outdoor living room that overlooks the swimming pool, vineyards and lake.
The outdoor sofa is one of my favorite places to write.
Sitting on the sofa I can look past the pool and vineyards to the lake.
This area serves as a living room when the weather is nice the soft comfy sofa provides the perfect place for me to settle in and write a blog post!
Kitchen for multiple cooks
We’ve been lucky enough to have lots of company and I love the fact that the kitchen accommodates multiple cooks easily.
Fridge on the left, pantry door on the left, island with sink - easy flow for multiple cooks.
A pot filler over the stove allows the cook to get pasta pots started while someone else is working at the sink.
My friend Lesley visits from the Seattle area and knows her way around my kitchen since she’s cooked several wonderful dinners while I’ve served as her assistant.
Pantry
It’s not pretty, it’s not decorated (except for the breaker box cover that I wrote about here), but one of my favorite features of our home is the large pantry.
Pantry with the breaker box art cover discussed in a previous post.
Love having the freezer (left) and natural light in the pantry.
A window provides natural light, deep chrome shelves let me easily see what supplies I have on hand (and makes unpacking groceries so easy!) and they hold big appliances and serving pieces that don’t fit well in standard cabinets, it holds the freezer so no more trotting the the garage, and the pocket door hides it all away.
What Do You Love?
What’s your favorite part of your home? Whether you own, rent, live in an apartment or even just a dorm room, you surely have a spot or two that you love. Although I love to decorate and redecorate my home, I think we all sometimes get too caught up chasing some perfect image in our heads. It’s good to take a reality check now and then and realize that there really are places and spaces within our home that we love.
We want you to tell us the two or three or five things that make you proud or calm or happy about your home. As usual, you can leave us a Comment below or email us at solutions@yourdecoratinghotline.com.
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Thanks for writing and sharing ladies. Isn’t it interesting how much of what we like about our homes focuses on the outdoors? A perfect illustration of why its’ so important to integrate the two as much as possible.
I’ll alert Cindy to respond to your outdoor furniture question.
I was excited when I saw this post, because I actually did a top 10 on my own blog. It was shortly after we moved in, so a lot of things have changed. But it was still a fun activity! I should do an updated list now that we’ve done some remodeling.
http://www.chateauwhitman.com/2009/05/10-things-i-love-about-our-house.html
.-= Kristi W.´s last blog ..Something handy for your kitchen =-.
Really enjoyed today’s blog! Like Cindy and Terrie, I live in a scenic area and never get tired of the fabulous views of Cook Inlet and the mountains in Anchorage, Alaska. These views have been the catalyst of two major remodels: the kitchen/dining area and most recently the master bedroom. In both cases we replaced the south facing wall with wall-to-wall french doors and sidelights to take full advantage of the glorious southern exposure and views. Privacy wasn’t an issue as we live on a hill and own the property behind our house. We had an appraiser in this week that confirmed that our remodeling decision added value to our home which was an added plus.
The Chelan area is beautiful and connected to my childhood home territory — Omak, Wa. A friend from high school days lives there, on the lake, as well, I believe. What I love about our place — views of farmfields, rolling hills, and hawks swooping to catch a morning mouse; the kitchen where I spend a lot of time, esp when we’re hosting family dinners–hardwood floors, though dicey to keep clean, soften the feel in there; the library/bonus room, a place to get away from the main living room and enjoy the courtyard view we planted in early summer. So I guess I could say the ‘outdoor rooms’ mean as much to me as what’s inside the house and I try to get the two to blend.
Curious where you found your deck set for the living area there. I was hoping for great sales at the end of the season but inventory was low and not that good of prices. Finding it challenging to locate solid outdoor furniture that is comfy and doesn’t break the bank. Any suggestions there I would appreciate.