Here At Home: Down the Hall, Bedrooms and Baths

Good morning. It is a drizzly, foggy morning here in SC, and I am feeling happy that all the pictures of the house were taken on slightly better natural light days. But we’ve been profoundly dry here most of the summer, so each shower overnight, each slow soaking in day is a gift.

Thanks for coming back for the conclusion of the house tour. Lots of pictures in this post, as I take you into the other part of the “L” that is our house, down the hall to bedrooms and baths.

Here’s where our boys sleep and play. I will tell you three things honestly:  I had cleaned the room the day this photo was taken, the photo is not very good, and the angle was carefully selected. But this room says something I’m passionate about in making home. I would not choose Nascar and monster trucks and images of the most fearsome Lord of the Rings scenes. I would not choose innumerable jars and rocks and shells and bottlecaps. But this is their space, to make theirs. A little spackle later is a small price to pay for their ever-changing self-expression.

Across the hall is one of our two bathrooms. It has gotten a light facelift type renovation, with a new floor and countertop and sink. But behind the white shower curtain lurks the original tub. It is lilac. Really.

Here’s another use for one of our old windows. I had one of my photos of the Middle Saluda river enlarged to poster size and just glued it to the back of the window frame.

On down the hall is our multi-pupose guest room.

A little but country. . .

and a little bit rock and roll.

Sorry, could not resist.

When the boys expressed an interest in learning drum set, it was time for John’s to come down from the attic. When we have company, they can go farther into the corner and be covered by a quilt, but in the meantime we need to live in our whole house, while we keep a welcoming space for guests.

Our guest space was created on a shoestring. My favorite project was this mirror, snagged at Goodwill for $8.50. I added the medallion and painted it cream.

Finally, across the hall is the master bedroom and bathroom.

Everywhere we have lived, it has been important to me that my and John’s private space be inviting, warm, and beautiful. It is easy to make the public spaces of a home lovely while neglecting those only family sees. Since the concept of “master bed and bath” was very different when our house was built in the early sixties, these are small rooms and tidiness and simplicity are a must. One of us makes the bed every morning because it takes up the whole room!

Our master bath did have to be professionally redone last year after we discovered that when we showered in it, a shower was happening in the crawl space as well. So our wonderful contractor gave us new walls, subfloor and shower stall, and John finished all the surfaces and installed the sink and toilet. It is tiny but works hard, since the boys prefer our shower to their purple palace down the hall!

Thank you for coming to our home over the last few days. It has been my joy to share it with you.

Like any home that represents the joys, pursuits and creations of living people, our home is never complete. “Done” and “Finished” may apply to individual projects, but never the home as a whole.

So do something new today–   frame a photograph, move a chair, make a corner for reading or knitting or making bread.  Making home is a joy and a journey, sometimes away from others’ expectations, catalogues and HGTV and into a space our own soul has been longing for.

 

 

Here at Home: Our Family Room

Good morning. It is a peaceful rainy start to Friday here in Upstate South Carolina. This home tour post is even a bit more “Here” than the others, since I am sitting in today’s room to type this post. Come on in to our family room.

This room did not get the same kind of major overhaul the kitchen received, but we have made a few changes. The sliding glass door was replaced when we got new windows, as well as the gas logs and surround for the fireplace. An old heavy brass hood with some kind of enclosed radiator made way for these black and glass doors that disappear when the fire is not in use. As you can imagine, this is the room we cozy up in in fall and winter, especially at night. And I love having a fireplace mantel to decorate for the seasons.”My end” of the sofa is by the lamp with the floral shade, which belonged to John’s grandmother and is one of my favorite things. Evenings find me there, reading, embroidering, or watching PBS, something on Netflix, or a West Wing DVD with John.

And here is the room with my back to the fireplace. The doorway on the left leads to the kitchen, and straight ahead goes into the foyer, or, with a right turn, down the hall to bedrooms and bathrooms. There’s the imac where I write posts, edit photos and loll in front of Pinterest. As a visually impaired person. i can tell you that the huge monitor has made so much of a difference in how much I enjoy working with my photos digitally.

This end of the room is clearly boy-central, with toy and book storage in the (on their last legs) laminate bookcases, their art on the wall, and a lego area with a table to build on and red bins full of creations in pieces, waiting to be dreamed up. And when you’re tired of playing legos? Beat out a rhythm on the practice pad with some drumsticks.

Sorry for the weird color in this picture–  it was a challenging day lighting-wise. This is a decor idea I reproduced after doing a version of it in our previous house. I masked off a rectangle with painter’s tape and painted it with a color complimentary to the Heavy Cream on the walls. In this case, it is a light caramel color called Pony Tail that we used in the boys’ room. I then gathered picture frames in silver and black (or made them silver or black with spray paint) and a few decorative objects with a slightly more weathered look to take the edge off the more modern feel of some of the frames. So this is a gallery of family pictures, some current and some vintage, but the painted area makes it a whole.

In decorating on a shoestring, often in the position of trying to make something work that is second hand, inherited or thrifted, or in re-imagining what I already have in a new way, I try to keep in mind balance and unity. A modern accessory on clearance from Target can perk up a tired antique and give it a little oomph. By the same token, the patina of an older object can warm up more functional pieces. And, as in the case of the painted rectangle that provides a landscape for the gallery wall, an intentional hand can bring together and unify disparate elements. It is just part of the dance of form and function, to add and subtract elements until the room feels right and works hard. And that equilibrium is intensely personal to the people who live and love and create in a home, and changes and shifts as our lives do.

Thanks for stopping by here at home. Have a make it real weekend!

Here at Home: Our Kitchen

My little house tour lands today in our kitchen. This is the room that has seen the most dramatic transformation since we moved into our house. The changes happened in a couple of large chunks, and were all DIY projects. Come on in!

Coming into our house from the carport, this is the view you’ll have of the kitchen. When we bought the house, the cabinets were dark wood and brown indoor/outdoor carpet covered the kitchen floor. (Don’t think too much about carpet in a kitchen.) The first summer we lived here, we ripped up the carpet and John laid our charcoal and ivory tile floor. As in intermediate, inexpensive step to brighten things, we painted the walls pale green and the cabinets ivory. At the time, where you see our stove, there was a cooktop with cabinets over it and a small built-in oven to the right.  In the second stage of renovation, eighteen months ago, we took out those overhead cabinets and the oven and cooktop, installed the range, and added the pendant lights. We painted the cabinets black because. . .

. . . we really needed to add more cabinet and counter space. There was no built in cabinetry in this corner of the kitchen, to the right of the door where you come in, so we added base cabinets from IKEA and created my baking center. We took one of the drawer fronts to Lowes and had the finish color-matched to black paint for the existing cabinetry. Silver retro hardware and new wood countertops unified old and new. (The framed picture is Julia Child. ) I chose a warm mellow gold for the walls.

So here is the kitchen from the other end, standing in the doorway of the living room. When we replaced the countertops we widened the peninsula to allow for a bar. We eat breakfast and lunch here, and I love to sit and plan menus here in the morning–  the room gets beautiful light. This is one of my favorite corners of the house, and where I recharge when I have a few moments. Since I am in the kitchen a lot, and there are so many necessary things that HAVE to be in a kitchen, I am very choosy about purely decorative things. We need to love what we give that visual real estate to.

These are a couple of recent additions.

I believe the folks at IKEA called this a bookcase, but it houses all our everyday dishes, larger serving pieces and a shelf of cookbooks.

When we need to replace our stove and dishwasher, we will go with black appliances instead of ivory. However, in the meantime, I am delighted with our remodel-in-stages. The kitchen works both harder and smarter for us now, and is a happy place. This is the view from the family room doorway,  where we’ll go tomorrow. Thanks for visiting our kitchen!

Here at Home: Our Living / Everything Room

I can remember walking into our house for the first time. I fell in love with this room immediately. It was early February, five and a half years ago. No leaves were on the five pecan trees that wrap around our corner lot, so this room was flooded with pale-lemonade winter sunlight.

With a family room for television and computer, and a breakfast area for lunches and snacks, I imagined this as a place for reading and family dinner. I found a long basket at Goodwill and filled it with our library books and a china hutch at Salvation Army for the china my mother in law shared with me. The room had no central light, and I don’t care for the harshness of overhead lighting anyway, so we bought a candle chandelier at IKEA and John installed hooks in two different places in the ceiling to accommodate my seasonal flare-ups of furniture-moving. A dresser from John’s grandmother serves as our buffet, with a little hardware updating. Our art is homemade or thrifted.  (I took these pictures when we we getting ready for company. Stop by on a random Tuesday and your mileage may vary in terms of tidiness. We LIVE here.

When our third bedroom, which had housed my craft supplies, was needed for guest and drum space, I pared down and switched around so this room could serve for creative space as well. My Project Life and cardmaking supplies are here, as well as the miscellany often needed for school projects. That is the corner for the whimsical, like Joshua’s soda can flowers made in the Triune Art Room, and the antique, like John’s grandmother’s desk.  I made the book page wreath over a year ago per Living with Lindsay’s instructions. The window is one of the original ones from our house, which we replaced soon after moving in. I kept a few of them.

To begin with, we had a second hand sofa in here, slipcovered in cream. It looked good, but it was huge and not very comfortable. One day we were talking about the house and John pointed out that three people almost never sit on a sofa, lined up like they’re waiting for a bus, and he suggested that a couple of great reading chairs would give us more flexibility and comfort for how we really use the room. It took a couple of months, but we found two wing chairs second hand and ordered ready-made stretchy slipcovers for them. They’ve become two of the most coveted seats in the house.

This room is a prime example of what we’ve always done, from our very first tiny apartment. Old and hand me down has to learn to harmonize with new, useful, and handmade. And a look is only as good as it is durable, able to stand up to the day in day out business of family life. Quiet reading and writing gives way to end of school day reconnecting and homework. Drawing and cutting are cleared for dinner dishes, which might be cleared to make space for chess or Yahtzee. And nothing could ever be more beautiful than the faces around the table.

 

If you have any specific questions about anything you see in these house pictures, I’ll do my best to answer them. The pictures are large and the posts seem long to me, so I want to avoid going into a tiresome amount of detail.  MK

“September has come, It is hers whose vitality leaps in the autumn,

 

Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fire-place.”

- Louis MacNeice, “Autumn Journal”

       Something in me both eased and awakened this weekend as the air cooled, for though this is the nineteenth day of September on the calendar, the soul of the month arrived Friday in upstate South Carolina. All weekend I felt a renewed joy in our home, in cooking and nesting. In orange and gold and red and rust. In music and words and all the simple joys these four walls hold like a basket.

      So, this week here at A Daily Portion, some photos of our home. Not because this is a decorating blog, or because we live in a model showplace. I’ve turned my lens to our spaces because this is where so much of my making goes, into making this home warm and welcoming and comfortable for our family and for those to whom we open it. I know that an atmosphere of calm, beauty order and creativity contributes to our family life. This can be done without a lot of money or professional help, but at the same time, I recognize that having time and resource to devote to a space is a luxury in and of itself. Comfort and stewardship of what we have are uncomfortable questions, especially since we found our church home this spring. Our eyes have been opened as never before to the weight of our blessing, the depth of our responsibility, but we are just beginning to navigate those deep waters as a family.

     But in thinking about sharing our spaces here, I realized something much more simple. I want to share my surroundings because I’m here so much. This is where I write from, cook from, read and make from. Since I cannot drive, especially during the week, I’m here. And for those of you who stop by A Daily Portion, I wanted to open the door, ask you in, share our personal family canvas.

     So, see you tomorrow. Here at home.

Make It Real

I graduated college never having had an e-mail address.

Some vague sense of what the World Wide Web was only beginning to creep like fog into the edges of my consciousness. My house still had a black rotary dial phone that felt heavy in my hand and made the most satisfying whir and solid clunking thunk when I made a call.

Wiser folks than I have struggled to express how all our myriad tools of connectedness have sped or shrunk or simply changed life. All I can say is that I waded into adulthood in a landscape that felt different than it does now, and I struggle to name and navigate it. I sometimes feel a creeping discomfort, even now when I am writing a blog post. How real is all this? Does the energy and intention I put into this space, into the online world as a whole, steal my presence from the here, from the dough I can knead with these two hands and the laundry basket I lift, and, far more important, the very much in person hearts I’ve been given to nurture up close?

So this rule lover has wanted a law, a stand, a line in the sand. I’ve gone silent for long spaces, shut down the screen and only answered e-mail than needed my personal attention. Made pronouncements. (Oh, how I love pronouncements. Though, they sound more convincing if you’re not still trying to figure out your own mind.)

And yet, there are genuine connections on these digital highways, as beautiful and clinging as webs themselves. You’re real people on the other side of these screens. A few of us have hugged one another, sat on a porch together. We’ve exchanged e-mails like letters and even letters too, from our real kitchen counters and back patios and beating hearts.

And there is, quite literally, a world of inspiration and kinship for all the things I love doing. Making home, feeding my family, raising my boys, embroidering and photographing and writing and living well. Loving God and longing for a life infused with grace. Living a one piece life. 

So, this law lover has to bend, get a little more creative, admit that integrating the virtual into the real is the path to navigate. In relation and in inspiration, how to breathe real life into these pixels?

A couple of thoughts:

• In online relationship, I’ll strive for revelation and authenticity. These media give us a lot of latitude to window dress our lives for those who don’t live with us day in and day out. I have plenty of boundaries concerning what I share, but I want to be genuine in what I do choose to “put out there.”
• I’ll ask myself how I can translate the gifts I try to share with my local folks into the online world. How best to spread beauty and encouragement? How can I point to others who do as well?
• And finally, ahem, about all that inspiration lurking in the black holes of my bookmarks folders. . . I’m challenging myself to take a higher percentage of those decor projects, art and craft tutorials, and tasty recipes from the “eye candy” to the “realized” column.

The first two challenges are largely a matter of conscience. Do I recognize myself on the Internet?

For the third, I’m trying out an online tool to help me move from “out of sight, out of mind” to “make and do” I’m using Pinterest to excavate the forgotten riches in my bookmarks folders and organize them visually onto themed online pinboards. My idea is simple–  if I can see all those ideas, there’s a greater chance that some of those links might be translated into fabric and paint, photos and flour. Move into the real.

I’m sure many of you have figured out this balancing dance, how to be present in the right places for the right amount of time, and in ways that are life giving. I’m stumbling a bit, banging my knees, but a map is starting the emerge.

Don’t live distracted.

Make it real.

Keep it real.

Back to School

 

A week ago this morning, they shouldered their backpacks and they smiled slightly sleepy smiles and went over by the fence for the first day of school picture. I lift the lens and with it rises a surge of gratitude: though the earth seems to shift beneath me, these two are easy in their skins and their new Nikes, sauntering into this new year.

And I was doing okay, up until we were gathered by the blue station wagon for our morning prayer, when my husband prayed for me. After all, he walks these weeks with me each year. He hears the tears in the night, this mother’s heart stretching painfully as these boys grow. Somehow all the bittersweetness of this calling distills in the first weeks and last weeks of the school years, with all those unavoidable mile markers of their flourishing, up and away. He knows some days these mother-hands, who only just yesterday diapered and spoon fed, lifted and rocked, would still the globe’s relentless spin and sun-round circle and the twirl of calendar pages. So he prayed for me and the day ahead.

But I smiled through the tears. The years bring a gift too:  the knowledge that as the early wake-ups get easier, the new shoes scuff, the afternoon sun lies lower and more golden and the nights cool, we’ll all find our rhythm. The supper table circle will be all the more precious as we gather at the end of the day.  We will delight together over all they’re learning and the adventures they have.  We’ll read aloud, we’ll have family movie nights and weekend cinnamon rolls. We’ll guard our margins. We’ll not miss the blessings ahead for the ones we’ve already tasted.

I’m being schooled myself, on living this good life, deep in the rich and lively now.

 

A Blaze of Silence

Ripe from Image of the Maker, the words flowed fresh and cool and the images framed themselves and I was ready and there to catch every drop, every spill of light, and serve them up here.

But then as quickly as the inspiration came, it fled. In its place a quiet descended, a quilted cloak of boys’ busyness from early until late, baskets and baskets of laundry and meals to plan, cook, eat, clean up from, repeat. This summer’s trademark pursuit of trying new recipes for homemade ice cream, playing word games, and origami. Darker patches of extended family worries, a sad but honorable journey we’re anticipating, and the days speeding relentlessly it seems to me toward the start of school and an end to lazy mornings and long read aloud afternoons.

I’ve been trying to hold up that frame, to see the art. But there’s been a creeping sadness to it and the words would not come.

I’ve learned to ride out such seasons, that the eye and the fingertips on clicking keys will come back. So lately I’ve been letting my other senses take over, for art tasted and felt and heard and not necessarily made by me. A kind of rest.

• A first taste of Honey Vanilla Ice Cream– all sweet on the front with a complex, pleasant bitterness on the back end.
• Percy singing “Wade in the Water” on Sunday. Mercy indeed.
• Boys’ bristly heads fresh from haircuts, boys’ smooth cheeks to kiss at bedtime.
• An amazing art exhibition that left me filled to the brim with wonder.
• The new-spine creak from a library book I got first dibs on.
• Galloping through Peterson’s latest installment of the Wingfeather adventure, a rush of wonder through the last chapters.
• Ten years old, but new to me, McCracken’s Gypsy Flat Road. Oh. My. Goodness.

“What was incurable, desperate blindness 
has been bound up from all sides with lovingkindness 
comfort for sorrow, 
rivers for dryness 
come and drink you who have no money

And it rained all day
With the bounty of new wine.”

In these quiet weeks, art still happened. My making has been more like supper and less like poetry, and the art has yet come spilling, from a sister’s voice on the phone, from the speakers, from the children with their nimble fingers and colored paper, from the front of an over-warm sanctuary and the side of a blueberry hill. There’s a good humility that comes clearer when my hands are cupped rather than creating, that it is all gift, that we are just bearing witness, to His Image on us, in other voices, other faces, other hands.

Image of the Maker

                                                                                                                                         Made Whole Cross, created at Image of the Maker

I have returned from a twenty-four hour retreat in North Carolina with Ann Voskamp, Christa Wells and Nicole Witt called Image of the Maker. I registered in February and have long anticipated this weekend. Now I am home, and the laundry is on the line, and the meal planning needs doing, and the boys and I have only a couple of chapters left in our read aloud. The current continues, the one in which I walk, and I am back ankle deep in it.

But different, oh, I pray, different.

Before I left, I asked God to break me open if needed, make me ready to receive what He might do with this focused time to consider being a follower of Jesus who creates. For some months, through the loss our family has experienced braided with the continued pace of the living, I’ve felt a hard crust grow. One through which it is hard for photo taking, word shaping, art making, or wholehearted worship to crack.

I asked. And gently, He broke me open that He might come in. Laid bare in talk and song and the silences between all my pieces were there, all the lonely places my frenzied seeking for approval, acceptance, love have only injured and re-injured.

I did not know I could shed so many tears.

What Ann would tell me, what she did tell us in that room, what Christa and Nicole sang to us by that lake, is that our brokenness is what our art is made of, that when we show our wounds, others will reveal theirs and in that authentic space, art is made where a wounded Savior is revealed.

And by His Wounds, we are all healed.

I’ll be processing this weekend for a long time, asking God what He would make of me with it, what I would make for Him with it.

Today I am shaky and timid and tired and thankful.

And longing to live the giftedness for the glory of the Giver.

Listed

(photo: detail from thrifted shirt, June, 2011)

I’m kind of a silly blogger. (And infrequent, and rather lackadaisical as well  I’ve been wanting to post all week. But usually when I sit down to write, I have one big idea I’m unpacking, turning over in my mind. And these first days of summer are much more conducive to lots of little things, scattered like sandals on the patio, or cake crumbs after supper. I’ve been resisting doing a list post.

Until I remembered that I LOVE list posts, reading what people are reading, and eating, and watching, and growing. It can be like a peek over her shoulder at a splattered recipe card in the kitchen, or a glimpse of the titles on her nightstand. Those lists are little fairy doors and windows into each other’s afternoon hours and early mornings.

So here, in my hands, are a collection of our little things:

• Reading to Myself: The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food and Love, Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers, and Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture. This is quite the crop of nonfiction for me, and frankly, I feel a little vacation with Jane Austen coming on, but each of these books gave such gifts, in thoughtfulness, rich conversations with my sweetheart, and those necessary moments when  we check our vision against our reality and course-correct.
• Reading Aloud:  The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book One: The Mysterious Howling  Perhaps it is the loving send-up of Jane Eyre in this delightfully funny book, or maybe it is the charming language, but we are loving this beginning to our summer read aloud season. Next up and much anticipated: The Monster in the Hollows.
• Cooking: An Italian Sausage and Orzo Soup like this, that I could eat a few times a week. And very soon could be made with fresh tomatoes and my basil if I have not killed it by then. And Smitten Kitchen’s Everyday Chocolate Cake. And contemplating making this ice cream 
• Coming Attractions: I can scarcely believe it, but the Image of the Maker Retreat with this exquisite woman. Blueberry picking at one of my favorite places anywhere.  Some waterfalls, and some cool rivers for hot days. Lots of library trips. The Farmer’s Market up the road.  Games of Yahtzee for hot afternoons. Clothespins between my fingers in the morning. Thrifting on fifty cent day. Sleeping later than on school day mornings, and sleeping well.

What’s on your list, these early summer days? What’s looking good, sounding good, feeling good, speaking His goodness to you?