Day 6: Cherish It Now

It's the weekends that get to me.  We have great plans and lists and goals of what we will accomplish.  By Monday, we'll surely have  a new home.  Or at least a homemade meal.  Or at least a home with folded laundry.  Eric likes to start the weekend with a list of things for us to accomplish (today's list included 15 items).  I like to start it with one goal.  His list usually includes practical things: mow the yard, organize the basement, clean the bathrooms.  My goal: make Emmalyn some hair bows.  Oh, I wish I was kidding.  He truly is a saint for being married to me.  But some weekends, our lists and goals go out the window, and nothing gets accomplished.  Sunday night brings defeat.

A large part of cherishing our home is cherishing it now.  We can't wait for every inch to be clean and every project to be completed in order to love our home.  So today, when I had to read for class, I cherished our wonderful couch.  While Eric and Emmalyn played on the floor, I cherished the work that Eric put into our wood floors.  I cherished the space we have for toys and being together in the same room.  I cherished the smell of that delicious mulled cider candle in the next room (seriously - go get one).  I had to stop and remind myself how grateful I am for our home and for the love that we get to spread throughout it.  Yes, there is still a massive unfinished project in our dining room.  Yes, there is still laundry to be folded.  Yes, our bathrooms are dirty.  But today, we actually enjoyed the home we're trying to make (and yes, Eric did cross some items off his list and I made 3 hair bows).

How will you intentionally cherish your home this weekend?

Day 4: Collage wall

This is the collage wall in our nursery, the other knock off in the room from Young House Love.  Now that Emmalyn's 15 months old, I'm getting antsy to change it up, but still haven't decided what to do yet.  I made the name sign (upper right hand corner), the chevron "you are my sunshine", the scripture print, and the words that have a glare on them to the right.  The 8x10 photo is from our maternity session and the two baby pictures are of Eric and I as infants (with our first family picture sandwiched between them).

Here are instructions for two of the pieces
The chevron pattern is from vol. 25 and you can download it (and some other cute patterns!) here.  I wrote out you are our sunshine in a font called clementine sketch and printed it on the chevron.  Super fast and easy!

The glare is covering the lyrics to a song that I fell in love with when I was pregnant.  As soon as I saw/heard it on youtube, I started crying .  I wrote the lyrics in a font called artistamp medium, printed them on vellum and cut out yellow hearts to scatter around the page.  Here are the lyrics: when i'm with you

Check out the music video to hear JJ Heller's amazing voice:

Just glancing at those lyrics helps me cherish our girl, and breathe in the sweetness of having her.

Day 2: Yellow Striped Curtains

Day 2 in 31 Days to Cherish Our Home

Do you ever struggle to find the right curtains for your space?  I always have the perfect curtains planned out in my mind, and spend hours searching online and in stores for them.  Finally, I find a stunning curtain!  ... and then I realize it's $80 a panel. Um, are you kidding me?  I've learned that ingenuity in the window coverings department is a great way to get what you want - and maybe something better.  Refusing to settle (especially on something expensive) is a great way to cherish what you have.  When I spend a lot of money on something that's just "okay", it leads to regret rather than knowing that I have put myself into something I love.  This curtain panel is just a small example of that. I think it is the perfect touch to bring the room together.

I knew I wanted yellow striped curtains in the nursery, and that something sheer wouldn't do much good.  I found a white grommet curtain on clearance at JcPenney's, and had yellow polka dot fabric on hand.  I measured the length of the curtain, divided it but the number of stripes I wanted and measured away.  I laid out the white curtain on the floor and laid the yellow strips on top (I had already sewed under the edges in oder to get the right width and length. I then pinned the strips in place and took the curtain up to my sewing machine to sew them down.  It was a quick fix to a white curtain, and makes a huge difference in the room.  I think I spent $25 on the entire project.  Below you can see the curtain closed in broad daylight.  Some light still shines through, and I left the blind in place to help with that.  It is a "blackout" curtain, but that only goes so far in white.  So far, Emmalyn hasn't seemed to be affected by it at all, and the curtain still blocks the brightness of the morning sun in her window.

There is a freak-out moment in almost every project I take on (due to my clumsiness or bad math skills or a combination thereof).  As I was ironing the curtain to lay it out perfectly straight, my iron started spitting rust all over the white curtain.  At first I thought I had ironed over crumbs (ha!) and kept going - and then I freaked out when I realized it was rust.  I may have had a little pregnancy meltdown as I thought I had ruined the curtain, but Eric helped me realize that I could just rearrange the stripes to cover the stains.  Good thing his logic is readily available in my projects, and to generally save the day.  

Day 1: The Happiest Place in Our Home

Day 1 in 31 Days to Cherish Our Home

This is surely the happiest - and most complete - room in our house.  Ironically, it's also the smallest.  Who says that bigger is always better?  Eric and I decided that we didn't want to know the gender of our children before they were born, but I feared that would make nursery decorating bland.  Looking back, I can't imagine any other nursery.  I had a friend who said that she felt that gender neutral nurseries were destined to be "John Deere" themed, meaning that green and yellow were the only palette options.  Hopefully, we've proved that wrong (I do sometimes wonder if the room would seem too girly if a little boy laid in that crib though)!  It was impossible to get pictures of this room without the main attraction, so you can play "Spot the Emmalyn" in these pictures.  

The turquoise paint is Olympic No-VOC and we loved it.  We were covering a neon green wall, but it went on beautifully.  We didn't use this paint in the rest of our house, but I was able to paint alongside Eric without worries this way! I wanted to have a subtle elephant theme, and there are a few of them around the room.  I knew I wouldn't be able to find crib bedding that I loved in these colors, and Eric's mom made Emmalyn the gorgeous quilt you see on our brown chair.  I sewed a simple slipcover for the footstool to tie in more yellow and white.  Almost everything in the room had a little home-made flair to it, and tomorrow I'll be back back to begin details on these things:

- The wall art

- Semi-DIY curtains

- The seventeen-coats-of-yellow-paint mirror

We love to sit in this room, and it has worked perfectly for Emmalyn.  Everything in the room is functional, and her little space fits just right.  Maybe I'll just spend the next 31 days sitting in her room and soak up the happiness? (That is, after I empty the diaper genie).

31 Days to Cherish Our Home

There is little that compares to the feeling of walking through the door and knowing you belong. The tension lifts off your shoulders and you are free to be yourself.  Everything just feels right.  The dog may be barking, a baby tugging on your leg, and a load of groceries weighing you down (six bags up your arm, digging into your skin), but still.  you're home.  It's a feeling that can't be replicated in many other places, and people yearn for home with only one want to satiate their desires.  Homesickness can be ignored, but not cured until you walk through the door and know you're where you belong.  But how often do we really cherish that place?

My name's Kathy.  I'm married to Eric, and we have a beautiful daughter named Emmalyn (she's just about fifteen months old).  I'm a terrible housekeeper but I love a pretty home.  One of the greatest compliments that I can receive is when someone walks in our house and says, "This looks just like you", knowing that our home is reflecting our personality and style. I see our home as a gift from God and what we do with it glorifies him - a place to raise our family, to offer hospitality, and to share laughter with others.  My idea of a perfect evening involves students piled in our family room watching a movie or friends or family around the kitchen table sharing a meal.  Over the next month, I want to take the time to cherish our home.  Sometimes I get so busy thinking about the next project that I forget to appreciate what we already have.  It's time to stop and smell the cider scented candle that burns around the mess in my kitchen.

Thanks the The Nesting Place for challenging me to do this!  Check out the other 31 Days bloggers at http://www.thenester.com/2012/09/31-dayers-2012.html .

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Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 8