Old Walls

When we walked into our home we fell in love. Within minutes we knew, just knew, it was supposed to be our home. It’s over 100 years old. The original floor plan may not have included an indoor bathroom (I need to see if I can find out!). We knew it had imperfections. And we were fine with it!

But once you start painting. When all of the sellers “stuff” is out. When every little lump and bump and crooked corner is highlighted in its nakedness...I started to get a little sad or maybe frustrated. Every wall has a story of something someone else did over the last 100 years. These old plaster walls tell a story. A story of how the previous owners did or didn’t know what they were doing. 

This wall is where it is the most obvious. We repaired (with spackling) the worst of it but decided to leave it perfectly imperfect. It’s also still half painted. 

And it hit me. This is life. (I’ve spent hours and hours painting so I’ve had a LOT of time to think!)

The last five years have been probably the hardest in our marriage. No marriage is without conflict and a little strife but I always felt like we came as close as anyone to having a happy, fairly easy marriage. So, now we have some bumps. Some scars. From our own conflict as well as external factors. We are like those walls. We don’t look all smooth and straight like we might have 10 years ago (I don’t know if we did or not, but in my memory we were pretty stinking happy! I know memories sometimes delete the day to day trials and you tend to remember only the good) but I hope that we are stronger. I keep wanting us to be who we were 6-7 years ago. But I’m coming to realize we can’t. And imperfect is ok. (That’s really hard for a perfectionist to say!) I didn’t want bumps and lumps and proof that we didn’t know what we were doing to be part of our story. But here it is. And like this beautifully, imperfect house that we are making into our home, we need to care for it. We need some patching up and some paint. We need some extra time together. Time spent just on each other. Sometimes, with 3 kids still at home, that isn’t easy because they need us too! But it needs to be a priority. One thing we are doing is going away this weekend. Just the 2 of us. No kids, no paint, no brushes, no rollers. Just us. With the lumps. The cracks that have been mended. With the quirks and creaks. Hopefully we will discover new things about each other just like we are as we explore our home!

What do you do to keep your marriage alive and well? Or what do tounwish you had done? 

Now, back to painting. 

I Think I've Always Wanted a Home

From the time I was a little girl I loved books. All the books. And I loved for my mom or my grandma to read to me. In turn, because I had such a good memory of that, I loved to read to my kids. A favorite book for all 3 generations was 

So maybe it’s not weird that this book came to mind now that we are getting a home!

For over 2 years we've actually been "homeless". No, we weren't living in a cardboard box or under a bridge, but in a travel trailer. A nice one, but still...in the state of Texas it's legally considered "homeless" if you live in a travel trailer! 😱

During those 2 years of living in purgatory everyone's dream, I stayed alive by dreaming of a home. 

I always wanted us to build a little home. Nothing big or ostentatious. Just enough. (I'm done with tiny living but I've never wanted a large house.) I drew floor plans on graph paper, I searched Pinterest ad nauseum, I saved paint samples. I searched websites for companies that build shells.

I even went and visited said companies!!! And took a picture in front of what I wanted for my future home!

When it came down to it though, the last few years have just been too stressful to take on the stress of building.  We are tired. We just needed a home. So we started looking. And every house we found had something wrong. Something that just made me sad because my dream was slipping away. Location. No front porch. No chickens. A master bedroom that was not on the first floor (we want to be able to live in our home forever if we choose). We put an offer on a house. We gave up location, I gave up the front porch. And it needed work. A LOT of work. When our offer was accepted, I was sad. And stressed. Thankfully, the realtor caught how I was feeling and we got out of the offer (the seller hadn't responded within the correct time anyways). I'm so thankful!

The next day we looked at the house that is as close to our dream home as can be considering we didn't design it ourselves. It's in the cutest little town. It has a front porch. We can even have chickens! We could not be more excited. We are in the process of moving in and painting now! Not all of that is fun, but it’s worth it! I *know* I always want a home!

And