A Tour of Our Home

(*UPDATED 2/18/13*)

By reader request – the home tour. And of course, a disclaimer. My house is not always this clean, and the rooms are never all clean at the same time. I cleaned it for this post, but it’s not staged or professionally photographed. I won’t be telling you the names of the paint colors (unless you really want to know) or where the furniture and accessories came from, because the truth is that most of them came from garage sales or secondhand stores, and that kind of thing just isn’t important to us. I hope that when you look at these pictures, you’ll learn a little bit about what IS important to us. You’ll learn that we love our children, and we love each other. You’ll learn that we’re fairly traditional, but we have our own style,  and though we like things to be generally clean and orderly, we don’t care about perfection. Ours is just a real house, where real people live, as evidenced by this sign admonishing visitors to please, PLEASE not ring the doorbell, just in case DJ is napping.

Naps are very, very important, not just for kids, but for Moms too!

DJ wears me out. He’s soooo cute, but such a little stinkweed sometimes!

This is our front entrance hallway, which is only for guests. I try my best to keep this area clean, pleasant and welcoming to visitors.

We always enter the house through our garage. From there, you can either go downstairs to our basement, or turn right into our kitchen.

To your left is our pantry and refrigerator.

Here’s the inside of my pantry. I take full advantage of all available space, including the back of the door. Because I have limited drawer space, the Rubbermaid 3-drawer cart holds my towels and dishcloths, plastic bags and wraps, and other kitchen utensils. We also keep our paper shredder, Dustbuster, and wall-mounted rechargeable battery organizer here.

All that alcohol is for, erm…cooking. Yes.

This is our kitchen island, which I bought online.

I use it as a baking center, with all of my baking supplies stored below.

Click here to read about how we remodeled our kitchen the frugal way!

Our sunny dining area. The sliding door goes out to the backyard.

The living room.

We recently bought new furniture, after 12 years of living with the old. I find the change to be very refreshing.

This is the bookcase that I agonize over, trying to get the arrangement just right.

I’m so persnickety about stuff like that.

Our china cabinet,

which houses my pretty, Melody Blue stoneware.

You’ve probably already guessed from my kitchen pictures that I love blue and white. It’s a clean, classic color combination that really appeals to me. When I found some of these dishes at Goodwill, I fell in love with them, and my sweet husband later purchased a huge set for me on eBay. Shortly after, we were watching the movie, “Hush” (very bad movie), and I was so excited to see these dishes displayed in the horrible mother-in-law’s farmhouse kitchen!

Now, let’s go down the hall. The first door on the left is my long-awaited private office:

Directly across the hall is the newly remodeled kids’ bathroom.

In our hallway we have this charcoal portrait of me, which was done by my high school art teacher (it’s kind of a skeevy story that I’d rather not go into. Let’s just say he liked me, and leave it at that).

This caricature of my husband and me was done at an art fair in St. Paul, MN. I was pregnant with Bee at the time.

Bee did this self portrait in preschool, and I framed it because it makes me smile. This is how I like to think of her – happy and cheerful and dancing in flowers.

At the end of the hall, you can turn left into DJ’s room. It’s cheerful, bright, and colorful, as a little boy’s room should be!

The fish dangling from the ceiling fan is a kite he made at the library.

Across the hall from DJ’s room is our room. On the left, we have two large closets which are hidden from view. Believe it or not, my husband really does like the deep purple wall behind the bed. It was his idea even!

See the fireplace clock on my husband’s nightstand? It’s responsible for Scary Alien Man.

Tagged as: Debt Free Decorating, Home Keeping