Time For A Tour

We've lived here for about four months now, and I'm just getting around to posting a house tour... yup, that sounds about right for me. So, here we go...

As you approach the house, this is the view up our street. Our driveway is immediately to the left in this picture. At the end of this road is a very pretty state park/ boating area/ nature preserve. Very cool.




There's the house as seen from the mailbox. Did I mention that our front yard is huge? Well, I should have, 'cause it's huge! At night, it is a great place to lie in the grass and look at the stars (if the people across the street don't have their floodlights on and you don't accidentally lay atop a fire ant hill... ouch!).




I wish this picture of the house came out a little better. It has such beautiful landscaping out front. When we pulled into the driveway with the moving truck, my first thought was that it looked like something out of an Anne of Green Gables story. Our landlord helped build the house when he was 14 (about 60 years ago). His family has owned this land for generations. His great-great-grandfather helped build the church we attend. (I'll post pictures of that when I get a better camera.) The little pop-out on the left is the master bedroom and looks out on this:



Isn't that pretty? It is such a pretty little spot with a different view on each side. Behind me as I take the picture is the front yard, to the right is our bedroom (the chairs there look right into our side window; actually, that's a little weird now that I think about it; I might have to move them), the old cattle pasture is straight ahead (the original house is back there, too) and there are woods to the left. Secondo is going to use our bedroom window as a nature viewing area into this spot. It's perfect with the bordering of the different habitats, and we plan on filling the bird feeders and setting up a salt lick. (Secondo already has a wildlife count going. So far we've spotted white-tailed deer, raccoons, opossums, a 5 foot rat snake (ugh), hawks, two turkey vultures, lots of butterflies and a hummingbird. She's started a nature journal and hopes to put photos of the animals in and has researched the diets and interesting facts of all the animals she has seen and put them in the journal.)




This is the view as you walk in the front door. We have a little bench to the right to place bags under . I love the fireplace. We had some torrential rains over the last week, and water was coming into the chimney, thus the unsightly bin in the fireplace. We can't wait to get a fire screen and get some fires going in there.




As you turn right after entering the house, you go into the office (most people would call this a dining room, but we needed the office space more). This is the living room as seen from the office area. You can see our cat food supply for the cat we inherited when we moved in here. (I tried to take a picture of her, but she looked possessed in the photo. I miss my digital camera.) The bookshelves are from our old town library up north. They were renovating the library (a historic feed store and train depot that was used as a hospital during the Civil War) and took out their solid oak shelving and replaced it with all metal shelves. Scandalous! The only good thing about it was that they gave away the old, solid wood shelves to whomever wanted to haul them away, so Frodo and a friend (and fellow bibliophile) went over and piled all they could in the friend's pickup truck. Since they were back-to-back library shelves, Frodo ripped them in half, so we now have two 7 foot sections of shelves. The frustrating part is, this was the only wall long enough for a whole section. We could only put half a section up in the office. But that's alright. Homeschoolers don't need bookshelf space, right? [insert maniacal laughter and oozing sarcastic tome here.] See the round tables in the middle of the carpet? We made those! Neat, huh?




We couldn't find a coffee table that suited our needs. We wanted something that we could move around if we needed to since it is very hard to place end tables in here, and the kids often put pillows down to watch movies and want to get the tables out of the way. We decided that a couple of tables put together would do the trick, but we couldn't find anything we liked, so we made our own out of large wall clocks and metal plant stands.




This isn't the greatest picture, but you get the idea. (Did I mention that I miss my digital camera?) Oh, and the clocks work... usually, when the batteries don't fall out after constant battering by children. Okay, back to the tour.



This is my half of the office. (You can see the archway to the living room on the right.) It's not usually this neat, but you can imagine it this way when you picture me sitting at the table working away or blogging or paying bills or whatever. Oh, and on the table is the newest member of our family, Moss. He's a squirrel tree-frog. These are his temporary digs while we work on a new habitat for him.




This is Frodo's half of the office. He has the screen to the kids' computer on his desk in addition to his laptop. Sadly, I can't get the screen resolution on the kids' computer to work properly, so they haven't been able to use it since we moved. (Well, they tried, but they started getting sea sick!) I think the monitor is too new for the computer. Any computer gurus out there want to help me out? Where was I? Oh, yeah... house tour. The doorway on the left leads to the kitchen.





The landlord put the floor in before we moved. I *heart* this floor. They are easy to clean, hide dirt and look very cottage-y. The doorway on the left leads to a very steep set of stairs up to the girls' room (no boys allowed). On the right, the wall has the height markings of all the kids who have lived here in the past 20 years or so. It's very cool. When there isn't a regular tenant, the landlord lends the house to missionaries who are on furlough. There are a lot of height markers on the wall (including our munchkins).




This is the main bathroom. Yes, it's off the kitchen. Makes sense since I think it was put in before the house had hot, running water, so it had to be near the stove to heat bathwater. It is a little weird, though, to come out of the shower and see the kids eating breakfast (okay, lunch... alright, dinner). The bathroom was remodeled before we moved in. Actually, when we pulled in the driveway the first night with the moving truck, the landlord and his wife were in here putting up the mirror and the shower curtains. I love this bathroom. It's so pretty.




View of the kitchen from the bathroom door. To the left (immediately next to the bathroom) is a laundry room and access to the basement (which we don't discuss; it's creepy). It's hard to see in this picture, but the little window near the back of the kitchen is a pretty, stained glass window. It is so nice to stand in front of something so lovely while making breakfast or emptying the dishwasher.




This angle, taken from the stovetop area, shows the school area of the kitchen. Just to the right of the bookshelves is a big closet where we have craft supplies, small appliances and about a three months' supply of toilet paper. The bookshelves have all of the school books we are currently using or use most often as well as my cooking and gardening books. You can see the stairs to the girls' room on the left and the white board, periodic table and calendar at the entrance to the hall.

The hall had the only wall space long enough to hold the maps. I often find the kids sitting on the floor or standing on kitchen chairs out here examining the maps. The door half-way down the hall goes to the boys' room, and the door at the end is the master bedroom... with a half bath (I can't tell you how nice it is to have two toilets again). I didn't take pictures of the bedrooms because they were very messy. They are finally looking more put-together, so I hope to take pictures of them at some point.

A little stroll down the hallway brings you back to...

The living room. (The kids love that the house is a circle, but it can be a little nerve-wracking when Quarto comes zooming around with his trucks for the millionth time.) There's the bench by the front door, and in the back of the office, you can see the half-unit of library shelving. (You don't know how much that kills me that we couldn't put up a whole unit. We could use the shelf space. The girls of piles of books on the floor of their room.) In the foreground is my Grandpa's chair. I love this chair. The fabric is a little scratchy, but it is amazingly comfortable. You can't see it too well from here, but it would fit in perfectly in Lucy and Ricky's Connecticut house. It reminds me of their den in the house my Dad grew up in. It had pictures of the family all over one wall (the den, not the chair). I don't know how many times my Grandpa watched Oklahoma! while sitting in this chair. At least as many times as he and I sat there to plot how to get to the Dairy Queen before supper without Grandma knowing. (He looked much happier watching television or planning covert operations than he did listening to the Twisted Sister album my Grandma bought me on one visit. Wonder why? *grin*)

This house has the perfect layout for us. I wish we owned it instead of renting, but I don't think that's gonna happen, so I'll try to be happy that I get to experience it while I'm here.

Well, that's the new place. Now you'll know where to picture me if you're reading or we're talking on the phone. Now y'all just need to come on down for a visit and set a spell!