 There's always time for a little park fun and, btw, this image is coming to me soon in canvas...I love this image! Five hotels, one travel-trailer, and one apartment later, I think I'm finally home! It has been a grueling four months since we sold our last house back in March. I never dreamed things would go the way they have but, hey, life is an adventure, right? And once again I'm finding we don't know everything we think we do about ourselves until life hands us lemons and we struggle with all our might to put together a palatable recipe that has some semblance to lemonade. A little sweetness always curbs the bitterness in life, don't you think? Now, the hubsters says we may not be here long if we find the house of our reno dreams, but I've let him know in no uncertain terms I will NOT be moving again anytime soon. Then of course there's the possibility of building still on our plates, but I'm keeping my plate firmly planted right here in this little rental. In fact, I may screw the plates down to the table and the table to the floor. He may never get me out of this place! In the meantime, I'm trying to make it home-sweet-home. As we are tucked into this little loft apartment, I have been working to pull in the basic pieces of furniture that are necessary to live and then a few necessary pleasures. I mean, who really needs a TV, let's admit it, to survive. But at the end of the day -- a very long, hard day -- television is a great distracter and relaxant. Our new abode has begun to be transformed from a non-descript vanilla box into a little country place in the city with a modern twist, but all around a very snug place to call home. After all, as I've said before, home is not a place; it's who you're with, right? I've started with dark beige. Yep, that's right, you heard me, dark boring beige; beige walls, beige carpet, beige countertops. With a rented apartment, unfortunately it is what it is when it comes to paint and carpet and countertops. But beige is a neutral and I always start with a neutral so for now it's beige. So in light of the fact that I will NOT be moving anytime in the immediate future, I've taken the liberty of adding some "semi-permanent" decor. Like lighting fixtures. Did you know you can literally transform a room just by taking down those ol' boring contractor lights and replacing them with beautiful chandeliers? It's fairly simple if you know some basic electrical safety (in my case it's the hubs who knows the basics). Then, once you do move, they come down and they go with you. Another thing that makes a rental feel more like home is personal art and family photos. When I move, I carefully wrap and transport my art collection, which is a motley conglomeration if I must say so myself. It runs the gamut of art worthiness, all the way from tiny pieces I find at discount stores to my treasured mixed-media pieces, paintings and pottery that my sweet Abbie created. And I mix them with reckless abandon! I am not an art snob; if I like it, I buy it! In a place less than half the size of my last house, I have to be a bit more careful with family photos. I mean, I can't have the members of my family peering at me around every single corner or if I get up during the night. That's just plain creepy. But I choose my favorites and try my best to arrange them in small galleries in just the right places. That's my favorite way to hang family photos and these are the items I treasure most when I move. To have my family photos near me truly makes me feel at home. Just because you don't own the place doesn't mean it can't feel like home. This I know.
So much to my husband's aggravation because of my never-ending "honey-do" list, I continue to make this little nest home. We sit above a walking town with restaurants, shopping, a local farmer's market on the weekend, community movies and concerts, and pretty much anything you need at your doorstep. You could literally live here without a car and many days mine sits uninterrupted. He loves this little place more than I do, and he knows if I fall too hard or get too comfy, he'll have to light a stick of dynamite to get me out of here! It's taken us quite a while to get where we are right now. Literally booted out of a couple of apartments while on the hunt, and with multiple contracts on houses and land that have fallen through, it's no small miracle that I still have my sanity at all. But because I am a great believer in home being a state of mind and that it's the small comforts of familiarity that make a strange place feel like home, I am grateful to be here for whatever amount of time I have for this stage of our journey. After all, home truly is a state of the heart. And, for now, my heart is right here. Happy Friday, y'all...  Never, ever too busy to enjoy a meal with my girls...Italian feast!
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