Home Anniversary.

Today marks four years in our home. Four years is the longest we've been anywhere, and I think it's safe to say we've established this as our home. I would bet lots of money that we'll be living in this house for a long, long time.

(Close-up of the new house color - Ron's finished painting the front. He's painting our house this summer! He's awesome. Here's what it looked like the year we moved in.)

When we first moved in four years ago, we definitely thought that by now we'd have started to think about where to move next. For a more permanent home (bigger, newer, fancier). As in, this will do for now but not forever.

It's funny how things change. We don't have a big house, or a very new house, or anything really that spectacular. But what we do have is a house that in four years has turned into our home. I could go on and on about the events and moments that have made that happen, and most of them would have to do with my children, because what I've realized is that they really do make this home for me. This is the only home they have ever known, and there is something magic about that. I am giddy thinking about them coming home from college to sleep under this very roof, watching their own kids maneuver the very steps they slid down backwards (should we just leave the baby gates up?), crowd around the same dining room table that I've been eating at since I was some single-digit age.

I am sentimental. I am not all that patient, but have learned that over time we turn this house into just what we want. Over time, we call on this house to do different things for us, we live in it differently. The play areas of the toddler days will be the hang-out spots for the teenagers to come.

And when they are both gone off on their own, this is all the house I want, and these walls hold the memories that will sustain me until they come home again.

This is what our home looks like today.

I'm sitting on this chair now. I love the print of Monterey I found at Goodwill.To my left across the room is this vignette atop our wine bar. I got the orchid for my birthday this year, the white vase was my grandmother's, the box is a treasure of Ron's from my parent's travels abroad. At times I notice it has disappeared from that spot and will find it next to Alla's bed, full of beads or rubber balls.

One of my favorite walls in the house, over the playroom bed.

I could not be without the gallery we installed in the hallway, you see it right when you enter the front door and get closer as you walk up the steps.

When you live in a smallish space, you have to get creative with organization. This is the best idea I've ever borrowed from Katie! I think having it actually inspires the artists in them.
A watercolor from Fisher.
Alla's drawing of me, and those are not curls she gave me, but tangles. She told me so.An Alla watercolor of a castle.

Children have a way of prettying things up. Alla made me this 'necklace' for my book/magazine basket and I think it might be there forever.

This little nook in our room houses a vanity that is quite ugly and dated, but highly functional. There's a mirror on half the wall, an out of reach cabinet for medicines, and a lower linen cabinet.

I left it unadorned for quite awhile but then decided to pretty it up, and now the space makes me smile every time I come into our room. There's an art print by Amy Rice, a photo Ron took of Fisher in my belly, and an early Alla watercolor.

A close-up of the Amy Rice artwork. It's printed on a page of poetry by e.e. cummings.

The house has its quirks. Things that need fixing, painting, re-doing. But it's ours, it's home. I love dreaming here, staring out at the walls and imagining what they'll become.