As I’m sitting at my desk writing this, I’m watching giant flakes of snow fall onto the already-covered backyard through my windows. This is our first snow in this house and it’s made me fall in love with our space all over again. It’s hard to believe we’ve been here since May, and at the same time it feels like we’ve always been here. It feels like it was made for us.
A day like this was just what I needed. The holidays were wonderful, but they went by way too fast. This beautiful snowfall has me feeling festive, so today I thought I would extend the season a bit and give you all a holiday home tour!
A Brief Backstory:
I don’t consider myself a materialistic person. I like to invest in quality things when I can, mostly because I’m too impatient to deal when things break, but at the same time I am ALWAYS looking for a deal. Seriously, I will put off buying something we need in order to give myself time to research the absolute lowest price and as an aspiring minimalist, I look for ways we can downsize what we have and keep only what we absolutely need. It’s like a game to me.
That being said, I think my love for this house is not so much about the physical space, but the potential I see in it when I look around. It’s a space where we can gather with family and friends. A space that’s less than a day’s drive away from the people and the places that matter most to us. It’s the space we will most likely have a family in some day and a space where we can work, relax, and hopefully show hospitality that reflects the love of Christ.
When Steve and I got married, he was living in an apartment that was equal distances from his work and our church. It was also 30 minutes from my parents, so it was really the ideal location. We knew when we got engaged that the apartment would be our home for the first couple of years of our married life. A lot of things in life felt temporary for us at the time, and since we’re big planners, we didn’t want to make any huge decisions like buying a house until we KNEW it was the right time.
Fast forward 3 years to 2020 and we had both left our desk jobs to pursue our own businesses and we both worked from home. That little apartment started to look smaller and smaller. Again, not being materialistic here, but I think the thing that made us crazy was that nothing felt permanent. We couldn’t paint the walls, rip up the carpet, we didn’t even bother buying new furniture because hauling a new couch up a flight of stairs to the second floor sounded...ugh. Overall, we didn’t feel settled because, although it served us so well in the beginning, it didn’t feel like home. (Quarantine didn’t exactly help matters either.)
Steve’s birthday rolled around mid-April, and he took the day off to just relax with no plans. He mentioned to me in the afternoon that it might be fun to go look at houses. “Sure!” I said. We had already done this several times and we even walked through 3 or 4 with our realtor, but it just never felt right. So off we went to explore around town. Again, we still felt like we weren’t 100% sure what we were doing, but mostly looked around for fun and half-hoped that the right one would jump out at us.
And then we found it.
Scrolling through Zillow while we drove around, I came across a listing that had JUST gone up. Newly remodeled. Big windows. It looked really promising. We drove by and decided we wanted to schedule a tour. I’ll never forget the feeling when we both walked through for the first time. We were quiet and didn’t say much to each other; we just let the realtor talk us through the main points as we meandered around and envisioned ourselves living here. When we got in the car, we both looked at each other.
“I could move into that house tomorrow.”
“Me, too.”
And the next thing I knew, we were putting in an offer.
Now, that epiphany may not seem like much to you, but let me tell you, if you knew how many houses we had looked at, how difficult it was to find a house in our area, and how carefully we make big decisions like this, you’d know how miraculous it was that we were SO sure of ourselves immediately.
Once our offer was accepted, I think we drove by 4 or 5 times just to look at what was going to be ours soon. I can’t even tell you how excited we were to finally have our own space. The next several months were a slow progression of finding our decorating style, buying furniture, etc. We basically started from scratch. I’m hoping to do other posts in the future about furnishing a space on a budget (you’d be surprised at what we spent overall...remember, you’re talking to the deal shopper), but for now, here’s a little fun to extend the Christmas feeling!
Spending the holidays in our own home was probably one of the best gifts 2020 gave us. I’ve figured out that even though I’m not great at it, I do love decorating. We hosted Christmas day with my family so I knew I wanted everything to feel warm and inviting. Naturally, the photographer in me that wants to document everything pulled out her camera, so if you’re like me and you wish Christmas had lasted just a liiiittle bit longer, then come on in and take a tour of - at least the main parts of - our holiday home!
Welcome in.
The sign in our entryway was hand-painted by my sister-in-law and displayed at our wedding.
I still struggle sometimes when it comes to wall art (funny, right?), but once I took the time to play around with this image I took at a family session last Spring, I fell in love with it.
This was our first year trying natural greenery and decor and I couldn't have been happier with how it turned out. The cranberries and oranges popped off the tree perfectly. :)
Excuse the half-finished gallery wall here...we were still in the decision phase. ;)
Our dining room table is one of my favorite "finds". A friend told us about a local furniture warehouse that bought up showroom pieces and sold them for a steal. After spending an afternoon searching through a labrinth that never seemed to end, we ended up taking home this $1,500 table for $190!
Our sunroom is my favorite part of the house. I'm hoping to eventually create a sitting room here, but for now, I've claimed it as my office.
Leave a comment or head over to my IG and let me know what you think! Here’s hoping your holidays were wonderful and here’s to the brighter days ahead...Happy 2021!
Blessings always,
Sarah
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