house #7

There was no reason to leave House #6 except our desire to have a little more room.  So throughout the years we would look at "house porn."  For us, that's a website that shows all (or most) of the houses for sale in our area with photo tours of the houses called openhouseok.com.

It always seemed that when one of us found "the house of our dreams", the other had to talk them down off the ledge.  It's not the right time.  That house costs too much.  We're not in a position to do a fixer upper.  Or it had what we came to call a FATAL FLAW.

The fatal flaw is the one aspect of a house that we couldn't even consider buying it because of.  For instance, the house was out in the country.... fatal flaw.  The house had 3 bedrooms.... fatal flaw.  The kitchen had a horrible layout... or was too small... or the backyard was 10 feet deep... You get the picture.  These were all fatal flaws along the way.

Until one day back in January.  Mister saw a house online that had no interior pictures.  And it wasn't on our usual website.  But it promised large square footage, in a desirable neighborhood in town (near our current house), and space for everyone.  We needed to go see it in order to find the fatal flaw.

But when we walked in, all we saw was potential.  Here was a house that had three bedrooms downstairs that were perfect for a master suite, office, and guest room, plus two huge rooms upstairs already painted the colors our kids needed.  They had their own bathroom!  They were across the house from our master bedroom!  There's a neighborhood pool!  The list of must-haves to move us out of our settled state kept getting ticked off.

And that's when the big move began.  The rest, as they say, is history.

home sweet home

Thank you for following along in our story.  Thank you for encouraging me.  Thank you for reading my blog!
Now, it's time to talk turkey.  How a teacher learned to decorate a home with what she had.  Hopefully you'll stay on this ride with me.  Hopefully you'll be inspired.  And hopefully you'll be encouraged to decorate your own home in a way that brings joy to your days.

We all live in a dream home.  Some are big, some are small, but they all contain the lives we were purposed to live.  Let's get decorating!

house #6

You've heard the saying "Pride comes before the fall."

That's exactly how that last house went down.  We had spent so much time remodeling and decorating that in the end we were extremely prideful of our home.  We loved showing it to other people.  And we loved hearing how much people liked it.

However, as much as I loved that house, I also loved not being bankrupt.  And we knew that was the next thing coming if we stuck around in our pride and waited out the storm in our lives.  We knew we had to go and we hated telling our friends.  WHAT? WHY??, they would ask.  Of course we didn't want to have to dive into all the gory details so we sufficed it to say that we just needed to downsize.  Everyone thought we were crazy.  But we knew we were crazy like a fox.  We were going to survive this and we were about to learn a big lesson about ourselves and our pride.

We quickly chose a house on the opposite side of town and moved in 3 days before Christmas.  It was a whirlwind, getting moved in.  A snow came unexpectedly, and we threw up a tree with no ornaments, invited all our friends over and let them put their name on a clear glass ball and hang it on our tree.  Our friends and family had pulled us through that rough move, they deserved a special place on our tree that year.  The humility of sharing our new, smaller, older home was painful, but important.

So this is where you might have come into our story.  You probably met us while we lived there, having no idea of the crazy tale in our wake.  We had you over for meals, football parties, or a just a beer on the patio.  We liked to say that this house was not everything we wanted, but it was everything we needed.  God gave us that house.  And He taught us many things there.

In many ways, this house held the actual glory years of our marriage.  But it also held the saddest and most disparaging times.

When we first moved in, Mister quit his job.  We had no idea at the time how long it would take for him to get a new one.  We had done this before.  We could do it again.

Months passed.  Depression set in.  I remember the day we sat down and looked at each other.  "I can go back to work," I said. "I'm able and willing."  It was a last resort, but we didn't want to deplete our entire life savings too quickly, and we had no idea how long it would take for him to become gainfully employed again.

So off to teaching I went.  I had sold EVERYTHING I had when I went into "retirement" that first time.  There was a learning curve, since things had changed since I'd been a stay-at-home mom.  But I settled into this new way of living.  It gave our family health insurance and offset the hemorrhaging of money each month.  We were finding our way.

Those were hard times.  VERY HARD.  Mister was not himself, as most bread winners wouldn't be when going unemployed for months on end.  A critical turning point arrived one day like an answer to prayer.  He sat me down, looked me in the eye and said "I think I have a contentment issue.  I'm realizing now that all these houses have taught me something.  I kept thinking the next house would be the right one.  The next car would make me happier.  And yet none of that has brought me any extra sense of joy.  I need to learn to be content right where I am."

Amen, brother.  In that house we learned to lean on each other.  That when one was down, the other would hold them up.  We danced in the minefields. We learned to love each other on the deepest level possible.  We dropped to our knees for our marriage and God sustained us.

In April I was having quiet time, reading my bible, when I suddenly heard from God.  It was not a voice, just a sudden feeling.... "Mister will get a job in my time, Kim.  But it's not in any industry that he's currently seeking.  You have no idea the career I'm about to lead him into."  He had been pursuing pharmaceutical sales and home building sales for months.  Nothing was panning out.  Until he got a call in November.  It was a college friend who worked with a commercial cleaning company.  Would he like to chat?

Was this a joke?  A cleaning job?  Mister went in and came home to tell me all about it.  He'd be selling accounts.  No cleaning, he would hire people to do that.  Could it be as lucrative as they made it sound?  Surely this wasn't for real.

And yet it was.  His first paycheck was $400.  And today he runs a business that bills $2 million yearly.  God is good.  He found a career for my husband that fits his personality perfectly.  There are jokes that get made every day about cleaning toilets, he gets to sell (which is his gift), and he doesn't have to do the dirty work.  haha.

Yes, God is good.  We stayed put in that house for 7 years.  We lived the best and the worst of life there.  And God blessed us indeed.  There was finally no reason to move.....

This little beaut has new carpet and is looking for a new owner, by the way.  If you're interested, or know someone who might be, you just LET ME KNOW.  I will hook them up!  ;)

house #5

House #5 is an interesting house in our journey.  It began a season of hard times in our marriage.  In fact, this is the house story that the mister said he may not want to read about on my blog.  And that's okay.  It will be hard for me to write about actually.

While we were livin' the dream on little ol' Poppy Lane, we bought house #5.  It was January of 2007 and we paid a measly $147,000 for a 3,000 square foot home.  Wow, huh?  It was in bad shape, to be fair, and the minute we walked in, I felt a sick feeling in my stomach.  I looked around at the potential and I couldn't shake the feeling of dread.  I had never been afraid of a move or a remodel or a build before, so I couldn't figure out why it felt so wrong.

after photos of the front elevation

The mister was so excited for the vision he could see, so we rolled full steam ahead.  We had just sold three of our rental houses for a great profit and needed a place to invest our money.  Unfortunately, we got some VERY BAD advice from a lawyer who told us we could roll it into that house.  We asked multiple times, but he kept assuring us it was fine.  So we did....

Then we took our life savings at that point and started tearing out walls, ripping up carpet, and remodeling our "new" home.  We were "building" our dream home.  This was the house, we declared, that we would grow old in.  We pulled out all the stops and incorporated every beautiful idea we had seen in magazines.  We were falling in love with our blood, sweat, and tears.  We had reached the pinnacle of life.  Or so we thought.

before (above)

after (above)

before

after

before

after (above and below)

before (powder room)                                                  

after (see those tiles?  Those are paintings of Norman monuments.  Yah, you can't take those with you when you leave.)

It took 9 months to finish the projects we took on and in August of that year, we moved into our dream home.  The pool was power washed, painted and filled.  It was decked and decorated and beginning to be enjoyed, just as summer came to an end.

before

 after (above and below)

WE EVEN PUT IN NEW GRASS, PEOPLE.  THIS WAS HARDCORE REMODELING AT ITS FINEST.

I'll never forget that first night we laid our heads on the pillows of our new beautiful bedroom.  Mister rolled toward me and uttered the words that remain in our history forever now.  "We are SO FAR OUT HERE.  I don't know if I can stand this."  While it was true, the house he had chosen was on the far northeast part of town, it was heartbreaking to hear.  I knew in that moment that our time in this house was limited.

Our daughter started kindergarten and I was enjoying time with my son each morning.  Life was plugging along.  Mister was selling homes for his brother; he was relatively happy.  And YET....

The next summer we made a shocking discovery.  Electricity COSTS A LOT OF MONEY.  Our home was completely electric.  That had been fine in the winter before, but now we were paying to cool a large house with two air conditioning units, as well as running a pool pump 24 hours a day because of the heat.  Our electricity was costing us $800 per month, barely less than our tiny mortgage.  Here we were, in our biggest house yet, with the smallest mortgage we'd ever had.  We were doing okay until we got audited by the IRS for that ridiculous thing we did called rolling money into a mortgage that we should have paid the taxes on first.  I found myself wishing we could sue a lawyer for bad advice.

Additionally, the housing market was beginning to sink.  Selling houses slowed down, almost to a stop, and my brother in law was in jeopardy of losing his business.  Mister wanted to leave his job so he wasn't a burden to his brother.

All of these circumstances led us to one conclusion.  Time to go.

We put our dream home on the market in October of that year.  It sold 7 days later.

We had to find a new home and we had to find it fast.  Mister was quitting his job soon.  We needed to qualify for our new house before we had no income.  And we needed our life savings to be freed from that home so we could live on it.  I was a stay-at-home mom and we had no idea how long he would go without a job.

We started the depressing process of packing up our home....

house #4

House #4.  We spent years referring to this home as the one that held the "glory years" of our marriage.  But looking back, this is only partially true.  This house was our home for a whopping 3 years.  A record for us at that point!

We moved out of the cute old brick house 3 weeks before I gave birth.  We spent one week in a hotel, our "things" in a storage unit.  I kept thinking please Lord, don't let me give birth while living in a hotel.  And thankfully our prayer was answered.  We moved into our little 1600 square foot all-siding home in the north part of town just days shy of birth.

Friends from church laid me on my couch and unpacked my kitchen for me.  People rolled out to help.  And yet, a whole week passed before I had my next little bundle of joy.  A boy.

We decorated his room in a barn theme and our daughter's in the cutest shades of pink and green.  Life was good on little ole Poppy Lane.  We were happy, arguing less and less, and finally figuring out that thing called marriage.

I was a stay-at-home mom in the truest sense of the word, enjoying every minute with my little ones.  We had many parties, playdates, and library story times.  I was finally getting to do all the things I couldn't with a daycare being run in my home.  I was LIVING THE DREAM.

The Mister, meanwhile, was working in pharmaceuticals still.  And during this time, he finally got on with a great company with an awesome product.  Remember the year the U.S. ran out of flu shots?  Well Mister was selling Flumist, a new product, and the windfall for that company was amazing.  He had a great season.

And YET.  He was still discontent.  He and his brother had talked for years about making a go of a home building company.  His brother had been mostly in commercial construction to that point and was interested in building homes.  Mister was the best salesman we all knew.  So WHY NOT?

Once again, the stable-job-holding part of me was crying out NOOOOO!!!  But the now-content wife was fearful of holding her husband back from his dream.  I couldn't stand the thought of hearing my husband tell me for years to come that I had kept him from his DREAM.  Nope, let's follow his lead!  And off we went.

He was having a great time working for and with his brother.  Life hadn't been better.

And YET.  At home, the walls were beginning to close in on him.  So I'm sure you can imagine what happened next when he came across what we call "house porn".  This little website where you can see all the houses for sale in our area?  Yep, he had found the next dream house.  It was in the far northeastern part of our town and it was huge!  And dirt cheap!  With a pool!  In a cul-de-sac!  He wanted that house.  And he wanted it bad.  We had the cash to remodel!  WHY NOT??..........

(to be continued....)

house #3

So there we were, living in our cute little white brick house on Terrace Place.  We had put blue toile wallpaper (are you seeing a theme here?) in the kitchen with our white woodwork, painted the old dark wood paneling, and recarpeted.  There were many things we did to that house to get it out of the 1960's.  It had been stuck, impressively.  Almost like a time capsule.

And then one morning, I woke up to a bright sun filtering in the windows.  I looked out the new french doors we had installed to the backyard and saw butterflies flying around the backyard.  The birds were chirping.  The flowers were blooming.  And in that moment, I wondered if I had walked into a Norman Rockwell painting.  I was literally pinching myself to see if I was really living this life.  And as soon as the joy sprang up, it began freefalling.  I suddenly had a knot in my stomach.  I wondered how I could be worthy of such a beautiful life.  Surely God was going to take it all away in an instant.  Soon.  I just didn't know when.  A feeling of impending doom fell over me and I started living like the ball was getting ready to drop.

Now, to clarify, I believe now that this thought process was probably part this little thing called The Baby Blues.  I didn't have full-on depression, but I would cry for no reason in the shower. "What is wrong with me?!?!" I would wonder as I sobbed. As time passed, life began to settle.

Our little white brick house with our first snow.  See the extra kids?  Those are my daycare children.  They were my daughter's very first friends.

Mister had a new job in pharmaceuticals and when my sweet bundle of pink joy turned 4 months old, I started an in-home daycare.  We started saving money to invest in rental properties.  I worked long hours and cuddled many babies and scrubbed floors daily.  I was exhausted, but it beat the alternative: working outside the home.  I was motivated to do my new job because of the preciousness that my new baby was.  I literally couldn't stand the thought of sending her to daycare.  I was willing to do whatever it took to stay home.  In-home daycare fit the bill nicely.

Around a year into my new career, we started building rental duplexes.  We were building wealth!  Wow, we were real adults!  And yet the fighting continued.

One evening I went to dinner with some girls I've called my Yayas for about 16 years now.  I told my Yayas about the fighting.  And wisely, they told me something that has stuck with me ever since.  "Kim, you need to go to counseling."  But I can't afford counseling.  We're tight on money right now. "Kim.... Counseling is a LOT CHEAPER than a divorce.  It's worth the investment NOW."

Oof.  Touche' friends.

And that was when the counselor taught us something we had never understood or considered.  WE ARE ON THE SAME TEAM.  It's US against THE WORLD.  We needed to keep fighting, but not against each other.  We needed to begin fighting FOR our marriage.  It was that or divorce.

Not long after that, I finally got pregnant again.  I had miscarried earlier that year and was desperate for another baby as perfect as the first.  And this is when the talk turned back to houses.  Just when I thought we had settled in a home where we could stay, we made some quick realizations.  I wanted to stop doing in-home daycare as soon as my new baby arrived and we couldn't sustain the mortgage on his income alone.  And by now I was coming to the realization that a house was not a home.

And just like the last story ended, we started planning another move.  This time we would build again.  But smaller.  We drew up plans and his brother started building in a hurry.  We had a deadline again!  There was a baby coming in July......

(We lived in the house on Terrace Place for 2 years.)

our dreamchild

Earlier this year, through a series of texts about a craft show in Northwest Arkansas, my friend Carol and I dreamed up an event called The Farmgirl Fair.  Remember Carol?  She's The Unlikely Farmgirl.  You must visit her website.  But you're more lucky to just know her in person.  She's amazingly multi-talented.

Anyway.  We sat down at a restaurant with our other wildly talented friend, Lindsi, and dreamed some more.  What would we want sold at our fair?  We love the idea of all local.  We love handmade items.  We love art!  We love unique.  How big can we make it?  What would we call this?  Who would come?  Are we crazy to think this could actually work?

We believe the answer is yes.  And we can't wait to share our vision with you in person on September 26th.  Imagine with me, if you will, Charlotte's Web County Fair.  There are pigs and horses, booths with local artists and produce, a pie tasting contest, hayrides.  Are you catching my drift?  Bunting strung all around, a petting zoo, and the cutest things available for purchase.  Can you see why it makes me so giddy to think about?  Yes, you need to mark your calendar and make plans to attend.  There will be live music and food to purchase when you get hungry.  I just know you'll love it.

Also?  Are you a talented gal or guy who handmakes amazing and unique items?  Are you a vintage collector wanting to share your collection with other people who would want to buy it?  What about the produce you grow or the eggs you collect at your urban farm.  Interested in selling them?

We have a limited number of booths and they are beginning to fill up.  We would love for you to apply!

Did I mention that the meager $5 (or more) entry fee will be donated to the Center for Children and Families this year?  See?  You're a philanthropist for attending!

The Farmgirl Fair will be held on a Ranch in northwest Norman on the only off week for OU football in the fall.  See?  There's no reason to miss!  We made it easy on you!  So plan to come.  Can't wait to see you there!

house #2

Woooooowwwwww.  My story was interupted by a little thing called a TORNADO and then another little storm 2 days later called HAIL.  Both of which suck.  Pardon the language.  I'm two windows less than I was a month ago and my roof has pock marks like a teenager with acne.  Bless.

yah, that's hail.

But we will survive.

I was reminded of this when I went for Indian food at lunch with my mama today and the owner was telling us that he had talked to his friend in Nepal and his damage was nothing compared to the devastation occurring in their country.

TRUTH.

So with a fresh perspective, I bring you chapter 2 of my story.

We moved into the house we built in a gated community in southwest Oklahoma City 13 months after we were married.  Did I mention that we had only dated for a hot minute?  We were married less than a year before our first anniversary.  We had never ACTUALLY argued before we got engaged (3 months later), much less disagreed.  So it's no wonder we were struggling to figure this whole marriage thing out.

House #2 was a cute red brick home.  It had 3 bedrooms and an office.  We put brick pavers in the kitchen and toile wallpaper in the bathroom.  Yes, that was a fun time.  I was getting to decorate a home with my "French Country" style.  I felt like a real grownup.

We were excited to move into this house, Mister's dream home plan of his bachelor days.  I was just excited to decorate.  But right about the time we moved, Mister had recently left his career in home building.  He wanted to have weekends off to spend with me and the kids we would eventually have.  So he decided that the best way to make that happen would be to go into pharmaceutical sales.

The first big pharma job he got was a contract.  He made a whopping $40,000 per year.  And I was teaching at a private Catholic school where I brought in $1500 a month.  Money was tight.  And there were many hours spent trying to figure out how to make our money stretch.  This life was a far cry from the stable job my dad had modeled for me his whole life.  I thought a man should get a job and stick with it.  And my new husband was not living up to my expectation.  I hated feeling house poor.  And the fighting continued.  I hadn't laughed at one of his jokes in a year.  We were both unhappy and plugging along at marriage.

His contract ended and suddenly my new husband was job-less.  After a few different job prospects and throwing around the possibility of relocating, I got pregnant.  We had planned this, it was no surprise.  But now?  Our focus was different.  I had never wanted to work once I had a baby and Mister was in no position to support us alone.  So we did what we were beginning to know best.  We planned another move.

I had worked in Norman, we banked in Norman, we shopped in Norman, we ate out in Norman, and we even dry cleaned in Norman.  But we had built in SW Oklahoma City.  We were out of our element.  Time to go back home.

Mister found a cute older house in an older neighborhood in Norman and we borrowed money from family to fixer upper before we moved in.  I was 9 months pregnant when we moved.  We moved on Saturday and Sunday.  I had my last day at my teaching job on a Tuesday.  We were set to induce on Thursday.  And then this little wrinkly baby made her debut before we were ready, on Wednesday morning.

We hadn't sold the house in Oklahoma City, but we eventually rented it out to a family and eased the financial burden.  We began to settle into a new life in house #3......

(We lived in house #2 for 1 year, to the weekend.)