Open House: "The Rose House"

Hi Friends!  Are you tired of these home tour posts?  Like this one?  Or this one?  I know it seems like we just did one last year.  Oh wait...we DID do one last year!  The packing up and moving part is horrible, and finding a place for all of our stuff takes time, but I really don't mind test-driving homes.  There are pluses and minuses to each one we've experienced.

Ready for the tour?

Here's the front of the house.  It's a classic 70's split-level house.  Blue siding.  I love the shade trees and the pretty flowering shrubs out front!  They act as a pretty "fence" to our yard.  

One of our "summer school" activities was going to the store and buying/planting petunias for the flower pots.  They make a boring front door a little happier, I think.  Speaking of the front door, there's no peek hole.  We have to peer down to the porch from the window like creepers to see who it is, and we're often discovered!  Agh!  Hello, salesman...

We went from a two-car garage to a one-car garage to NO garage!  We had a good laugh about that one.  The plus is there are lots of storage closets and sheds, so there are places for most of our stuff.  Look at the awesome rafters Josh built to store our broken-down moving boxes! Let's hope we won't need to use them for a while.  :)

Split-level entryways:  Going up.  Going down.  I'm not sure why they decided to carpet these stairs.  They will be tricky to keep clean, along with the flat paint on the walls.  :)

Living Room:

Our last house only had one small room in which to gather.  It was our TV/Family/Living Room.  We really did live in that room.  This house has a den downstairs, so we put the TV down there and found this awesome set of leather couches for 100$!  They were a bit broken in some places, but again, awesome Josh reinforced them with some wood and screws, and they work great and are really pretty!  I'd like to figure out a color scheme for this room and make some pretty pillow covers  to add some visual interest in here. I've had the same decor for 10 years, friends!  I need some help. 

Other side of the living room.  Computer desk, bookshelves, etc.  

On the opposite side of the living room wall is the kitchen/dining room.  Not a lot of storage space in the cupboards up here (short and shallow), so we are SO glad that we have TWO kitchens!  One up.  One down.  I use the downstairs kitchen for all of our food storage, as well as large pots/dishes that we don't use as often.

It's got these lovely fruit basket tiles!  It's easier to keep clean than the butcher block counters, but not by much.  You can tell by this picture, it needs a good scrub.  But, it always reminds us to eat our fruits! :)

This is our new Craigslist fridge we picked up on our date a couple weeks ago.  It's working great!  They must have reclaimed some cabinets and mounted them on this wall.  I'm glad we have them, but they were pretty poorly painted, and they are kind of oddly placed.  The two on the bottom I use for storing plastic tupperware that the kids can use for snacks, drinks, etc.  Perfect height!

Dining area.  We weren't sure if the dining room would fit our large table, but I can't bear to part with it, so we have it sitting the long-ways.  I think it works just fine!  The sun really beats on the back of the house in the afternoon and heats up the kitchen.  Those curtains do a pretty good job of keeping some heat out. 

  Back deck - painted blue to match the house, and some stairs that go down to the yard.

Down the hall from the Kitchen/Living room are the Bathroom, Master Bedroom and Diddles' Room.  That's a coat closet on the right.  Around that corner is a linen closet.  Around the corner to the left is another closet next to the bathroom.  Yay for lots of storage!  

Master Bedroom. Our bedroom is ALWAYS this clean.  ;)

Master Bathroom.  It's pretty small, and doesn't have a very big vanity.  It gets a bit crowded, but it's super fast to clean!  

Diddles' crib finally had it's last move, and fell apart.  It was literally being held together by Josh's old belts!  When we were moving in, Josh just tossed the pieces on the lawn and said, "She can just sleep in a big girl bed."  Our moving helpers who were there each shared funny stories of their kids "saying goodbye" to beloved objects like blankets, binkies, beds, etc.  She loves that crib, and I worried we would be duck taping the pieces back together come morning.  Diddles came out, saw the crib in pieces on the lawn and said, "My kib bwoken?"  Yes.  "I sweep in big girl bed?"  Yes.  "Ooo kay" she said in a resigned but happy way.  That was that!  Happy sleeping ever since, although she's more a night owl than the other two.  It's usually 8:30pm at the earliest she finally settles down.  There was no window coverings on this window, so right now she has a big blanket tacked up there to keep the early sun out.  

Downstairs was once it's own apartment.  It has everything you'd need to rent it out:  Bathroom, kitchen, separate entrance, etc. Down this long hallway there is an under-the-stairs storage closet, Laundry room.  Josh mounted his bike there, since we couldn't leave it outside.  I'm just happy he didn't suggest we keep it in our bedroom!  

We lost a bedroom in the move, so we had a time trying to figure out who would get which room.  What a production!  We debated sharing with bunk beds, but no one wanted to share with Diddles (don't blame them).  Yaks wanted to share with Boo, but she didn't want to share with him.  Boo didn't want the "ugly" room with the fuse boxes, but she also didn't want to have to have all the toys stored in her room.  It went on and on...

So, Yaks got a queen-sized bed, which will become the guest room, should anyone decide to visit!  Both bedrooms have the wood paneling papered over by this HIDEOUS textured wallpaper.  It's got glitter in it, friends!  GLITTER!  Diddles calls them "Parkeeow Fwowers."  (sparkly flowers)

On the bright side...it's a neutral color!?

 Boo's room is the largest, but she always finds something to complain about.  That girl...  Last week it was that it was too bright in the mornings and the sun wakes her up.  Josh and I remind her that we BOTH had to share bedrooms until we were 16 years old!  16!!  Quit complaining!

On the other end of the hallway is the bathroom.

When I was trying to figure out where to put our toys (again, since we lost a bedroom), I realized these awesome sliding door cupboards were just deep and wide enough to fit the storage bins of toys/games!  They fit every board game and toy bucket we have!  

Don't you love that lettering?  Salle de Bain (bathroom)?  

 Piece de Joet (toy room) is more like it!

It's got a nice little kitchen downstairs that I already used this week as my "canning kitchen" to put up 24 quarts of peaches!  It will be wonderful during the holidays to have more than one thing in the oven(s).  Who's coming for Thanksgiving!?

This family room downstairs is wonderful.  I love it.  Probably my favorite part of the house for the kids.  The kids can pull out toys, watch a show, play piano (oh!  We got a piano...on Craigslist!  Hahahah) and they can be noisy and messy and it's all O.K.

My favorite place in this house is the backyard.  It's small, but it's beautiful.  It's just enough yard that it can be cared for, but enjoyed as well.  It takes us 10 minutes to mow, instead of two hours!  Shady trees, beautiful flowers.  There are even a few raspberry canes!  It was like a little Secret Garden when we first moved in.  Everything was overgrown and covered in weeds.  We've slowly been working on digging it out and discovering what is growing there.  

Current bush

 Clematis 

We share a section of the back neighbors' fence.  They have these two cute Beagles who BAY and BAY when there another dog is walking past.  They have these little white dipped tails that go crazy when they get excited.  Diddles was pretty interested in them one day, and would find small sticks and twigs to toss over the fence, hoping they would "fetch".  I checked on her a few minutes later and noticed that she had thrown a brick, several pinecones, and a plastic cup over the fence in an effort to find something that would tempt them!  Oh, goodness, I hope nothing hit the dogs!  Fortunately the neighbors weren't home, and the fence is short!  I hopped over and "cleaned up" after her, and we had a talk about what dogs like to fetch. Thank goodness we can't have pets in this place.  

Here are some of the beautiful roses that line the yard.  I wish I could take credit for them, but they truly just GROW.  I love, love, love rose bushes!  They've been a happy addition to the summer and this new house.  I thought it would be appropriate to name this house "The Rose House".  

Hollyhocks

Gorgeous Lavender 

Thanks for coming by for the tour!  Feel free to come visit anytime!