Our Home Sweet Parsonage--A Pictorial (& Video) Tour

Well, I figured that if I kept waiting until everything was completely decorated and how I want it, I'd be waiting until my hair's completely gray (and no, I don't have ANY . . . yet!), so I settled for doing this when it was at least clean.

It's been just over a month since we moved here to Linesville, and we absolutely love it here! After getting completely out of boxes in just a few days, some minor illnesses and just plain L-I-F-E has gotten in the way of my big plans of getting completely settled in within a week. You'd think we'd have this whole moving thing down to a science by now, but the whole moving-out-of-state deal comes with some extra challenges like new bank accounts, insurance, drivers' licenses, etc., etc., etc. Oh, well.

We absolutely love our new church family and have had so many opportunities for fellowship with them, starting the day we moved here. We had 3 or 4 different offers for people to watch our boys during while the big stuff was coming in, and after I dropped them off at another home, I came "home" to about a gazillion (okay, maybe just a couple dozen, but still!) helpers that had already unloaded the majority of our belongings. They even helped set up and make our bed and unpack about half my kitchen. They'd burned a lot of boxes before we left to go down the road to the church for a fabulous dinner prepared by others in the church.

I must admit: It was a little odd having people whose names I didn't remember (and had met only once or twice, in the past couple months) asking me where to put furniture pieces in a house I'd briefly toured in late November, but hey!

Without further adieu, here's the grand tour of the first floor:

When you come in the front-ish side door (there is a front door, but there's no real access to it--weird, I know), you come in through (drum roll, please!) the coveted spacious mud room!

If you were visiting in person, you could sit down and take off your shoes or boots (depending on the day of the week or time of day, this crazy winter!) and then hang up your coat on either the wall-mounted rack behind the door, to your right, or on the rod to your left. Either way, you'd then want to follow that well-placed carpet remnant to your left to what was once the side door.

Once you walked through it, your view would be something like this one, with the arched doorway slightly to the right of being directly in front of you:

Don't you just love the white trim and chair rail against the tan walls?! We do! And note the berry swag you can barely see above the arched doorway--I just had to put in that Pennsylvania touch--along with candles in my windows, of course!

The window-type opening above our extra-long sofa leads to the kitchen, so it's a semi-open layout. (And yes, I know that there's a hole in my photo arrangement--like I said, I'm not done yet!) By the way, to the right of that incompletely decorated wall is the door to the pastor's study.

(As a side note, we are adjusting to his working from home again, never mind the first-shift-ish and somewhat flexible schedule--there are both positives and negatives to all of that. It's especially hard for the boys to understand that when Daddy comes out to get a cup of coffee or something, he's not really home. One way we've tried to explain it to them is to tell Caleb that the play room is his office. I love it when he tells me he's working in his office! lol Then, today, he told me that the kitchen was my office. How cute is that?!)

Moving on, if you were to look to the right of the door to the study, here's what you'd see:

If you stood in front of the door to Jonathan's study, here's the view as yo look a little to your right (just past the arched doorway you saw before):

In the top right corner, you can see our nonfunctional front door in front of which is the staircase to the upstairs, which includes three bedrooms (two of which are very spacious!) and a large full bath that includes a ton of storage. (Maybe I'll give you a tour of that sometime next month. . . . if there's any interest.)

Standing at the same spot, here's what you'd see if you looked a little to your left:

You can see the (second) door you came in, there to your left. And sure, it's a little quirky to have a window to my mud room, but that's obviously where the house once ended. Besides, window treatments are in the works, and I just love having that informal but highly functional entryway!

Might I point up our new electric fireplace? It's my Valentine's Day/Anniversary/Mother's Day/probably a few other holidays gift from my man! Ain't he the greatest?! We had the TV on the bookshelf you already saw, until we bought that last week, and now the pictures need to be rehung because they don't look quite right, but that's okay!

Okay, back to the tour. If you turn to your right and walk through the arched doorway, turn to your right, and you'll be in my kitchen! It's not huge, but it's not tiny, either, and there's plenty of cabinet space--woo hoo!

Past that is our dining area. It's a little too white for my taste and the valances were here when we came but don't quite match my not-yet-hung decor, but alas . . . these things do take time! Anyhow, if you were to walk through the doorway and look to your left, this is what you'd see:

Walk along the counter on the left and look back the other way, and here's the view:

If we moved the buffet, we'd have room to use all four leaves to extend our table for plenty of guests. By the way, that back door is functional, and it leads to a small cement landing with a few stairs to the spacious, evergreen-shaded back yard.

Why don't you walk over to the side window (the one not along the same wall as the back door) and look out. Here's what you might see (depending on the day, this odd-ball winter):

Yes, there is a creek and plently of wooded space out back--such a great place for two boys to explore as they grow up! Now, jump back in the window, and turn toward the kitchen, and you'll see one of my favorite spots inside the house:

I must give credit to Jonathan for this brain child--if we hadn't used this little nook as a coffee corner, I'm sure it would be wasted space--speaking of space, this place has TONS of storage, like the cabinets placed below the coffee pot!

Back through the kitchen, I must point up a feature I just love--no, not the old-fashioned phone--the pantry! I've never had one of these before, and I just love having the extra space to stock up on food. Our church family did a pretty good job of getting us started out with plenty of canned goods and some easy meals, so some of those are still in there, too.

Okay, going back to the living room, when you came through the arched doorway, you turned right to come into my kitchen. If you'd gone straight, you'd go into a small full bathroom (sorry, no pics--it is clean, though!).

If you looked to your left, you'd see our basement door (it's unfinished and has a low ceiling, but we're grateful for the storage space and washer and dryer down there). Like all the interior doors downstairs, the door to the basement has a fabulous vintage doorknob with a (working) keyhole you can peek through, like this one:

To the left, just past the basement door, is the door to my favorite place in the whole house--the play room! (Originally, this was one of two bedrooms in the house--so glad they added on!) But we'll save those pics for another post. For now, you'll have to settle for the sneak peak in this very amateurish, completely unedited 4-minute video tour linked here.

Thanks for popping over to see our new home. We're very grateful to the Lord for providing it and to Calvary Baptist Church of Linesville for all the hard work they've put in to keeping it up for nearly 6 years without a pastor to live in it.

Hope you'll visit in person sometime, friends! Just give me about an hour's notice, and I'll even feed you. :)

Familiarity & Breeding Without Contempt

Home. That word encompasses so much more than a mere dwelling place. In fact, it could refer to something other than a residence, but it definitely refers to something greater. Something less tangible. Sometimes people say a place feels "homey" (that's one of my favorite compliments I've received about one of my many abodes!) or makes them feel "at home." As I looked ahead at the December page of my 2010 Susan Branch calendar to record an upcoming appointment, tears welled up in my eyes (see pics from it throughout this post). We were living with my parents at the time, just aching to again form a "home" of our own, where we could re-establish our family rhythm (my own term, but I'm sure you'll understand its meaning) as a foursome.

Funny story--when I was single, my roommate and I invited a family from church into our "home" (then, a make-shift apartment that was the second story of an old farm house--very first-place-esque). Commenting on many "found" pieces of decor, including a hand-painted pie plate made by my ceramics-loving grandmother, one of our guests said they didn't expect such pieces to be on display in our home. Why? Because we were single! As if marrying a man is what brings such touches to our tables!

By contrast, there was a man I dated some who described his taste in decor as consisting of "nothing organic." When I probed as to his meaning, he cited not liking furniture made of wood. Well, if any of you have been to my home, you know that we would have clashed royally! Can metal and glass furniture really feel as cozy and "homey" as wood? Not to me. But then, my long-time home was in the middle of a forest. (Besides, how can one build a nest without wood? Okay, that was a bad one!) That brings me to my main point, though: Home consists of the familiar. A month-and-a-half ago, we moved into this bare-walled apartment, and we have since made it "feel like home." That consists of more than stuff--it's our stuff, our favorite fragrances, our favorite foods in the refrigerator and cupboards, and our style of cooking--for better or for worse.

For worse, you ask? Sure. Can't you think of something distasteful about your home, your home town, or your home state, that makes it feel like home? I loved going to my grandmother's house, and there was a particular mixture of fragrances that accompanied those memories. I once found myself in a dreamy reverie in the storate aisle at Wal-mart, when I realized that one of those smells was that of moth balls! Admittedly not a pleasant odor, I associated it with the familiar and happy place where my now-deceased grandmother made me feel so special and loved!

For some reason, other things say "home" to me as well and just somehow resonate with my homesick heart--autumn and its colors, "Spiced Pumpkin" fragrance from Yankee Candle, the soundtrack to Anne of Green Gables by Hagwood Hardy, Susan Branch and her handwritten books with watercolor illustrations, and Jan Karon's heart-warming Mitford. So does the idyllic landscape of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which my husband calls home. Perhaps someday we'll retire there.

By contrast, this November, we thought God might be leading us to make Tucson, Arizona, our new "home," and I wondered if it could ever truly feel like "home"--its landscape, climate, architecture were all so foreign, resembling nothing familiar. In fact, even if one could argue the superiority of one setting over another, the lack of familiarity could easily tempt a person to choose the "inferior" place, simply because of its greater chances of feeling like home. Thankfully, this was not a choice that was ours to make.

(To be quite honest, even though the "rejection" aspect was hard, we are actually relieved that God did not ask us to move to Tucson. Each day of the week before Christmas, I gave my husband, Jonathan, and our toddler son, Caleb, a small gift to open that symbolized something we're thankful God did not ask us--as yet, anyway--to give up! These included a grow-your-own-grass kit, a board book about dogs, and white tennis balls stacked to look like a snow man!)

Some people, sadly, "feel at home" when they're mistreated and in squalor, which is sad. My responsibility--part of it, anyway--is to form a positive sense of "home" for my own family. Will my sons feel at home when they are spoken to with biting sarcasm or shoved aside when technology or other "distractions" are present? Will they sense familiarity when there is conflict and ill will, or peace and harmony? I may not be able to control how many places they learn to call home, but my attitude and emotional and spiritual stability will go far to help establish their own self-confidence and sense of security. I hope they also remember that everything matched.

Nesting, Nesting

I cannot believe it's been over three months since I last posted! I've written often in my mind, but the technology to transfer that directly to a blog has yet to be invented (as far as I know!). I'm on-line mostly one-handed on my iPhone (fun!) these days, usually while nursing. (Sorry if that's tmi!) Today, my baby Joshua is 3 months old.


The three months since he was born have been such a whirlwind, and it's finally dying down, at least for now. (In case you need catching up, after the first month, which is such a blur, we flew to Tucson for the week, where Jonathan candidated at a church. The week he became a 2-month-old cutie pie, we found out we would not be moving to Tucson and moved, instead, into our own apartment here in Madison. We're now moved in, settled, and past the holidays, so we're feeling pretty relaxed, at least for parents of two children under 2!) I have a sneaking suspicion the calm won't last long, so I'm trying to savor every minute. Sometimes savoring includes letting thoughts running around in my head spill out into the world, so here I am again.

Enough about me, on to some big ideas! Here are a few hints: "There's no place like ____," "____ is where you hang your hat," "____ SWEET ____," "____ is where the heart is." I'm sure you've guessed by now.

In the past six months of being in "limbo," not sure where our next residence will be, I have been contemplating that idea of "home." That was easy for me, not a question at all, during my growing-up years: I lived in the same house since I was 5 months old and attended the same church and church-run school from age five through high school graduation. It really "rocked my world" when the church and school changed locations my freshman year of college. When I came "home," the place where I'd spent more time than any other place (other than the house where I grew up) was no longer familiar. Then, the year I graduated college and moved to Michigan, going "home" for the holidays meant going to Wisconsin, not Illinois, for my parents had moved. Thus began my "home displacement" issues (yes, I did just make that up!).


Having grown up in Illinois and attended college in South Carolina before moving to Michigan, I had no idea how many more states would become "home" to me in the years ahead. While in Michigan, I called 5 different places "home," lived with my parents in Wisconsin and sister in Georgia between Michigan and Oregon, where I moved once I got married. From there, we moved to Pennsylvania, where we lived with Jonathan's parents for a few months between ministries. From there, we moved to Gillett, Wisconsin, where we stayed for over 2 1/2 years--a new record for me in adulthood! We really made that place feel like "home," even though we did not own it. It was a parsonage, and the church gave us the liberty to paint and make other updates that really made it feel like "ours."

After living with my parents for my last trimester and first couple months with baby Joshua (ever time we tried to move out, another strong potential would come up for moving out of state!), we moved into a 2-bedroom apartment here in Madison. It does feel like "home" with all our stuff around and all. Crazily, we hope to move sometime in 2011, hopefully to someplace we'll get to call "home" for quite some time.

So what is "home," and why is it so important to us? After 22 years in the same place . . . 11 years, 6 states, and 10 residences later . . . it's a question I've been asking myself. The next few posts will be my meanderings and fumbling answers to those questions, so check back soon!