But that's not real life. Money is real, and that freedom of doing whatever you want whenever you want to is not. I don't say that to be a downer on our specific situation; that's not real life for anyone. No matter what your budget (well, there are exceptions out there but it's no one I know) or how unburdened your finances, you don't have the ability to just do everything at once. Things take time. Decorating and renovating and organizing and figuring out what works best in your home takes time. Lots of time, and some failed attempts. My parents spent like thirteen years getting their house to the place it is right now, for crying out loud, and that was with a lot of round-the-clock work that lasted for months and months at a time.
The huge, glaring, nasty heart issue that I had to come to terms with in the middle of this hissy fit is that my stupid pride has an issue with showing people our house right now. Not because it's not super cute and great and cool right now, but because I'm not done with a single room in the house and I feel the need to tell people that. Like, heaven forbid someone think my house is exactly the way I want it. When I say it out loud - and especially when I type it to the universe - it's ridiculous. First of all, no one expects you to have a perfect house, and certainly no one expects you to complete the perfect house in less than a year of living in it. Second of all, my house is awesome just the way it is right now. We've done a lot and added a lot to it in our time here, and it's great. It functions and it's beautiful and we love it, and yes, we have ideas to make it better over the next 2 to 5 to 10 years, but that should be exciting. During the last couple days, since the hissy fit and the corresponding revelations, I've been soaking in our house just the way it is and focusing on all the things I love so much about it right now. The plans we have are really exciting, and some of them will help our lives be a little more functional and practical, but our house right now is really exciting. Our house, just the way it is right now, was exactly what we wanted. And it's very us. Isn't that the point of a home, anyway?
With all of that laid as the foundation for this post, I wanted to share a couple things we tackled yesterday during our snow day to give some areas of our home a facelift in an extremely budget friendly way. And how did we do it?
We used what we already had.
This is hardly rocket science, and it's a concept I've preached before in my office space makeover, but I just can't stress enough how useful and surprising it can be to go shopping within your own house. Moving things around, digging through boxes of stuff you've had for years but thought you don't have a place for...if you're anything like us you'd be seriously shocked to discover the gems hiding within your own four walls. For freeee.
One of the things on my long list of things for the house was to figure out where to hang some cool maps of our county, and to create a gallery wall in our family room around the huge world map that's been there for most of our time in the house. I'd originally had a plan for the space around the map but have since given up on finding the exact pieces I was looking for, and decided that a collage would be better. That led to some brainstorming about what we had scattered around our house, which led to some digging through boxes and collecting frames from some bookshelves, which led to a big lay out on the floor. We had some frames that had a picture or piece of artwork that we wanted to leave just the way they are, and we had a handful of frames that we wanted to use but replace the pictures inside with some new ones. So all we had to do was go through Shutterfly and pick out the ones we wanted, the sizes we needed, and order! With a deal Shutterfly had going on right now, we paid $5.44 for three new prints, (one 4x6, one 5x7, and one 8x11), including shipping!
Here you can see a little window into the frame selection process, where I went through the house and just laid as many as I could out on the floor facing the wall they would be hung on. Not many of the photos and art you see in those frames are what will stay there, but I'm saving the final product for when all the pictures (and JTs birthday present, which is going in one of the frames) arrives in the mail.
We also hung the two maps of our county I mentioned, using frames and matte board we already had (see the two frames propped up against the entertainment center in the picture above). They are both similar wood frames and even though they're not the shade, they look good together. We decided to hang them on a wall that's been bugging me in our dining room because it looked so empty.
One of the maps is of the Virginia/West Virginia line (which Berryville borders), so it includes the town of Berryville as well as much of the mountains and valley in surrounding areas and West Virginia. The other map is slightly more artistic looking, and is of only Clarke County. I really love both of them and I really love them on that wall. They fill the space really well.
We hung a very special clock in our entryway, as well, which you can see peeking through the archway in the picture above. We've been talking for a long time about how one of the little walls in that space needs a mirror (the wall facing the front door) and that the other wall needs a clock. I know that between our cell phones and the microwave, we don't really need a clock anywhere in our house, but it just seems like something a house needs. I've been keeping my eyes peeled, but whenever I saw one I liked I was alone and I knew the hubs would want to weigh in on a decision like that. So when we were visiting his parents in Colorado back in November and his mom said that she has a clock he made in high school...obviously we snatched it. And even though it probably needs a friend or two to help fill that wall someday, we decided to put him dead center until we find something to pair with it.
One other thing I decided in a flurry of productivity to do yesterday was change out bedspread. I've got some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket and I just can't decide how to spend it (on the house? on some new clothes? on a tattoo?) and one of the things I've been searching websites for is a new bedspread for our room. I get really bedspread ADD for some reason, and I've just been wanting a change pretty bad. While I was playing with picture frames and layouts, it occurred to me that the guest room bed has a dark blue comforter hiding inside the duvet. It would match our room pretty well. So for one last shopping trip within our own home, I pulled the comforter out of the duvet in the guest room, put it on our bed, and filled the guest room duvet with an extra down comforter we'd had stuffed in a closet.
Please ignore my bad iPhone picture, and the dog crate in the background (who's ready for a cast to be off?!). It's plain and it's nothing fancy or crazy, but it was free. Guys...free is important. I might argue, that depending on your financial situation, free is the most important.
Here's the bottom line: we all have dreams to make our house prettier or trendier or more functional, and those days will come. It's not a rush. Nothing is a rush, and it's dumb to press ahead with all your plans thinking they're urgent when you're really just putting yourself in a financial place you can't afford to be. Some of the plans we have for our house are going to be super expensive and won't happen for years, when we know we can. And that's what makes a day of little updates and tweaks that all cost (basically) nothing so much better. Because those free changes can still make a huge impact on your house, and that's a big deal!
(This last one is for me, because I have to continue to tell myself this): no one is going into your house and saying "geez, what a dump. She really needs a couple more baskets and throw pillows and then it would look great." No one is saying that about your house, and no one is saying it about mine. So stop putting that burden of having to please other people on yourself when it doesn't exist to begin with. And besides, your house is for you and the people you share it with, not anyone else. If someone does walk into your house and say those things, they don't have to live there anyway.
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