How to Have a Pretty Sofa While Also Having Dogs, Cats, and Kids

Thanks to Havertys for sponsoring this post! For a long time, we’ve regarded sofas as more or less disposable. It seemed impossible to keep them in decent shape for any length of time, between kids spilling stuff, cats scratching, and dogs….smelling like dogs–so we spent many years picking up super cheap sofas on Craigslist or at thrift stores and then … Continue reading

Cheap Rugs and Wallpaper Musings

I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but back at our old house, we had the most beautiful rug in all the world in our living room. At least that’s how I remember it. It was a big old oriental rug, mostly red, worn down just perfectly. It made the room feel so cozy, and it made my feet happy, … Continue reading

The House with TWO Christmas Trees

I was planning to call this post, “A Tale of Two Christmas Trees,” but then Amber over at Wills Casa just wrote a post called “A Tale of Two Carraras,” so I thought I’d better go in a different direction. I ended up with a much more obscure literary reference. Anyone read The House Without a Christmas Tree? (that’s an affiliate link, … Continue reading

The Big House List, Part 1: Downstairs

Aww….summer. If you are us, summer means a couple of months of two adults being home. Summer is the best part of Dave’s job. We love summer. Except that it’s really, really hot. But you can’t have everything. Summer is, theoretically, a good time to knock out projects. Last summer, Dave built a fence. We thought that maybe Dave should … Continue reading

Looking forward: I want this wallpaper!

I have a lot of nursery things that I’m almost ready to post about. Maybe, if someone hadn’t put his Math Olympiad books right on top of my special scissors and double sided tape and ribbon in the buffet, so that I had to spend forever looking for them, I would even be ready for one of those posts right now. But no. … Continue reading

House Tour: Den

Continuing on our glacially paced house tour, we arrive at the den. Here it is before we moved in: It looks bigger in the picture than it really is, I do believe. Tricky lenses. And it’s a tricky room, too….the trickiest in the house, I think. I cannot figure out what to do with it. It feels very dark, even … Continue reading

Ikea Ribba Picture ledge hanging: proving we can accomplish things on weekdays, too

Yesterday I kept thinking about doing a photo tour of some of the little projects that we really need to get knocked out/finished. But I couldn’t even work up the motivation to post about how hard it is to work up the motivation to do these small things. So I was surprised to find us, last night just before bed, … Continue reading