Making a Rental a Home

Nearly two years ago, we signed a lease for our rental house here in Ardmore without ever actually seeing the house.  It is one of those crazy things people have to do when they keep moving all over the country.  As excited as I was to come to Ardmore, I was heartbroken about leaving our house in Kentucky for multiple reasons: we owned that house, it truly felt like a home, and it was the place to which I had brought Shepherd home when he was born.

When we arrived in Ardmore, we were relatively happy with our rental.  It wasn't great.  The carpets were horrible, but we figured it would do for the one year agreed to in our contract and then we would look around.  As soon as the first year ended, we started looking for a new rental.  We looked and looked and looked, and all we found was that the rentals in our price range in Ardmore, OK, are dismal.  All the looking just made us more discontent.  I started missing our little cottage in Kentucky even more, and we never felt settled.  Buying wasn't (and won't be for a while) an option because we, like so many people in America, were severally stung by the housing crash of 2008, as in we lost A LOT of money on our house in KY.  Finally, it hit us that maybe we needed to learn to be content here.  Maybe it was time to make a home out of the house God had put us in.

Since then, we've been slowly changing all the things that made this house feel so cold and utterly un-homey.  We started by painting the walls, and then (with the generous help of BJ's parents) we were able to take out the carpets and have the gorgeous hardwood floors underneath redone.  To celebrate this whole process, I thought I would start a brief series on my blog looking at each room and showing what we've done and what we've yet to do.    First off, Lydia's room.

I have loved setting up Lydia's room over the past few months.  I'm a girly-girl, so making a girly space has been great.  In Lydia's room, we've painted the walls a soft, creamy yellow, and of course, we've taken out the orange-brown carpet. 

Here is a really good shot of the floors:

Also, I sewed the curtains using some beautiful, bright fabric I found at Hobby Lobby.  The tie-backs for the curtains are just ribbon glued around belt loops. 

As far as our to-do list for this room, we have a bookshelf that we are planning to put in after we paint it peach.  The bookshelf will be for toys, books, blankets, and some clothing items. In all of our rooms, we still have to repaint the base boards, but that is waiting until grandparents come to watch the kids while I get down to work. For the most part, though, Lydia's room is done, and I'm so pleased with her little space!

Speaking of Lydia, here is my new favorite picture of Lydia.  Shepherd was sitting at the dining table painting, so she crawled under the table and poked Shepherd in the belly button.  She was pretty proud of herself.  Seriously, can you look at that face without smiling?  I didn't think so.