House-o-Joe's

Here is our "new" home....actually it is the 20+ year old house that my dad built for his parents in 1983. It is right next door to the house I grew up in, so I really moved "back home"! This first view is the kitchen. The floor was updated as well as the sink (I don't think that is visible in this photo, but it is great! Thanks Mom!) and just freshened up with a nice coat of paint. We left some of Nan's things here and there...the little shelf by the back door for one.
There is a great plate rail above the cabinets that Joe promptly filled up with all our doo-da's. Some are antiques some are just things that tickled our fancy. Notice the Hello Kitty lunch box? The block letters below it originally spelled C-O-U-N-T-R-Y or W-E-L-C-O-M-E and Uncle Joe, being the creative dood he is, rearranged it to spell M-E-O-W. :o) I thought it was funny!
Here is the girls bathroom. We thought coming here they would be so excited to have their own bathroom. The shower has a seat in it and the spiffy new shower curtain is just what they like. OH BUT NO!!! They want in the big middle of mine and Joe's bathroom!! We have the bathtub/shower and they LOOOOOOVE to take baths. Oh well, it saves me from having to clean TWO bathrooms. So, I guess this is really Charlie the Cat's bathroom.
This room is the brain child of me and my parents. They are both aware that I struggle with a Laundry Monster on a daily basis so we re-thunk the layout of this room, took out a freezer and a cabinet and added a laundry folding station! It has a large table for folding, shelves underneath to hold 4 small laundry baskets for sorting clean/folded laundry and 3 large laundry hampers for sorting dirty laundry underneath the table. Dad also added a sturdy pole for hanging laundry. That is my favorite. This has saved a huge mess in our living room and bedrooms. I LOVE THIS ROOM!!! (and it smells good!)

Here is our bed room. As you can see, it is small, but CLEAN. Bedzilla has taken up most of the room. I love our King sized bed and hated the thought of giving it up, so we didn't. The bedspread is Mom's deal-of-the-day that she found at a yard sale just up the road in the new housing addition. If the owner's husband was telling the truth, it is a $800+ set and we got the whole ensemble: comforter, bedskirt, pillows, shams (that I dont' have pillows for) and 2 curtains, all for $100! I caught them at the perfect moment: CLOSING TIME! Despite our best efforts to enjoy this comforter, we still sleep with our old one (It is just so comfy!) and just put this one out for show.

One thing that you cannot see in this picture is the great bookshelf Dad put in a dead spot on the wall just around the corner to the right. He raised it off the ground so there is storage down there for our one suitcase and 5 shelves to hold all our books/magazines etc. He painted it coffee-bean brown for us, the color we actually wanted on the walls but decided against in such a small space.

My parents worked so hard on this house for us all summer and words cannot ever express my gratitude for their tireless work for me and my family. I choke up with emotion every time I try to speak my gratitude to them.

Nan has been gone for almost a year now, hard to believe. I know she (and Pap) would be so very very glad that we are living in her house. She would be glad that Joe is working in her yard, making a garden. She would be glad that Cassi has the Doll Room and kept her shelf for dolls, and even rescued a baby doll from a garage sale just last week. She would be glad that Carly is using her bedroom suite that she saved for us all these years. She would be glad that her house is filled with the sounds of little girls laughing, crying, singing and fussing. She would be especially glad to hear the music that comes from within these walls from Joe & Cassi. She would be glad to see our daughters making friends all through the neighborhood, playing outside and riding their bikes. She would be proud of me for helping to make this house into a home.

More pictures will follow , so please stay tuned!!