A mini-tour of our home

Since my intent is to actually print and bind this blog into a book to make up for my lack of putting photos into actual albums, I thought I would be a little self-indulgent and put some pictures of our home on here, so that years from now we can remember our first house we ever bought. I will say that the whole house-buying experience is a little daunting at first, but now that we've been through it - the benefits far outweigh all of our home-buying fears. So if you have no desire to see pictures of our house or read ramblings of the things I love about our house, then check back tomorrow for some kid pictures!
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So, here it is...our 1549 square foot 3 bedroom/2bath home. We bought our house from a really nice young couple that had only lived in it for about a year. They made alot of great decisions when having the home built - from the lightfixtures to the placement of the master bedroom walk-in closet. I'm so glad that the previous owners had such great communication with the builders.
We've loved entertaining in our backyard. The raised planters have been awesome. The one closest to the swingset has rhubarb growing in it. The rhurbarb is a hearty plant and keeps coming back. The other planter had some strawberries planted in it, but I did not do a very good job protecting the budding berries from the birds. Behind the fence are blue-berry bushes. On the left hand side of our house, behind the oil container are two salmonberry bushes. Yummy. I love teaching the kids about growing our own food. I intend to have a garden at our next house.

Outside of the fence is the lily pond. In the summertime it is beautiful and we have quite a few ducks. Keith worked really hard building up a rock walkway between the fence and the pond's edge so that the kids could go back there (supervised, of course) to feed the ducks, and skip rocks. In the wintertime, we run around on the ice. One of our neighbors often plows a bit of the pond right after the snow falls, and that spot is good for ice skating.

I love our large windows in the living room. I have great memories of resting on the couch when Daniel was a newborn and looking out at the stars through the high arched window.

I love our kitchen. I will be the first to admit that I would have never thought I'd like BLACK appliances, since I am more of a neutral-colored girl, and the black just seemed so modern to me. But I love them! They clean up so easily! I know now that if I ever have a flat-top stove again, it will have to be black. A few swipes with the special cleaner and it still looks new.

This is our first home to have a pantry. And not just one, but two pantries. We uses the larger one for food storage, and the smaller one beside the fridge to keep our pots/pans and small appliances in. I can't think of what we did before we had a pantry.

I love the lightfixture over the dining room table. Our dining room table formerly belonged to Beth and Zach. I find it kindof ironic because they have so much of our baby stuff, when I go over there I'm always thinking to myself, "hey, I remember that shirt or that toy!", I wonder if they feel the same way when they are at our house and see their table!

(Pardon the whiteboard and bulliten board - part of our homeschool stuff that I forgot to take down before taking house pictures - the people on HGTV would whip me with a wet noodle if they knew how bad I am at "staging" a house to sell, after all, we do have to live here while it's on the market!)

The view from our dining room window. I love, love, love opening this window and the kitchen window over the sink when I am cooking in the summertime. Ahhhh...the breeze is fantastic!

Our master bathroom is fabulous. I love the shower-for-two. I have to admit that I love my husband very much, but showertime is my time, so it's not very often that I'm open for visitors when I am in the shower. However, the bench in there was a lifesaver when I was pregnant and fresh from having a C-section. The shower-for-two has also been awesome with helping teach the kids how to shower because there is enough room for them to move around and not be scared.

Our jetted garden tub is one of my favorite parts of the house. Before we had kids, when Keith was stationed on a ship, Friday nights were my nights to take a nice warm bath and just relax away the stress of the week. Since we've moved into this house, I've been trying to get back into that routine - funny how I find it so hard to take time to relax now that I have kids, when I need to relax the most for my mental health! This tub was also amazing for back aches and Braxton-Hicks contractions and other discomforts of late pregnancy. Then after Daniel was born, nothing soothes a grumpy baby like a nice warm bath with mom. And nothing relaxes a tired mom of a newborn, like nursing a baby in a nice warm tub.