Mr. Ten Months

The Picture Window

Before I became a mother, I worked full-time as a lawyer.  A litigator.  Going to court and taking depositions involves a certain amount of stress, although for the record being a mother is by far the more difficult job.  During my time litigating, I kept a picture in my desk drawer that I had torn from the pages of Country Living magazine.  It is the picture of the kitchen window above.  When I was particularly stressed, I would open my drawer and look at that picture and it would calm me.  I could imagine standing in front of that sink, barefoot in the summertime, watching out the window while the children I longed for ran and played in the grass.  It was a dream place for me and God knew.  He knew every detail.

I don't remember looking at my "picture window" the last year I worked at my firm.  That was the year I was pregnant with Wynn.  There isn't anything quite like feeling your baby stretch and hiccup inside of you to keep you grounded and focused on the important things.  I guess you could say that my picture window came to dwell inside of me and I forgot all about the glossy dog-eared picture I'd torn from the magazine.

After Wynn was born and we had moved into our rental house, I spent a Sunday afternoon cleaning out my office at the law firm.  I stumbled on "the picture window" at the bottom of a drawer.  My breath caught in the back of my throat.  Apparently sometime in the prior year I had forgotten the specifics of the architecture of that window. 

But our God never forgets the details.

He goes ahead of us, He fights for us, and He prepares a place for us. (Deuteronemy 1:30; Matthew 28:1-8).

That Sunday afternoon in my old office, I held a ragged magazine page that had been forgotten at the bottom of a drawer and looked right at the very kitchen that God had led our family to when He called us out of our New Old House and toward the Harvest. 

It is a pretty exact replica of the kitchen in our rental house.

You can see for yourself. 

I can't tell you how many times I questioned our decision to sell our house and move and whether I had really heard God's whisper and interpreted it correctly. Was I lost? Was I where I was supposed to be? Were we following the Lord or had we misread the map entirely? Finding that magazine page that Sunday afternoon was a true God-Stop moment in my life. He spoke to me and I knew I was in the right place. I knew He was right beside me. He had gone ahead and prepared my place.

What can I even say about the fact that I am holding my precious baby, standing in front of that kitchen window?

"What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love Him- these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:9.

I hadn't planned to blog about the picture window.  It seemed too personal and hard to believe and for some reason I was hesitant.  Then last night I was looking through some images online, trying to find motivation to write something and I came across the same Country Living photo.  I think God was telling me to sing of his faithfulness from the rooftops.

Take heart.  He is ahead of you at this very moment, preparing a place for you.  Be faithful when you hear him whisper your name and call you forth. 

Trust me, you do not want to miss it. 

Simple Ways to add Charm to your Home

When Mr. Marvelous and I were first married we had a short-term lease on an apartment while we started house hunting. We found and fell in love with this darling little cape code style house in a historic district that was built about 1930. I can still remember how excited we were when we wrote our offer on that house! Looking back, hindsight really is 20/20, because as charming as the house was, it was also rather . . . um . . . dilapidated. Probably explaining why the house was listed at less than $100,000 and why those charming hardwood floors were sort of sloped from room to room. Regardless, it was true love-I loved that house! Then came the dreaded house inspection and the inspector's repeated use of the terms "not to code," "fire hazard," and oh ya, "money pit." In fact, at one point, I think we heard, "run and don't look back."

Needless to say, we didn't close on the house and withdrew our offer. As a completely reactionary measure that I regretted in years to follow, we did a 180 and bought a brand new track home in a neighborhood that can best be described as a sea of beige with lots the size of shoe boxes. I worked as hard as I could to add some character to that plain jane house. The biggest transformation was in the kitchen. I painted the kitchen cabinets myself-it was a tremendous amount of work, but worth every bit of it in the end. We also added glass inserts to the cabinet doors, which cost less than $100 since we were able to borrow a saw from a friend.

New hardware and a kitchen island from Martha Stewart's Kmart line completed the look.

As for the rest of the house, we added DIY wainscoting and crown molding.  A small cost, a decent amount of sweat equity and big pay-off.

When we built the New Old House, I tried to incorporate as much old charm as I could in our new build: a wrap-around front porch, hardwood floors, beadboard, farmhouse sink, old fashioned front staircase, lots of pedestal sinks . . . In fact, I drove the builder crazy. It was worth it in the end.

I recently came across this article on simple ways to add charm to any house and knew I had to share it here. The following are ways to add charm to any home, regardless of the age!

1. Add a Picket Fence

2. Add a dutch-door (and enjoy breezes and natural light while you are at it)

3. Dress up your porch



4. Add Beaded Board





You can buy beaded board by the sheet at Lowes and Home Depot and have it cut to size in the store. It's very affordable!

5. Install a Farmhouse Sink

I love, love, love our farmhouse sink! When we were building the house I fell in love with Kohler's Dickinson farmhouse sink but it was way outside our price range. I searched Ebay for months and months until I found one for 10% of the original cost, new in the box! I joked with Mr. Marvelous that I was going to sleep with it at night when it arrived since we had it stored in our garage for several months while the house was built. You can get good deals on farmhouse sinks at Ikea.

6. Embrace Open Shelving

Take the doors off some of your cabinets and show off your pretty dishes or collections.

(update, see how we included open shelving in our current rental house: The Little Kitchen that Could)
7. Plant Window Boxes


We have done window boxes in all of our houses and it really does add instant charm.

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Alright, so now it is your turn! Please leave a comment letting me know how you have added charm to your house. I am always looking for new projects and ideas!

(Reposted from July 2009)

Refine Me.

When my sisters and I were little girls, growing up on the shore of Lake Michigan, we collected beach glass. It was everywhere back then.  As children we spent nearly every day of the summer on the beach and we would carry beach glass home in our pockets and plastic beach pails and clasped tightly in our sand covered hands. We were sleepy and happy and sun-tanned at the end of those long summer days.

We were treasure-keepers. 

Once home, the beach glass became our buried treasure. We hid the blue and green pieces deep in the cool earth within the woods surrounding our house. I am sure that some of it is still there, waiting for future generations of children to discover and claim as treasure again.

Beach glass results when broken pieces of glass bottles are carried out into the deep waters of the lake and tossed and turned and whipped about in the waves, year after year, until the process refines the shards of glass into soft, smooth treasure.  When I was young, this story left me feeling sorry for the pretty pieces of glass that had to tumble through the cold, deep tumultuous water, be broken against rocks and drug across sand, in order to be refined; to become mine.  I would look out across the waves and breathe deep and sigh and wonder. 

Today, as a grown woman, I know that there is nothing that refines like a truly difficult trial. If you feel lost at sea, be comforted, for you are being refined.

The storm will settle.

The waves will calm.

You will be set upon the shore, ever the more beautiful for having endured.

And oh the joy to know that you are worth the trouble.

For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver.

Psalm 66:10

(A post from the archives, originally written April 2009.)

Between the "I" and the "Do"

Eight years ago today, on a cold January evening in a candlelit church, I stood, face beneath a veil, and pledged forever.  His eyes locked with mine and he was all wobbly-kneed and he promised forever in return.

We were positively certain. 

 We said "I do," not really knowing what would be the nit and grit between those words, the hours and days made up of living and Saturday morning pancakes and loss and murmured prayers that would become a bond like cement.  

The baby who would come through the aching and sweat and tears and better it all.  

Today, eight years in, I see only in part. One day we will be one hundred years old, standing wrinkled hand in wrinkled hand, and we will look back and see the whole.  The love story played out in all its chapters.  On that day, God will reach down and gently stroke my hair and ask:

"Do you see Me?  

"Do see you see Me in the details?"

"Right there in the nitty gritty?"  

And again, on that day, I believe we will be positively certain, that I might breathe my answer unto Him:

"I do, Lord"

"I do."