We have been in Lucky for nearly eight months now! It has been amazing. The functionality and practicality of this house is wonderful.
Remember back here, when I said I was working on before and after updates? Yeah, I'm still working on that. I am hovering in the last remaining days of summer craziness, but I can smell the slow down coming. Autumn skies and temperatures are popping in to remind me that summer will soon slip away.
The Hubs has been wanting to do an open house for quite sometime. Our way of saying thank you to all those who helped make this home a possibility, and also for a chance to invite over all the friends and family that have been asking what are you guys up to in that house?!
The thing is, I keep dragging my feet. I always tell people I have an open door policy, if they can step over the toys, they are welcome anytime to come see us or the house! And I truly mean it.
I desperately want to throw open my doors and say 'welcome to our home', but I find myself apologizing, or rattling off the list of to-do's to visitors to make sure they know that I don't plan on living half finished like this forever.
Then I read this, "America spends more on garbage bags than 90% of the world's 210 countries do on everything." ~ Dr. Wess Stafford in Too Small to Ignore, via the Nester.
That is startling and really puts things into perspective.
It really makes me think about what I'm wasting and what I'm complaining about. Who cares that my dining room walls still need a finishing coat of paint? Who cares that we still have bare bulbs hanging in some of the rooms? Who cares that we don't have a couch in our living room or a flat screen tv, or the gallery wall is half finished?
I care. But I am trying really hard not too. There are so many hurting people in the world. There are too many people not just wanting a better life, but desperately needing it. There are people in the world who would give anything to have the stuff we're throwing in our zillion trash bags a year. They would trade me my first world problems any day.
I need to focus less appearances, and focus on what really matters. The people around me. My neighbors and friends. They aren't waiting for a perfect home for an invitation. They just want a chance to spend time together. They want to see my family, and my home, not some page out of a magazine.
I am working on pushing aside my fears of looking lazy or unfinished. I am learning to let go of my insecurities and acknowledging that all things take time.
One of the reasons I wanted this house now, was so we could spend the rest of our lives here growing and changing and making memories here. From the beginning I have been the proponent of taking our time, saving our money and slowly making it our dream home.
And to be honest, it already is. It is a dream that we are even here. I remember the tears and the fights and the days when I was convinced we would never leave the trailer house.
Those days are over. We are here. And everything else will take time. This is real life. I'm learning to find beauty in the things I would normally overlook.
(That is at my barn. I haven't let the house get quite that bad yet!)
Our house will never be 'finished'. There will always be another project, another decorating idea.
But our home is now.
Our home is in the walls that need another coat of paint, but gets pushed aside because my girls need help painting pictures. Our home is in the love seat that is too small but forces us to snuggle when we sometimes don't want to! Our home is a kitchen without back splash tiles because baking pumpkin muffins for the baby bump took precedent.
Bike rides on beautiful days with my girls, become priorities to mowing the lawn.
I am not going to pretend that the unfinished projects and decorating dilemmas will no longer bother me, they will. But I am going to put them into perspective and remember that they do not define who I am.
A messy house does not make me a messy person, an unfinished project does not make me lazy. It is just the stage of my life I am in right now.
I am going to shake off the self doubt and schedule an open house. I will complete the projects I can, and leave the rest to be done in there own time.
Autumn is coming and it deserves a party! Official date coming soon!
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