I never got around to posting some pictures of my new place, but here they are. It’s a duplex, and we love the location of it (within walking distance to the beach, grocery shopping, the library, restaurants, a quaint little main street, parks, and even a movie theater!) We also love the renovations they did before we moved in, like new appliances and a brand new kitchen and bathroom, but our favorite is the washer and dryer. It took me awhile to get used to the fact that I could now start and complete a load whenever I wanted.
Our living room
I really like our living room. It’s not massive, and could certainly use some design intervention, but our budget and lifestyle these days beg for simplicity and clean, clear spaces, so that’s what we try to aim for. It has a great window behind the couch that Eli and Dylan love to look out during the day, like they are in this shot below.
Living Room Window
Master Bedroom
This probably is the smallest master bedroom we’ve ever had, and we knew it would be this way when we looked at our place. In fact, both bedrooms are kind of on the small side. But I realized when we lived in our previous place that at least for now, neither we nor our kids really spend that much time in our bedrooms except to sleep. The decor in our bedroom is also pretty simple – I want to work on it at some point, but for now, the most I do for “looks” is to keep it as uncluttered as possible and to make the bed every day.
The kitchen
No, it does not look this clean all the time. In fact, most of the time it has dishes either drying or waiting to be washed, because as you can see, there is not a dishwasher (but I’m okay with that – really, where would they put one anyway?).
The dining area
This is part of the same room the kitchen is in. See those adorable begonias? Well, they’re gone now – I couldn’t keep them alive. Now a basil plant occupies the sunny part of that window sill.
This picture above is to the right of the kitchen table.
The hallway from the living room to the kitchen
Even the square footage-wise this place is a little bigger than our previous one, it feels a lot bigger, largely I think because of this hallway and the layout. The living room is at the front of the house, and on the way to the kitchen are the bathroom and one bedroom and a closet, and then beyond the kitchen is the laundry area, then another bedroom. It gives us lots of space for getting our wiggles out :).
The bathroom
This bathroom is larger than our previous one, and while it’s not a deal breaker for me, I can say that I’ve really appreciated the bit of extra space I have, especially now that my 2 1/2 year old loves to follow me EVERYWHERE.
The boys' room
We’ve always been so thankful that God has provided us with everything we’ve needed, especially when it comes to furniture. It doesn’t all match, but everything but the little children’s table and the play rug and a few plastic storage bins was given to us by generous and thoughtful friends and family. I have some ideas of things I want to do to personalize the little table and chairs, but I’ll save that for another post :).
Your new place is lovely! My favorite room is the living room with the beautiful built-in bookcase. Wow – how wonderful to have so much space for books.
Love your kitchen too.
You mentioned furniture that doesn’t match – we have always had that in our home and to us it feels cozy and “like home”.
Thank you for sharing your beautiful new place with us. :)
Susan – actually, the bookcases are not built in, but they are one of the pieces in our home that we get the most comments on. When we first got married, my husband, who has a M-Div from seminary, had a ton of books in his room propped up on boards and cinderblocks. I’m not against books, but I wanted to do something that unified the look more, so we got 5 bookcases off of Craigslist for $80 that were a dingy brown laminate and painted them white. We’ve really gotten a lot of use out of them, and love the look too :).