On my heart.

When Chris and I were dating, we had the most amazing pen-pal kind of courtship.  A full summer of letters {for real letters, not emails, no texts... can you imagine?!}, sweet little packages, and long talks on the telephone.  He would ask me what he could pray about for me {this was a first!} and send me his favorite books on prayer and worship.  He rocked my world in more than one way but he laid the foundation for a relationship that knew where to turn for guidance.

One day I received a card from him in the mail.  He wanted to share with me a verse that had been on his heart.  It read...

    “Enlarge the place of your tent,

    stretch your tent curtains wide,

    do not hold back;

lengthen your cords,

    strengthen your stakes.     

Hmm...And then I moved on.  

Fast forward 5 years and as he proposed to me on top of the Empire State Building, he reminded me that he felt called towards an un-ordinary life.  One full of purpose, surprise.  One in which he was instructed to spread wide his tent.

Hmmmmm... and then we moved on.

Today, another 7 years later {yeah, it took us awhile}, we are on the precipice of a move that might take us a bit closer to both literally and figuratively spreading wide our tent.  By a miracle that neither of us yet fully comprehends, we are placing one foot in front of the other and by faith, lengthening our cords. We are making our way towards realizing a dream of ours with no other explanation than the verse that my husband heard that summer in 2001.  The Lord is mysterious in ways I find harder and harder to comprehend and his blessings are just so abundant I might scream.  My heart overflows with gratitude and awe.  

And that's what's on my heart today. 

Extreme Home Makeover - part II

Oh, you didn't know we were going to re-do our main floor living area?  That makes two of us.  Until I came home to this...

That's 80 years of wallpaper, paint, and a little more wallpaper being scrapped by hand.  Yuck.

But you can't just do one room, so that led to this...

Which then made Chris decide we might as well redo the hardwoods too. 

We did this 3 times... {not by hand, this is just the corner work but it was not fun}

And then we added lighting.  Why no one in 80 years ever thought to add lighting to the living room, I have no idea.

And now we're enjoying this...

{Ingress loves it}

Hey! You know all that stuff we were doing to our house?

Most of it's done!  I will admit to one crying rant in the bathroom, and that's about it.  It was laborious, at times a teeny bit torturous, but it turned out amazing.

One GIANT bummer is that we are so gung-ho about projects that we rarely stop to take pictures before or during.  Blah.  Whatevs.  You'll get the idea...

Remember our the dark, ugly stairs leading to our unfinished basement?

BEFORE:

 AFTER: {including hand prints on the glass and misc toys at top of stairs}

We hated how dark the stairway was and the metal door was pretty battered.  It definitely wasn't a welcoming side entrance.  Chris found this heavy glass door in the DOLLAR BIN {yay!} at The Rebuilding Center and we retrofit it for this doorway.  

So, the basement... remember this?

BEFORE: {sorry for the blurry image... I told you we suck at taking pics}

 AFTER:

Chris worked in a built in bookshelf underneath the stairs to use up the wasted space.  We used 4 old drawers from a dresser we were tossing out to create 2 long drawers at the base.  Can you tell we're all about repurposing/reusing? 

We now have an extra bedroom which has already been put to use.

Extra space for tv watching {and playing circus}.

Play room {Ugh.  I need to get rid of some of this stuff}.

A new laundry room which is never without mountains of clothes.  Sorry.  Real life here.  I should also tell you that one of the things I am most proud of in this room are the washer and dryer.  See, right after I had Beckett, our hand-me-down set went out.  My mom was literally coming over and grabbing clothes to take to her house to wash.  I had a 2 year old and a newborn and NO way to do laundry.  Impossible. Anyway, we found this washer on craigslist for $100 - perfect condition.  But still no dryer.  UNTIL... late one night I randomly found a posting for a FREE {do you hear me singing hallelujah?} dryer.  I sent Chris and Isaac out at 11pm to go pick it up at the end of someone's driveway.  It came with a sample of ranch dressing inside {wha??} but I bleached it out and it runs perfect.  Bargains make me ramble.  I digress...

Last basement detail... We decided to keep the original beams in our basement, which I love.  Someone over the years had painted them white so we thought we'd strip 'em down but then ended up loving the kinda worn look.

None of this, at all, ever in a million years, would have been possible without this guy:

My handsome extraordinary husband.