The Sort Of Entry

Decorating

Like most people, there are things I love about my house and things I don’t love about my house.  I love the open floor plan which allows a lot of people to mingle and gather without it feeling overwhelming.  I love the way it flows.

I don’t love the fact that almost the entire main floor can be seen from the front door.

Have you ever noticed how frequently foyers are featured in design magazines, usually with some amazing statement piece that sets the tone for the house?  Often these entries are designed to shield the rest of the house from view.  When we were building our home I knew I would wish I had that kind of entry, but I couldn’t find a way to do it with our floor plan.  The dimensions of our lot gave us little choice about the footprint of the house and we did the best we could.  We ended up with a great house, but no real entry.  There’s somewhere to stand inside the front door, but you can see pretty much everything from that spot.

Which is fine, if it’s all clean.  But more often than not I feel like I’m opening my front door and the shoes, toys, socks and so forth is what sets the tone instead of a console table and an awesome mirror.

Here are some pictures of what you see if you turn your head from side to side upon entering my house:


If you knock on my door and the curtains are open, you can see through the dining room and into our kitchen eating area  (translate:  table must be clean).  When you enter the house, the dining room opens on your left with a clear shot of my kitchen counters  (translate:  counters must be clean also).


If you look straight ahead when you walk through the door, you see this:


To the right is the hallway leading to my studio/guest room with a closet and bathroom on the way.  The closet is currently our game closet which my youngest girls love to open and pull things out of ALL. DAY. LONG.  Getting that hallway clean and keeping the closet door shut is no small feat.

To the left is our family room, and for some reason everyone loves to drop things on the ground in front of this table, or on top of the table.  The table itself is a thrift store find which needs a coat of paint.  I don’t love the bookshelves but they’re sturdy and functional and I want access to some of our books in there.


Lastly, on the right is the living room.   {Happy sigh.}  I love my living room.  I can get it looking right in less than 2 minutes.   It’s the one view I have going for me (most of the time) when that knock is heard.


So there you have it.  In about three quarters of a second you can sweep your gaze across the areas of my home that get messy faster and more often than any others.  When everything is clean, I love that.  When it’s not, I really wish I had some focal point I could draw attention to instead of the clutter on the floor.

I’ve been thinking about that.  A focal point.  Is there something I could do to catch and hold the eye nearer the door?  Between the hallway and the living room sit the stairs.  All too often the stairs hold 2-3 small piles of various things that belong upstairs.  All too often I’m the culprit, placing it there while I tidy up so I can save time and take one big trip upstairs.  A few years ago my sister made me this awesome “H.”  I’ve had it in several places since then:  on my mantel, leaning against the fireplace, on a wall in the family room.  I made some changes to the family room so the H was without a home for a while.

Until now.


I hung it on the stairway wall, and I think I like it there.   I like the drama of the strong lines, and I like having something to notice.  From the front door it looks like this:


While I’d like to say that it makes the entry a little more interesting and attractive,  it surely makes me more motivated to keep the stairway clean.  It’s hard for me to justify a temporary pile on the stairs when in my brain the presence of the H means that it’s an area worth maintaining well.

I’m trying something on the edge of the dining room as well, with a similar goal in mind.


This little red bench is having an audition on the edge of the room near the front door.  I like it’s size but I’m not sure about introducing red in the dining room and I really love the red on this bench.  I saw a cabinet a while ago at an outlet store that I’ve been dreaming of ever since which would be a perfect statement and storage piece but that’s just an idle dream.   So the question is:  bench or no bench?  And do you think the H is an improvement?

Every day one of my housekeeping goals is to have the main floor tidy and clean.  With little ones home all day this usually proves to be a challenge, but it’s a good challenge.  We have days when other things take priority, and when that happens I’ve learned to shrug and open the door with a smile.

Tell me, do you have a formal entryway?  If not, what do you do to keep “the view” under control should someone knock?

Hopeful Homemaker

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Turquoise Star quilt top

Quilting and Sewing



My little squares of cheery fabric have become a finished quilt top.  I used the instructions found at Pins and Bobbins for the Made in Cherry Quilt Along .    I made the smaller 60 inch size, which actually made this a super fast project.  Once I got all the squares lined up on the bed, I broke it into small sections and was able to work at it in 10-15 minute segments until I had it all pieced together.


For this project I cut into a small stack of prints from the Tweet collection by Timeless Treasures.  (You can find some of them here .)  The turquoise solid I had in my drawer just happened to match and I thought it was good for me to use a solid other than white for a change.    I’m proud of myself for cutting into relatively new fabric instead of fretting about having the perfect project for it.


This is the fourth project I’ve finished in 2012 that is still waiting to be quilted and finished.  I did baste the Little Man quilt top and made a couple of passes for quilting, but am unhappy with it and need to pull it out and start again.  Ugh!  I wonder if I’ll get it done in time for the baby to still use it!  (I know, I know… it would certainly get done if I worked on nothing else in those stolen 10 minutes each day.)

Sooo, I’m off to clean bathrooms so I can perhaps find a few minutes to spend with my seam ripper later tonight.

Have a great day!
Jennifer

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The Good Enough Party

Entertaining, Parties



Last week I shared photos of my girls prepping for a last-minute birthday party for a friend.  The joy we all found in scurrying around to prepare was increased when our friends arrived.  It was a perfect evening.


And yet, very little about it was technically perfect.  I didn’t have any paper cups or plastic forks.  I went through several recipes before I found one I had all the ingredients for.  The house was barely tidy.  What was perfect about the evening was our willingness to do our best before the party and when the party started, we all wholeheartedly gave ourselves to enjoying it.


I remembered this post and realized that I’ve learned a lot in the past 18 months.  Many lessons have been imposed upon me by the realities of caring for eight children, but I’m so thankful I’ve learned to relax and enjoy my guests, refrain from apologizing, smile and visit and focus on making people feel good about themselves.


Gratefully, my lavender shortbread cookies and this citrus lemon cake with lavender frosting carried the day in addition to the chocolate cupcakes and cake our guests brought with them.  Everything looked and tasted delicious.


The very best part of it was our family’s common goal of making my friend’s birthday special.  It wouldn’t have been a common goal if I’d been more worried about how things looked than I was about involving my family in preparation.  Because I let them do the decorating, they were able to serve and to anticipate joy as much as I was.  Sharing the creative process without specific expectations or judgment allowed my children to claim my goal as theirs.  This goal was a blessing to her children as well, who felt good about being part of something special for their mom’s birthday.  We had two families who were content to relax, laugh, talk, give praise, and enjoy being together.  Ten minutes before our friends arrived I had a list of 15 things in my mind that I wished I could still pull off, but when we said good-bye I couldn’t remember any of them.   I felt so full and happy I wouldn’t have changed a thing.  We had done enough to let them know they’re important to us, and then we spent time enjoying their friendship.


I don’t mean to go on and on about it.  It really was a very simple gathering.  I guess I think that too often we get big grand pictures in our heads about what a party looks like.  The parties we see in magazines and on pinterest aren’t the kind of party that usually happen at my house.  Those pictures are inspiring in their beauty and it’s fun to glean ideas from them, but they can distract us from the real purpose of a party.  I always try to do at least one special thing to make it look nice (like the mini cake on a piece of china sitting atop a cake stand in the first picture), but I never manage to get everything perfect.  I don’t think we have to.  I think we need to be open, real, relaxed and more concerned about enjoying our guests than we are about what they think of our event.


If you’ve got someone you’ve been meaning to invite over but haven’t yet because you can’t seem to get everything to work out for a Perfect Party, try a Good Enough Party.  Be yourself, make your signature dessert, work as hard as you can for a little while and then take a deep breath and  smile.  Your Good Enough Party just might become a Perfect Party.  Ours did.


Our evening ended with the girls getting wagon rides from my husband while the older children spread streamers all over each other and my yard.  While they played my friend and I talked about real life as we took down streamers together.


And then the birthday girl got a little surprise from her son.


Like I said, a Good Enough, Perfect Party.

Hopeful Homemaker

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