welcome to main street

Welcome to Main Street.
Really, we live on Main Street.
In a house that's older than my oldest grandma.

Meet my family:
1.) on a day last year with good clouds I gave them 5 minutes notice for family pictures happening right then so they better change quick. No one even had time to complain and that was the whole idea
2.) this Halloween next to the UK phone booth which for some reason lives in Wyoming
3.) at a favorite family vacation spot: Jackson Hole, WY during the Saturday farmer's market
4.) on the tram to Disneyland. happy happy.

I am the picture taker of the group.
Let's begin.

Our house was built before family rooms, tv rooms, game rooms and dens were really a thing.
The front door opens to a great big enormous room where we do all of those things.
But I don't really know what you do in a den because my grandpa had one but it was just a good place to go for hide-and-go seek. We do that too. Behind the couch is a great spot.

I love quilts. I love pretty grandmotherly blankets. I have a rotating pile from flea markets (found on very lucky days), presents and ones I've made.

We are holiday decorating kind of people. All of them. And if I've neglected some poor Memorial Day or president's birthday or dia de los Muertos then you can bet my daughter is going to whip something up and hang it on the fireplace and suggest we go out for ice cream.

The clothespin banner here was created because waiting until October 3rd to decorate for Halloween was just not cutting it. She took matters into her own hands.

I'm good with all the decorating and redecorating because I want playdates to feel like parties. I want dinner to feel like a party. I want to be able to just add balloons and have it look like a completely wonderful party.

Really I think there is just always something to celebrate and I don't mean Abraham Lincoln, though he's pretty great too. 

We really just enjoy being 'togedder' and our home is the perfect place to do that. If we're not on the tram to Disneyland that day. That works too.

I love having things in our home that make people smile. A row of green lockers will do just that. And they're rather handy for storing coats and bags. Whaddaya know.

This is where we eat. The white metal star was a funny find that I'll explain when we get to Max's room. It is lit by a repurposed tangled ball of Christmas lights.

I am one of those people that takes a lot of pictures and makes a lot of scrapbooks. They live around the house so we can remember our great times together.

Our house has bathrooms. And they are very much old lady bathrooms with old lady tile.

Back by the front door is the staircase. When the door opens it conceals the stairs a bit so people often don't realize we have a second story. All three bedrooms are up there. The main floor also has two bedrooms which at no point in the past month were even close to being fit to be photographed. No amount of sliding clutter around would have helped. We use them as an art & craft room and a playroom. They are more fun to be in than to look at anyway. Perhaps I'll share them in their messy glory on my own blog soon.

Upstairs.
Little shelves of sentimental items. Pictures of grandparents. Our wedding. Special gifts from my mom. Art from Lily's baby nursery. Mother's Day gifts from my kids. Pottery from my sister.
Also a robot costume of course.

We have a bedroom. 

Record player music is the best kind of music for folding laundry.

When we moved in the low ceilings and stairway turning a corner prevented some furniture from making it up the stairs. Our queen size bed would not fit. Not even the box spring. We slept on a mattress on the floor until Ikea saved the day with an unassembled bed frame and mattress that comes in this huge unbelievably heavy roll wrapped in plastic.

The great-grandmas that used to live in this house must have had tiny beds.

Most of the house shows 'us'. We are not very serious, usually happy and silly, up for a messy project or a living room dance party, relaxed and pretty laid back.

Lily's room.
Lily's room is even more of just 'her'.
Butterflies, fairies, unicorns, flowers and pink.

The Minnie Mouse pillow was made from a t-shirt she had as a tiny cute one-year-old. I love it.

Bedtime story reading moms will probably be able to pick out at least 12 books from the shelf based on their blurred spine designs alone.

While thinking about this lovely blog of Heather's and what I think makes my home lovely...I stopped at this picture of homemade fairy houses and a pink princess castle.

I want my house to make my family happy.

I want my home to be a place where fairies, oompa loompas, tiny plastic Indians in cupboards, Peter Pan, Junie B. and Anne with an e would all be welcome. I need their help to make my children's childhood magical while I have them all little and wonderful.

Okay, now want to know about the big metal star and the big red metal M?

Well you see, once the store in our town that starts with a W, has a star, an M, and more letters that spell out ART in our art room window needed to be remodeled. And once my earth-friendly husband happened to be taking a load of cardboard and cans to the recycling center. And that dear husband, knowing of his wife's love for cool old stuff inquired about the pile of metal letters and then brought home the greatest decorating gift yet. Our old windows are basically two sets of windows so there is a perfectly sized gap in between for displaying a giant red M if your name is Max and your favorite color of all time is red.

Max is named partly after his sister's love of Max and Rubyyyy and partly after the King of the Wild Things. Both characters have a spot in his room. Along with his jet pack and soccer trophy and dino baby Rex.

  

Thank you Heather dear for the bed-making inspiration. Reflecting on our rooms brought me such a thankful lucky feeling for what I've got and who I've got it with.