When I look back on these photos, I'm pretty proud of us for making our OK house work for half a year. It was old and pretty yucky and tight on space. Not to mention we shared it with a colony of wolf spiders and various other creepy crawlies. We had to do what we could with our budget and the short time frame, plus it was a bit of a challenge to find a decent rental house that was dog friendly. Taking a glimpse back to last year also makes me really thankful for the clean, new-ish, spacious home we have now. We're lucky duckies, and we're really enjoying making this space ours. It's nice to know we'll be here for a while and can settle in.
These photos are from the back half of our OK house which included the hallway, bedrooms, and bathrooms. I shared the kitchen, dining area, and living room in a previous post.
Our guest bedroom was nothing to write home about, but it did the job - we were lucky to have both our parents come visit a couple times each. I chose to make this extra bedroom a guest room instead of Liesl's nursery to ensure our families didn't have to stay in a hotel when they came out west, and because, honestly, I was still more than happy to keep L in our room. : ) The gun rack pictured was made by the Mister while we were in OK, and it ended up in the guest room due to the fact that he didn't have an office/man cave in which to display it.
The guest room was the dogs' domain during the day when I was home alone with L and couldn't wrangle everyone by myself (they didn't love being quarantined, but they were happy to have a great view out the front window from the bed), so that's the reason for the baby gate. These ceramic tiles ended up being unbelievably slippery when wet, hence the random assortment of every rug we owned in the hallway. I ended up kind of loving the patterns together, though, and the rugs made traversing to the bedroom after bath time much safer.
The house had two bathrooms, a full bath off the hall and a half bath off our room. We would have been fine with just the full - it's the only one we really ever used since it had the shower and tons of counter space. As you can see from the photo above, one pro about this house was that it had TONS of natural light. I am a sun junky, and having all those happy rays streaming in was good for my soul. Luckily, our new house is the same way; it may be even brighter during the day (we are in the desert after all).
I went minimal with our master bedroom, other than Liesl's little nursery corner. Like I said, that natural light spoke for itself and I mainly just wanted to highlight the big window. We bought curtain rods and curtains for our room but never got around to hanging them before it was time to move (oh, military life!). The Mister made our platform bed at my request (and the fancy, schmancy dog bed, too!).
I was itching to do a tiny bit of a nursery in OK since there was no reason to have one in NC (we moved for the first time when Liesl was still tiny and sleeping in a bassinet by our bed). This space was full of precious items, including the canvas above that my sweet and talented cousin, Molly, painted. I hand made the bunting for our wedding reception and the bear print depicts Liesl Bird's favorite stuffed animal at the time (that we lost in the park, sadly - if you have a Target hook-up and know how to buy discontinued items on the black market, let me know). I liked the coziness of this space, but I love Liesl's new nursery where everything is a little more spread out since she has a room all to herself now. Can't wait to show you!
I custom ordered this print featuring the first two lines of my most favorite hymn to hang over the crib. It's one of the dearest things to me in her current room, too! It brings me a lot of joy to see our little one sleeping under these words.
This frame was on the wall in our master bedroom and it's become a treasure to me. The first photo is from the night we got engaged, the second is from our wedding (obviously), and the third is from when we were moving out of our first home in NC with baby Liesl in tow. When we arrived at our new home in TX, I removed the engagement photo and added a photo of us in front of our OK house that was taken on the day we moved out (and scooched the other two photos over to make it chronological). I plan to keep this up with each move - but I may have to buy some more frames because I kind of like the idea of having a photo of our little family in front of each house on display... both because it's fun to see the different houses we've made homes and because I love to see the snapshot of our family at that moment in time.
All in all, even though I didn't LOVE our house in OK, I do love the memories we made there. It was our home for a lot of Liesl's life so far. I think we made the best of it, and I'd choose that house again (minus the spiders) if given the option. I think Hank and Luellen really miss it - they had a big backyard full of lots of wildlife. Now they have a teensy sandy lot with a pitiful patch of grass. Poor pups!
I'm glad I finally got around to sharing this post. Now I can show you some photos of our new house (which I really, really love!)... If I ever get around to taking them that is. : )
