"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."
-- Maya Angelou
-- Maya Angelou
The concept of home has been a tough one for me. It's been decades since I felt at home with family. Even before then, home was never a haven of security and love. At 17, I dove happily into a steady stream of roommate situations; as of today, I've shared 11 addresses with 40 gals in 12 years. Oh, and there are a few brief stints with relatives scattered in there, too. While the majority of those situations were happy - and even when not happy per se, they certainly weren't awful - in no situation was the space truly my own.
In a mere 11 days, that's all going to change.
As of August 25th, I will be a resident of Orem, Utah, renting a lovely two-bedroom condo a mere five minutes away from my office. To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement!!! Creating a beautiful home for myself has been the best thing possible after the heartache and struggle of the last year. I am beyond ready to have that tangible renewal and clean slate. New address, new ward, new memories, new possibilities...
...and new stuff. I don't own a single piece of living room furniture!!! It's been a ridiculously fun project to design my living space from scratch. Last night I bought my lovely couch:
and today I'll head to the condo at lunch to measure rooms. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks, painting and packing and moving. My dear friend Lynsie, who is a wonderful interior designer, is coming over Saturday to help me with furniture placement, paint color, etc. I'd share a picture of what the place looks like now... but the paint color is awful, and a photo of the empty space won't do it justice. It'll need my TLC in the next few weeks to get it spiffed up for the move, but it's worth it. My landlord is awesome, and he's letting me do basically whatever I want with the space. I've never been so excited to deep-clean and paint in my life!!!
As for furnishings, I'm going to take my time and make it a long-range project, collecting piece by piece. I'm planning to do a lot of garage sale-ing and estate shopping, finding classic pieces with potential that I can upcycle and refresh into something fabulous. (Hooray for Pinterest and my soon-to-be craft room, right?)
I'll have to do a post after things are done, but for now, here's a sneak peek at some of the elements that will go into my new home sweet home:
And, last but not least...
The vintage typewriter from eBay that's my favorite purchase of the year! (I know it photographs blue, but the actual color is more green, like this shade.)
As for the rest... you'll just have to wait and see!
