Real Life At The Castle

Hello sweet friends! Oh how I’ve missed you! How are you? Did you enjoy your holiday season? How is life?

We’ve been busy celebrating the holidays and recovering from all the germs and sicknesses that always seems to happen this time of year. And we’ve been working on home improvement projects, of course! Our little castle is really beginning to look like “us” and it’s so inspiring!

What is it like to live in The Castle, you ask? Well, obviously, it’s very glamorous…..

 

 

Friends, living in our home is a dream come true! If your idea of a dream is living surrounded by beauty, inspiration, and a never ending amount of home improvement projects. To me, that sounds like heaven! I’m happiest when I have a paint brush in hand and am using my creativity to transform something into my vision. And recently there has been a lot of transformation happening in our home!

I’ll be honest, living in an old house isn’t always easy. Problems occur on a regular basis, without warning, that require a lot of money to fix and often turn our day to day life upside down. So much of our home improvement budget goes to really boring behind the scene things that aren’t noticeable but are necessary. I’ve learned not to get too upset about house issues because, as my contractor recently assured me when we were discussing the joys of living in an older home, “Everything is fixable…. It’s just how much will it cost?!”

Over the years I’ve adopted the attitude of “I’ll worry when I actually have something to worry about.” It’s a great coping tool, because I could literally spend every moment of the day fretting about what needs to be fixed, how much it might cost, and what could possibly break next. So far we’ve been able to handle every old house problem we’ve faced, regardless of whether I spent sleepless nights worrying about the problem or not. And so we’ve learned to carefully plan our budget, work hard on our home improvement projects, and ultimately enjoy living in our dream home.

We also have an amazing group of people we work with who are incredibly talented and knowledgeable about working on historic homes. These guys are so smart, they take pride in their work, and they understand that we are a one income family with three young kids. I call them my “Dream Team.” I can’t even tell you how comforting it is that whenever we have an old house problem that we can’t fix on our own I simply pull out my phone and say, “Don’t worry, I’ll call the Dream Team.”

This holiday season has been especially challenging. I swear, if I were dating this house my Facebook relationship status would have been “It’s Complicated”. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen our Christmas tree dilemma. I posted this picture with the following description:

“Looking for inspiration for your tree this year? We’re going for a minimalist look at our house. Some tips to achieve this design: tear apart your living room two months before Christmas to fix a “simple” problem. Then purchase the biggest Christmas tree at the tree farm with the optimistic attitude that your renovation will be finished in plenty of time. When the tree farm calls asking you to pick up your giant tree as they are about to close for the season, bring it home and place it festively next to your bright yellow dumpster full of construction debris. Resist the urge to lay in the snow next to your tree in an “I can’t even” moment. Ponder if cutting the tree in half will make it short enough to fit in any other room in your house. Ultimately decide to leave it in the snow and keep holding on to your optimistic attitude that maybe a Christmas miracle will happen and your living room will be fixed before the holidays. If I end up posting pictures of us unwrapping presents while sitting in the snow Christmas morning you’ll know why!”

So many old house problems kept popping up and what should have been a simple fix dragged on for months. And while we did our best to celebrate the holiday season with our family, the fact that our tree wasn’t up made me so sad. Friends, the “Dream Team” worked so hard to finish our projects before Christmas. The Wallart Drywall team even cleaned up all the construction dust and mopped our floors so that we could have our living room ready by Christmas! Everyone, including our friends and family, went above and beyond to help us. We barely slept for two days while frantically painting and we finished the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Our family decorated the tree on the evening of Christmas Eve and my husband and I gathered all the furniture that had been scattered all over the house and put the room back together after the kiddos fell asleep. They were so surprised when they woke up Christmas morning, and we had a wonderful holiday! It was a Christmas Miracle!

 

I told my husband that I needed a break from home improvement projects. We celebrated Christmas, snuggled our sweet babies, and enjoyed relaxing without working on any house projects. For two days. Then inspiration struck and I was like, “You know what would be a really fun project that I bet we could get done before our New Year’s Eve party? The sunroom!” And just like that I was back to my old self, dreaming, creating, and loving life in our little castle. You can once again find me with a paint brush in hand happily transforming our home during the kiddos’ nap time and at night after everyone else is in bed. My Facebook relationship status with this house is back to “In a Relationship” with all the heart eyes!

And, speaking of Christmas, how cute is this video of my baby boy! He loved my parents’ Christmas tree with the changing lights!

 

These are magical years and I’m so happy that I get to share our life with you here at Whimsical Blue Living! It means the world to me that you follow along on our journey as we restore this gorgeous home and fill it with love and life! I am so grateful for you, sweet friends.

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Have a beautiful day!
Sandy