Our Home Tour at Debbiedoo's

I am so excited to be participating in Debbiedoo's Home Tour series today. If you haven't been to Debbie's blog (is there anyone left who hasn't?), pop on over and visit me there for a tour of our home. Thank you!!


When Debbie asked me to give you a tour of my home, my first thought was, "Wow! That's so nice of Debbie to think of me." My second thought was, "Oh my word, I need to clean this dump up."

So I'd like to thank Debbie for having me over today. Thanks to her my house is clean, and I get to spend some time with the readers of her fabulous blog!

Welcome to Our Home...

I am blessed to be able to say that I live in my dream home. Do you have a house in your town that you stalk drive by and admire?  Well, for me this was the house that my car always seemed to drive itself by. I'd arrive early to pick my kids up at preschool, so I could turn into the neighborhood next door and spend a few moments checking out this house. I'm lucky the neighbors didn't call the police! I loved the architecture and the charming elements like the cupola and weathervane. Although the home was built in the late 80s, it has the character of an older home.

I was beyond excited when it went on the market and had an open house. Literally, the second I walked in the front door, I whispered to my mother, "I love this house!"

We left the open house, and my husband and I immediately began planning how we could get our house ready to sell and buy this house. As fate would have it, two days later I went to my first summer tennis team practice and who was on my team? The owner of my dream house! I found out she had 3 sons just like me (we would later add a 4th son to the mix) and she loved the house as much as I did and was sad to be leaving it. We both believed it was meant to be that our family would be the next owners of the house.

A few months later, our family was able to call my dream house "home."

The house has undergone some changes over the past 4 years. In the foyer, we put in new hardwood floors, removed the carpet from the stairs, refinished the stairs and painted the walls.

The living and dining rooms are a work in progress. We removed the carpeting and installed hardwood floors. In the dining room, we removed toile wallpaper and curtains and put up grasscloth wallpaper.

In the living room, we painted the previously red walls white and put in plantation shutters. I am currently working on decorating these rooms. I'm playing with furniture arrangement (as you can see by the pads under the piano legs!), and I've got lots of accessorizing left to do.

The "hub" of the home is our kitchen and family room.

One of my favorite spots is our sunroom.

In the master bedroom I tried to create a tranquil retreat to escape the craziness of a house full of boys!

I hope I afforded the same luxury for our guests.

The design of this room was born of the French Provincial furniture I inherited from my grandmother. Perhaps it's a bit frou frou, but I never got to decorate a little girl's room!

There's no shortage of "boy spaces" around here.

The room that received the biggest makeover was the master bathroom. Early last year we embarked on our first major renovation, which involved completely gutting the bathroom.

My blog began as a way to document the remodel of our master bathroom.

It is my favorite room in the house!

My kids' favorite hangout is in the basement.

Lots of pop-a-shot and ping pong tournaments take place down here.

But, in the summer there's only one place you'll find all of us...

Oh... this makes me want winter to end soon!

Debbie, thank you so much for featuring our house. You have been so supportive of my blog from the beginning, and I truly can't thank you enough!