Welcome to our humble abode...

 Welcome to our home!  There is still much to be done, but at least most of the boxes have disappeared and we are contemplating tackling the yard...  :)  This is looking through the entry way to the dumping room breakfast nook.

 If you'll glance to the right, you'll see our Ikea-inspired craft room.  Sure it was designed as a formal living room, but with 5 kids and my boxes of craft junk, we needed a room dedicated to cutting, gluing, and textured cardstock...  (pardon the mess, I figured there was no waiting for spotlessness as it's a rare event when you have kids at home during the day.)

 Also somewhere for the two enormous filing cabinets.

 I love my old yellow chairs.  I paid $10 each for them.  I know the yellow is funny looking and I do intend to recover them someday, but until them, you can appreciate the tall-backed one made for the husband, and the short, rounded one made for the wife.  So cute!

 One of my favorite space-efficiency measures is the media shelves on the basement stairs.  

 We just love all the windows and light that fill the house.  Also, it's nice to have enough room for a table we can all sit at.

 A bar!  And tons of counter space!  To fill with junk!  Okay, so the junk isn't wanted, but you know how counters tend to fill up.  It's easy to grow into counter space.  Also fridge space.  Where did we get so many magnets??

 There is this awesome shelf the runs above the living room.  We decided to put all of our mementos from ours and other's world travels.  I need to arrange it and put in a few nails, but you get a sense of how cool it's gonna be.  I need to find a good quote about how reading can take you anywhere to cut from vinyl and put above the ledge to tie everything together with the hoards of books we have.

 Again, more gorgeous windows to match the gorgeous molding and hardwood floors.  It's really starting to feel like home...

 The twins' (as we call Shrimp & Domba) room.  I lost finger dexterity spray painting the frames white, but it was worth it to have them all clean and pretty again.  These where my sister & my beds when we were kids.  So fun to have my girls in them now!  Still more work to do in this room on the walls.

 Mini-Me & the Wudge get to share a room these days and they are really enjoying it.  Of course we sort've had to draw a line down the middle with blue on one side & pink on another, but I can live with it.  Heaven knows we end up shuffling bedrooms and roommates at least once a year...  I can't think how many times I've broken down and rebuilt bunkbeds and the crib in my decade of parenting.

 Based on how bad the Wudge is, he'll be in his crib till he goes to college...

 Here's Dh's & my room!  I looked through hundreds of comforters to find this one.  I couldn't decide between brown & blue, and brown & green. so finding this was perfection!  Add some room-darkening drapes (as in the kids' rooms) and you have a perfect Maren-cave!  :)  (Please pardon the strings hanging down in all the bedroom pics--the kids can't read the light chains when the fans are on, so I tied some ribbon for them.)

 When we first toured the house, I hardly even noticed there were jets in the master tub.  I was sort of put off by the upstairs hardwood flooring, and trying to look past the baby-blue walls.  I have since come to realize that those jets were the clincher in the deal.  At least to my kids.  The tub is so enormous that the kids can swim in it, and the jets make the water all frothy.  One time, the kids were in there for over 75 minutes.  Their fingers were so wrinkly they took hours to smooth back out...  I personally just love looking out the window (just high enough to be modest) at the mountains as I shower in the mornings.

We let the Bub have her own room for a little bit, at least until Domba is old enough to have to start getting up early like her.  We turned one of the bunkbeds into a loft and got her a desk & chair.  She's really growing up, and needing the quiet space for all her homework these days.  And that wraps up our parade of homes...  We're ready for visitors and have an extra bedroom in the basement!  Come see us!!