Remember how I said there were big changes coming to this little house of ours? This is it! That wall with the beautiful mantel and (very fake) fireplace has been torn down and behind it–surprise!–is a staircase leading to an upstairs! Bet you didn’t see that coming!

Our house is (well was) a duplex and we were living in the ground floor apartment. Preso! Change-o! We now have a two story house with twice as much space! It is crazy and exciting and totally overwhelming.  Be prepared for many before and after posts (as soon as I stop sewing for kcwc).

It seems a little show off-y to have a tour of my own home, but really what are blogs for but to be show off-y? You’ve seen bits and pieces already: too many pictures of my kids’ room and my bathroom even! So why not show you the rest? I get a little annoyed when other sites have home tours and then all you get are photos of little vinettes. I tried to take pictures of the big picture, well really the small picture: our house is only about 900 square feet (85 sq meters). It will be changing in new and exciting ways soon, but for now it suits our little family of five quite well.

If you came over to my house, this is where you would come in–just to the right of the mantel. My dog would probably try to eat your feet (she is old and weird).

If you’d been playing in the mud before you came over, you’d probably have to sit down and take off your shoes.

Oops I got a little vignettey. Well, that’s what mantels are for anyway.  On ours are some doily cover rocks, fake grass, beautiful candles I was given, a bit of art, and my straw garland.

Hey, I am sitting on this couch right this very minute! Yes, we have two green couches in our living room. After the couch I bought in college hit the dust a few years back I went a little crazy on craigslist trying to find the perfect couch. Many months went by and finally I found that vinyl beauty (in the first picture of the post) for not too much. Two days later this lean, green mamajamma was listed for 50 bucks. I snatched it up. They not only delivered it, but threw in a matching chair (which is in the basement because seriously, we can’t have any more green furniture in here)!

Our living room opens up to the dining room slash library slash office slash play room.  No, actually every room is the playroom with three kids in a little house.

Most of our toys are stored in the credenza in the living room, but I also carved out a little play area under the windows in the dining room. The photo of Maya’s play room inspired this space.  Remember the rolling toy boxes I made a while back? This is where they live.

The dining room is also our art gallery, which at the moment is overflowing with end of the year school work. It is a little more edited in this shot. We converted the linen closet into a tiny office that you can see in this post. And the other door leads to our bedroom…

…which is very green.

We updated our kitchen a little this year and hot damn! I love it now. It needs a coat of paint, but it is still pretty.

That’s all! It’s not always so tidy, but we live in it for goodness sake! And we do live in every little bit of our house. And love it too. I hope you enjoyed the tour of our home!

I took all the homemade, wonky, gluey hearts down from the wall in my kids’ room and it looked so sad and bare. The room needed some cheering up! First I was thinking I would let the kids go crazy with washi tape, then I thought maybe we could make some paper flowers and tape them up, but then I saw this amazing wall.

My daughter and I headed to the craft store to buy some [faux] flowers. I’m usually not down with fake flowers–or even buying that much plastic at once–but I have to admit some of these flowers are very,very pretty. The weedy looking ones are my favorite. I do believe I’m the only woman in the world buying plastic weeds.

Luckily all the fake flowers were half off, so we went a little crazy picking them out. My daughter fell hard for the bubblegum pink roses covered in fake water droplets. I was not so smitten, but she was so in love. When we got home I was messing with the flowers to see if I could get them to look a bit more natural and when I pulled back the petals on the rose, it turned into this absolutely gorgeous bloom. You can see how the rose looks closed and open above.

To hang all the flowers on the wall, I cut the bunches apart with a wire cutter and trimmed most of the leaves off as well. Then marked five rows on the wall. Working from the top down I simply taped each flower up so it was in line with the one above it. My rows aren’t perfectly spaced or perfectly straight, but the it’s the contrast of orderliness and nature I was going for–that’s what drew me to the first photo of flowers on the wall. Also, it’s just plain awesome to have a field of flowers on your bedroom wall.

For 20 dollars and an hour of our time, we managed to get spring to come a bit earlier in Wisconsin. Not bad, not bad at all.

an adorable little step stool for the bathroom: “Wash hands and face and do it well when you step on this carousel,”

a basket I know full well I don’t need,

and some gold shoes. gold! shoes!

I’ve been looking for a record player on and off for a few months now. Why aren’t there any in thrift stores? Did people get rid of them too long ago? Or do people think they are worthless and just pitch them?  Whatever the reason I couldn’t find one at all and I mentioned it to my mom over christmas. So she packed up and sent me hers to use until I find one of my own. Moms are the best.

The amount of awesome records out there is staggering–kids ones especially. We live right around the corner from a record shop (why I’ve waited this long to find a record player I don’t know).  The little gem up there came from their fantastic free box.