I love my house. I have said that in order to preserve my house I would either chain myself to it or take it apart piece by piece and drag it with me wherever I went.

I looooove my house. I love the old kitchen, the pantry made entirely of beadboard, the hand-hewn beams in my bedroom and the fact that due to plumbing being added in the sixties, I have three (3!) hot water heaters. That comes in handy when you have little girls.

But I really love Pumpkin and Sweetpea’s bedroom. They decided that they didn’t want to sleep downstairs because their things were accessible to the other kids in the house. I could understand that.

(The glass really is wavy. You aren’t drunk this morning. Well, I’m not – I can’t speak for you.)

So CH and I cleaned out one of the bedrooms upstairs for them. I stripped wallpaper off the walls and we moved out old mattresses (how do old houses accumulate mattresses? In every old or abandoned house I’ve ever been in, mattresses abound. Do they reproduce themselves?) and antique bottles and a whole lot of dust. I made colorful curtains and bedspreads out of vintage-looking fabric covered with roses and painted dressers in white, pink and green.

I love the small touches in this room. These are the hinges on all of the doors upstairs. Gorgeous.

We also left this light fixture.

We could have repainted and refinished the walls, ceilings and floors but we (ok, I) chose to leave everything as original as possible.  Target’s Shabby Chic line has got nothing on this room.

Guess where the girls sleep now? Downstairs in the nursery.

Maybe they’ll all three move back upstairs once the new baby takes over the nursery. Or they’ll decide they want to live in the barn. There’s really no predicting.

Right now, all of my friends and neighbors are feverishly praying for snow. It’s become a rare occurance for our little corner of Eastern Virginia so any indication of snow is cause for a raid on the grocery store and a spate of school closings.

Last night was really lookin’ like snow. It was as if a gauze had fallen over everything.

I was expecting to wake up today to a perfect white ground, but no such luck.

However, reports are still indicating a significant snowfall so all of us who aren’t in Wyoming or North Dakota or Pennsylvania are crossing our fingers and wishing for snow.

Because this shot would be so much better with snow coming down…

Holidays with no pressure, don’t you?

There’s no preparing for 20 people to eat at your house, no presents to buy for every family member… not even a costume to go out and buy and then feel crappy because you didn’t make it yourself.

There are just candy hearts, chocolate and children scrawling on Valentine’s cards for their friends. How simple can a holiday get?