This may be my first post for this blog and I didn't anticipate blogging about various brands and then I thought, why not share my thoughts on decorating by sharing my secrets on decorating your home, your life, etc.
Jimmy Falon says be happy, we'll sort of and when my house or home is decorated I'm thoroughly happy and when it's not, I become unglued. This is my story about thanking GOD and IKEA for helping me through the home renovation process.
January of this year, we moved back into our new home? Yeah that's right. Back into the home we built in 2009, rented to another family in 2010 and came back to in 2014. Funny. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. We relocated to the Hudson Valley part of New York, thinking we were going to be there for a while and as fate would have it, moved back due to my hubby's job. His job still not in Maryland where we currently reside in our new-old home but his work is in Pennsylvania. Needless to say we spend a good deal of time shuffling kids from one store to the next or running to the grocery store for who knows what and in between all that time, we are trying to furnish the new house we built five years ago.
It's bitter irony. I wanted to stay in NY renting (can you believe this) a 5,500 square foot home we couldn't afford to decorate and he, my brilliant sales exec husband wanted to come back to our new-old 3,400 sq foot home and affordably decorate that one! He convinced me by moving back south we would save on many things including the oil we needed to heat the NY winters that were killing our household budget. I agreed and in two months we were moved.
We left a good nursery school, my work and volunteerism, and solid friends. I was sad but hopelessly looking forward to decorating my little farmhouse; the house we brought home our brand new twin daughters to. Little did I know what I would be walking into when I first entered the door of my new-old home on Friday January 3rd, 2014. Nothing could prepare me for it: dog smell. Yuck and old toilet smell, gross and vastly dog ridden walls with scratch marks as far as the eye could see, blotched hardwood floors and just grossness. Our renters, yes paid the mortgage for four years but left us with four years of their stuff on the front lawn, the back lawn, the deck. It was a plant invasion of vast proportions!!
I was immediatly taken into the twilight zone of new homeownership. I wanted to run back to Pawling, NY as fast as my short legs would take me, back to my rose bushes, my front porch, my bird feeder, but it wasn't my house. I had to remind myself. Bummer. Back to new-old-home-rented by-weirdos-itis.
We began painting, scrapping, wiping, and buying lots of repair items. Home Depot seemed to be loosing their patience with me and I was not amused and neither was my husband. We eventually gave in and found an inexpensive general contractor to help us with our rennovation. I use the word "rennovation" loosely because to us our home was not new anymore. It needed a MAKE OVER and BIG TIME!!!!
I'm at the airport: our plane to the Bahamas for a weekend trip has been delayed. Thank GOD for that too. Last night's windstorm had me shaking in my $5 Target booties! I told my hubby I will not board any plane if it's that windy in the am. He laughed but I was not kidding. I'll stay home and commit myself to more shopping, more nails and hammer action (you know those frames aren't going to hang themselves!). Forget it. Ill blog. My flight to Atlanta has been delayed two more hours. I've got time to think about how much I love Ikea and how it saved my budget and beautified my home.
This past weekend at the beloved Ikea I completely changed the look and vibe of my dining room for $225-that's it. It's beautiful, dreamy and will be the perfect setting for our Easter gathering. Thank you Ikea. I love you and I will definitely be back
