As you know this blog is dedicated to finding peace in our lives. Peace can be found in a variety of ways. The most direct route to peace is through God, but He has given all of us interests and talents that will bring peace to our lives. One interest that brings peace to my life is decorating. I have always loved decorating. Even when I was very young, I found myself wanting to decorate and make my space pleasing to the eye. My mom used to call me her little interior decorator. I would move things around when I was little and try to make them look better. I spent a lot of time with my mom decorating, and I have always said that everything I know about decorating, I learned from my mom. Looking back on it now, I realize that those times I spent with my mom decorating were some of the best times of my childhood. I learned a lot, and I was able to spend quality time with my mom learning the “tricks of the trade.” My mom taught me that our houses should be a place of refuge from the outside world. She taught me that a home should reflect the people who live there and should be a peaceful environment filled with the things that have special meaning and bring us comfort. I have always tried to do that everywhere I have lived, and it is a passion that I will have for the rest of my life.

With all of that being said, I have decided to start sharing pictures of our house on my blog. As you may know, our house is currently for sale and when it sales, we will be building a saltbox. If I said I was not anxious for the house to sell, I would be lying. I am ready for it to sell, but I want it to sell in God’s timing. He wants us in this house right now, and we plan on being here until He tells us differently. One thing I have always known and am now learning to accept is that God’s timing is perfect. We may not understand it all the time, but He has a plan for all of our lives, and when He is ready for the next stage of the plan to begin, He will reveal that to us.

For most of the time we have lived here, we used the living room as a dining room. Over the years, we have talked about making it a living room, but we never did. Honestly, I love it as a living room. It just seems right. It is now one of my favorite rooms of the house. I continually ask myself, why we did not do it sooner, but we didn’t. I guess that is another lesson that God wants us to learn. It doesn’t matter how long it takes us to get there. It is the getting there that matters the most. I hope you will enjoy looking at the pictures of our living room and that you will get a sense of the peace that this room brings me. Our homes can bring us peace if we allow them to and not become too overwhelmed with the process of making them look a certain way. It is a balancing act that God is still trying to teach me and one that I have faith that I will eventually achieve. Our homes can being us peace and as we all know, PEACE MATTERS.

~Dan~