The Casey House Evolution

We have, by the grace of God, moved into a lovely home in the small town of my upbringing, Hughson.  A la The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming, I am terribly grateful to be so close to my parents and grandmother, and accept that despite our longing for fine dining, the arts, jazz, and friends I’ve met around the country, this is what the Lord has for us and this is what is most important.  No, at judgment He will not ask if we felt we were in Italy once a month because we ate at the Trattoria Da Franco once a month or if we felt like we were on the inside circle because Jen served us free drinks on special occasions while listening to amazing jazz at the Artist’s Quarter.  No, He will ask us about the hungry, the naked, the lonely.  We’re called to love first at home.  What good are the arts if the art of love within one’s family is not perfected?  But there I digress from the subject at hand.

In this call, He has blessed us.  We have a home.  We have a home in a small town.  We have a home in a small town in a community where the guy across the street chats with my husband while water the plants.  We have a home in a small town where a young man we’ve never met before offers me tacos during his catered party as I’m leaving for the Mexican grocery store with my three-year old to buy tilapia.  Five dollars towards a boy’s Boy Scout camp experience and baseball games at the park.  We have been blessed.

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I am slowly working to make this house our own.  In January we moved while I was pregnant with our third child.  The move was stressful.  For one week my mother and I painted over dark saturated red and bright, bright orange in order to make the rental a place our family could feel peaceful and at home.

In that house, from a tomato red, we painted the living room Urban Loft from Valspar and added some throw pillows (the blue from World Market – polyester mimicking silk and homemade pillows from a gold shower curtain obtained at Unique Thrift Store in Virginia).   We took the 1980’s chandelier and covered it with a modern over-sized drum shade from World Market.  I painted the dining room a repeat color from our previous house: King Arthur’s Court by Benjamin Moore.  In my mind, I always called it latte.

For my daughters’ room, I repeated Straw by Benjamin Moore to complement a painting I bought from Prints Plus for $5 as it went out of business many moons ago.  Our son’s room received a couple coats of Gaia’s Tears by Valspar.  In my experience, Valspar is much smellier than Benjamin Moore, but the latter is so much more expensive!

The house was very dark.  A flash was used for all these photos.  The ceilings aren’t shown because no photograph could really capture the sparkles and personality of popcorn ceilings.  It was a tribute to the 80’s.

We lived there but six months before it was glaringly apparent we needed to move, much more so because of the neighborhood than the house.   Through providential help and my parents’ desire to invest, we moved into our new and rather permanent rental (rent-to-own) home.  More to follow…