I’m feeling very aware of my home. I attribute this in equal parts to having been gone for a week and having company staying with us for a few days. Nothing makes you “see” your house more than these two events.. I think it’s intensified because they happen to overlap this once.

Here’s what I see:

The top of my refrigerator is really dusty AND we are still rocking Spring decor touches. This must be addressed immediately but I can’t decide on a Summer vibe to splash across our living space. Suggestions/ideas [about the decor, not the dust]?

Our kitchen is getting there, and this cabinet with all of the bottles doesn’t bother me so much after all. It’ll be years before we can give this space a “finished” look, but until then I think I can be satisfied with where we’re at.

I love my gallery wall. Someday, I would like to have a china cabinet there, but that gallery wall truly makes me happy every time I see it. It’s pleasing. It will be around for a long time even if it has to be moved.

A rug in the living room is absolutely vital. [Also, you should know that the table is still pulled back from last night’s use of the fold out couch by our guests – who I told to leave the table alone because that mess of crumbs you see on the floor? It came from the couch when we opened it. Not embarrassing at all. Pretty sure Swiffering is my next order of business] How can I save our pennies fast enough to get a great rug for the living area?? It’s so cold right now that we only live in the downstairs no-furniture-family-room, which brings me to my next point…

I’m content with not having furniture downstairs right now. I would like to get the walls painted and change out those cornices, but I sort of love the fact that the girls can play and destroy to their hearts’ content and there’s nary a thing that I have to worry about.

We have GOT to get a mattress for our guest room. We have a bed frame and I can make do with some other items for decor, but for the love of Pete – I just want our company to be have something other than an air mattress to sleep on!

My office – bless it’s heart. Eventually I want it be a pretty space. Right now it’s more like a cave because it gets very little natural light and I don’t believe in overhead lights – ever. I dream of craft storage under the window and a long table against that blank wall – of pretty curtains and painted walls. Sigh…

I cannot even talk about the guest bathroom. It’s low on the list of priorities but, good gravy it’s tragic!

I am so pleased with this little display wall for Adelle’s, and eventually Marilee’s, art work. It looks like a family – our family – lives here, which most assuredly falls into the parameters of my home decorating.

The stairwell and the upstairs hall are paths of vacancy, which makes me feel like we still haven’t moved in all the way. Someday, they will all have the same feel as this portion – a very long way away someday because lawsy, that’s a lot of wall to fill.

We operate on $100/month for home updates. Everything I named falls under that category plus anything that needs to be done in the yard, which I didn’t even touch. Nor did I mention the dining room table that Josh will be building or the light fixtures we’d love to change or the little accessories I’d love to add. This means that there’s a pretty good chance that some of these things will never be completed…and I’m [learning to be] okay with that.

I have a hard time feeling excited about hosting people in our home before it’s complete-ish. I think this reflects, more clearly than I care to admit, my own to desire to feel complete-ish before I let people into my world. My goal for this summer is to exercise my “let people in” muscle by inviting them into our very incomplete home and doing my VERY best not to explain away it’s incomplete-ness. Maybe in doing so, I’ll learn not to worry so much about the incomplete-ness of mySELF while it’s in the process of being made whole.

What about your own home is a reflection of your heart – good or bad? If you could do one thing to make your house feel more like a reflection of your family this month, what would it be?