Feeling Like Home

I've decided that a house doesn't start to feel like home until you have things on the walls. It feels a bit more permanent that way I think....committing to the house more so than simply plopping your furniture down. Putting things on the walls requires a bit of planning and stick-to-it-ness. And that's exactly what I did in the upstairs living room with the frames purchased on our recent trip to IKEA:

It current houses current photos and sentimental pieces from when Michael and I were together 5 years ago. The largest one is actually the poem that he used to propose the first time. When I went to Ireland for 3 1/2 months in 2005, he handed me a box with cards, one for every day I was gone. There was also a paper with an alphabetic legend and another paper (the one hanging) that had blank spaces for letters. The cards I opened each day walked me through the verse I was to read from the new testament of the Bible that day (we read it from beginning to end together while I was gone). And, every few days there would be a series of symbols that I would then decode to fill in the poem, which eventually read (he'll be mortified knowing I put this up!):

Though torn apart even oceans away
For oh so long I love you the same
seems like forever I count all the days
till you return home on a really big plane
then with you once again I will be
and for more than a moment each other we'll see
a semester together we'll spend all our time
watching movies at night and eating pecan pie
maybe some B&J oatmeal cookie chunk
but none for me I want to be your big muscle
bound hunk
Oh to be with you I just cannot wait
to take you on what will be like another first date
Together forever I know someday we'll be when you say yes to the question

Then a few days after I returned home from Ireland, he handed me the last card that had the symbols for

Will you marry me?

Creative, right??! I know! It took him 2 months to come up with the whole plan. He knew he'd have a hard time coming up with a better proposal the second time around, which is why the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris was a no brainer. What a lucky gal I am!

I didn't really mean to get all sentimental on you. In fact I don't even plan on keeping these photos hung there. I will be printing off wedding photos in sepia tone for all the frames. What is up now is simply for the interim.

Here's the living room as it looks now (still in progress):