House August 2011

As I feel quite a few changes coming for our home in the coming months, I thought I'd snap a few photos of what it looks like now that we've had two years to settle in. We are nothing, if not slow to make changes, but we've put our stamp on it in our own way. Part of the appeal for buying a home that was move-in ready was that we didn't have to spend extra to make it livable. That part is wonderful. The other part is that changes come more slowly and it takes longer to break from the cookie cutter because nothing is "broken." Anyway, here she is in August 2011.

I snapped these when we were prepping for some friends to come over for an end-of-the-summer happy hour. And I didn't bother to move around some of our normal clutter. This is how we live, people.

The laundry room curtain to hide the disorganization of the shelves above the appliances.

The kitchen:

The living room:

The entryway:

The office:

The hallway:

The guest bedroom right after the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper was removed.

The guest bath:

The master bath:

The master bedroom:

Areas of major concern include:

• guest bedroom paint/makeover
• the laundry room.....something has to happen...
• general decluttering of the whole house - especially the office
• finishing touches for the master bedroom
• repainting of the master bath to make it more neutral

Those Transcendentalists...

It's that time of year again. We've finally moved on from the painful (because I find it a slightly boring section of the American literature timeline) first unit of the year into a section of literature that is far more interesting for me. Today, we learn about Ralph Waldo Emerson, that rebel. We work on vocabulary, yes, and then we read an excerpt from his essay, Self-Reliance. If only his language were more accessible to student ears and hearts. Emerson's words embody everything they want to believe about the world, yet they do not always understand that he's on their side - advocating for their rebelliousness and right to explore their individual path.


At the end of the reading guide we work on together, the final prompt says this, "Choose your favorite aphorism, or quote, from Self-Reliance and explain why you find it to be the most significant line in the essay." Here's mine. I like to keep it as a reminder when life gets interesting.


"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

So true. Thanks, Ralph.