Making a House a Home

Even though we've been in our new house for about 5 months now, it's taken me a while to get everything all put together and decorated. I started the process by painting each of the girls rooms, the kitchen, the bathrooms and living room but kind of called it quits as I was getting towards the end of my pregnancy. I hung pictures a couple at a time, and I still have more to hang, but I've realized that I don't have the complete vision for what I would like my home look like, so I'm just doing a little here and a little there. With each little finishing touch we add, our blank canvas of a house is now becoming our home. The home that our children will grow up in, school will be taught in, many meals prepared in, my husband and I will grow old in God willing, and hopefully some day our grandchildren will run around in.

 

One of the things I knew right away that I wanted to do was to hang up some maps in our dining area. Weird you say? Well, when I was dating my husband way, way back in the day, he brought me out here to the ranch to meet his parents and I noticed that his mom had a world map hanging up in their dining room. I thought was an odd decorating piece at the time. Hubby comes from a homeschooling family and I soon realized how handy it was to have a map right there around the table where all the school work took place. His siblings could look up a country they were studying or reading about. Or maybe you heard about some event happening in a far off country on the news, you had the map right there to look at. 

 

 

 I found this antiqued map set and just finished them off with a simple trim that I painted black. I chose to go with laminated maps so I can wipe them off whenever they get yucky from who knows what's on my children's hands.

 

Here's a little bit of a close up.

As our oldest is getting ready to start school next year and becomes more curious about where her extended family lives, or where some of her book characters come from, it has been very handy to show her and help her get a little bit better understanding of how far away other states or countries are from her wide open prairie in Montana.

Oh the curiosity of little minds!