Remember When Everything was Made of Dropcloth?

I made these signs for our old house. Faith, Hope, Love and Family- concepts I always treasured, and that were really put to the test at times.

I made these a long time ago, and to be honest I don't even remember how I ran these through my cheap printer. But they came out as I wanted and I put them on my little blog and was proud of them.

After the struggles we went through I must have shoved these in a closet somewhere. Not ready to give up on the ideas of faith, hope, lasting love and trust and a stable family dynamic, but also not ready to be displaying them on a wall either. Ralph came across them when we moved and stuck them up in the stairwell. I didn't care about them enough to move them anywhere else. But recently I've been spending time in pastoral counseling with a man I really admire, and I am thinking daily about my faith, hope, trust and healing, and which parts of the Scripture resonate with me the most.

The life we live now....Ralph and me, Ralph and the kids, the kids and me...... is the best we have ever had. We are so much closer to our best selves, the selves we were always supposed to be, than we ever were before. We're just happy with each other, even when things in the world are hard.

So I pulled the signs down off the wall, took the mats apart (really old tape!) and covered the outer mat with the ticking striped wrapping paper I've been using all over the place. Best purchase ever. I painted the frames blue and put it all back together.

After this photo was taken I found some great kitchen towels from Dolly Parton's line at Hobby Lobby. I used one of them in place of the folded towel under the totally fake plant there. Cats. They're the reason we can't have anything nice. Henry loves Dolly, so that's a nice coincidence. I also printed a photo I love of the four youngest kids together before Christmas last year and put it in a Rae Dunn "family" frame Henry gave me. Hubby's guitar and the Red Sox guitar strap Bean chose as her gift to him finish things off. My decorating philosophy has evolved from trying to copy everything I see online to decorating like WE live in our home.

As a side note, the pillow in the bright blue cover and the pillow in the gray cover are exactly the same size pillow. Try and picture me (and my assistant Bean) stuffing that big pillow into that little cover.

I have been enjoying being in our home so much more since I started using more meaningful stuff to decorate. And I'm looking forward to lots of family memories being made here before we move on to our next home.

I hope you have a cozy day in your home. Come back any time!