But when it comes to furniture, houses and decorations, change harms no one, and it's super super fun! So last weekend, Alejandro and I decided to rearrange not one, but two of the rooms in our house, upon the arrival of a new-to-us couch for our living room.
Then, I decided I wanted to capture the look of those rooms, and remember the things about them that I love. Sometimes, our homes hold memories that are lost in remodeling or rearranging, and unlike people, we don't typically photograph homes and remember how they change through the years.
There used to be a set of couches that sat in the living room of my childhood home. They were brown and 80's and sort of striped, and they faced each other. I used to lie on one and watch TV. That was my spot. I remember many movies in my teen years that I watched from that couch. Remember Beaches? Yeah. That couch. And me blubbering like a whale with my junior high best friend. And before that couch and the TV were there, it was that couch and the fish tank and us small-sized girls with our noses pressed against the glass watching gold fish. Aaah... But anyway, before I get lost down Memory Lane, here's what I want to remember about this couch and living room:
It's the way the light spills in and warms your feet as you sit on the recliner during the day, and the way you can stare at the fire at night. It's the fireplace with our engagement picture over it signed by our wedding guests, the candles from our wedding, and the Believe sign that was a gift from one of my Mary Kay heroes. It's the rocking chair that my step-brothers were rocked in as babies. The Bienvenidos frame that I cross-stitched as I sat in language school every morning in Costa Rica in January of 2002. The rug that we wrestle on and play Legos on with my son. These are the things I want to remember about my living room.
In our bedroom...
It's the sunlight through the window that acts as our headboard. It's the early morning shadows cast on the walls. It's the hope chest and dresser drawers I got as a high school graduation present. It's the fact that not a single solitary piece of furniture matches in that room.
It's the rockers that we sit in to talk. Or that we it in to not talk, but just to be together.
It's the coffee pot that we put in between those chairs. Because there are days when it takes a little something extra to get me out of bed, and a coffee pot in my bedroom, making me feel like I'm in a fancy hotel, is sometimes just the trick. And who says you can't have a coffee pot in your room? Not me.
It's the extra floor space to play on, the picture that I can't believe was taken ten years ago. Surely I have not been getting older, have I?
It's movie nights in our room. Because the only place you really want to watch a movie from is bed, right? And it's Cars or Bob the Builder during Mommy's shower time. Because, for the love of all that is fresh and clean, sometimes I just need to shower.
It's this picture, taken the day I earned my teaching credential, three months before we were engaged. It's these pieces of jewelry, which are now my favorite, and which seem to live piled up on the little table between the closet and bathroom doors.
It's the secret space hiding behind our pillows that acts like a shelf and hides things that Danny won't find. Like the clown doll that sucks its thumb that was mine when I was young enough to suck my thumb.
It's the night stand that holds the lamp that's older than dirt and that I can't believe is still working. My journal, given to me by a dear friend. My Bible.
