Jenny & Don Plus MASON and Kate!: Home Sweet Home

Finally! After we've been in our new place for 7 months, here are the pictures (some of) you have been waiting for. We have a beautiful new home, on a little mountainside. We get amazing orange sunsets, views of the mountains in the day and the twinkling lights of the city after dark (when the leaves have fallen off of the trees). This place is finally starting to feel like home. Maybe it's because we've spent a Christmas here, I'm not sure, but I'm liking it more every day.

Now, it's a good sized place, but currently we only have 3 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths. So unless you want to sleep on the couch or in the basement, you'll have to book a room at the Hampton Inn or at my parent's place (if they aren't in town). I'm a huge fan of the 1 floor, split layout. I like that the kids don't have to go up and down stairs to play and get things out of their rooms. We looked at an amazing place with a view of the Saluda River, but spending 2 minutes in that home with it's beautiful staircase and my 2 year old was pretty convincing that I prefer 1 floor. There's a whole second house worth of space downstairs that is ready to finish, and would add 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, a living area, kitchenette, gym/sewing room, and a laundry. Not to mention an additional house worth of storage space and a 3rd garage bay that comes in handy for lawn equipment. We've got some serious slopes in our yard, so we're hoping for some snow this winter to sled. Ok.. so on to the photos...

This is the view when you walk in the front door.

To the left is the office:

And to the right is the dining room. There was no chandelier in this room when we moved in, so we purchased the one you see here. I'm not sure about the purple-ish color on the wall, but it's growing on me.

There's also the stairwell that goes downstairs. I'm pretty happy that the people who built this house put a gate at the top. Otherwise the kids would be tempted to play on the staircase.

Then there's the living room. The tree in this room is huge. Too huge probably, but it was beautiful.

Looking back towards the dining room and office from the living room:

And then there's the kitchen. Oh my how fabulous this space is! I feel totally undeserving of this kitchen (not to mention the entire house), and often think someone needs to pinch me. Look at that island! Holy cow. Amazing. It is.

More kitchen.

And more. Because this really may be one of my favorite rooms in the house.

Looking into the breakfast room - that opens onto a large, covered porch.

Here's a shot of the porch, looking towards the breakfast room.

And a view from the porch. This is when the leaves where changing. The photo doesn't do it justice. Lots of grilling occurs on this porch!

The half bath - in the hallway towards the garage. And while there's no photo, there's a laundry room. It has another refrigerator. Yes, that feels decadent. It comes in handy for storing drinks and popsicles and things that we don't want in our normal fridge.

The kids each have their own room and their own bathrooms. And, their own walk in closets. I thought it would be wonderful for them to have separate rooms after sharing for 6 months. You know, cut down on the bickering and whining. What did I hear the first week in the house? "MOM! Mason's in my room! GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" Ok, so much for that. She did finally stop pining for the bathroom in the Wilmont house - the cute Jack and Jill that they shared. It was fun.

K's room with the pink Christmas Tree. Speaking of pink, we've ordered her a pink bed. She's pretty excited. Then she can pass this one along to M.

And her bath.

M's bedroom and his "ordinary" tree.

Cute little boy bathroom.

Now we're headed out of the kitchen, back through the living room.

Ok, across the house going into our room. Don gave me this beautiful linocut for our anniversary (by Mark Mulfinger). It's hard to tell from this photo, but it is of the rooftops in Charleston. A familiar scene from my 7 years in an attic apartment downtown.

Our bedroom is just lovely. They picked a great color.

The Master Bath is next. It's large. Too large, I think. There's a lot of wasted floor space, but is it very nice.

The kids love the tub. It's really hard to wash them in there, so they take more showers than baths (in this bathroom). The shower is nice because I can get in there with them and not get wet. One of the benefits of a large shower!

And there's a little closet off the master bath. There are a lot of things about this house that are completely silly on the luxury scale ( (our luxury scale, of course). Maybe I'll do a post one day when we get this thing organized the way we like it. I've filled my side up. Proof that you really don't know how much stuff you own until you have the space to spread it out.

And there you have it. We looked at quite a few homes before we settled on this one. It feels a lot like the Wilmont house. I still love that house, so having something similar is very comforting. I miss my old fig-ivy covered front steps. We took some pretty awesome kid pics there. But, we have a new front porch, a fancy set of doors, and some stone that will soon have a little fig ivy of its own.