If You Lived In My House--the photo gallery

I know some of you started reading this blog because you were fascinated by the thought of a family of six living in such a small house; you wanted to see how it was done, how we have arranged furniture, what we deem worthy of the precious square footage, how we store all our toys and clothes and homeschool stuff and still have room to walk.  You've been waiting patiently for a long time, for me to post photos and give you the walk-through.

Sorry, this is not that post.

Some of you have always wanted to know how we homeschool, the breakdown of an average school day, how we manage time and little space to give each child a healthy, productive work space.

(Giggling and wiping eyes at the thought of such a thing happening in my house.) 

That post, too, will have to wait.

Some of you are just plain curious about us, and have long been trying to figure out just what kind of people we are--exactly how weird we must be to do what we say we do.  You want the inside scoop, the dirty laundry, the reality-TV show.

This is that post.  With pictures.

My antique hobbit-green door, which I love.  Note the broken pieces at the bottom which most people would mend before painting--I don't know how to fix those pieces, but I know how to paint, so voila!  Also note the completely odd door knob that fits neither the door nor the jamb.  Just one of those unfortunate, bizarre things that was like that when we moved in, and which we will someday (. . . sighing wistfully. . . ) replace. You will sometimes find my door decorated.  Guess what country we were studying last Spring?

This is our soapstone hearth, and antique redwood floor, in the living room/master suite. This is the way my floor looks pretty much every morning.  DH is totally great about getting up and making a fire for us in the morning before he goes to work, but sometimes not so great about sweeping up the ashes.  I will gladly sweep the hearth and floor--I posted this pic just because I have a feeling most of you readers never wake up to a bedroom floor strewn with ashes and bits of wood (from when it was carried in the night before).  Welcome to my world.

And it's not like it's just the living room that suffers from such daily debris. This is my sad kitchen floor, only a few hours after it was swept.  Four children, three meals a day (ok, at least two), firewood being carried in, a dirt driveway, no place to leave dirty shoes outside the house. . . sadly, my floor is only tidy for about 5 minutes after being swept.

Those worn places on the floor are some of what I was trying to fix before my family came.  I did a really poor job, but at least it is much less noticable now than in this photo, which is from a few months ago.  Which tells you just how long I have had it in my head to share photos of my dirty floor with you.  All in the name of making you feel so much more content with the state of your own floors.

You can see the mix of antique chairs we use--the spindle belong with the table, but the folding oak are less tippy for little ones.  The table and chairs all belong to my in-laws--a permanent loan that I really truly love and appreciate.

I keep reading on some people's blogs--esp. those of you in Texas--that parts of the country are experiencing 100 degree temperatures almost daily.  We are currently experiencing heavy fog pretty much all day, so above is what the thermometer inside the house read yesterday morning.  Hence, the daily fire. 

On Monterey Bay, if it reaches the upper 80's we're in a heat wave; where we live, under the redwoods over a creek, our temperatures generally peak in the upper 70's.  If we are lucky.  So yes, DH makes a fire almost every morning of the year.  Sometimes during our hottest seasons, we have gone for as long as a month without a fire.  Last summer I heard we had the coldest summer since 1971;  this summer we had a gorgeous spell of weather, right when my family all came to visit (yay! but even then the mornings are cool so we still made fires for our guests), but it has been cool since.
 
I should admit here that our low temperature inside the house on a January morning might only be five degrees lower than that.  Living on the Bay, we only experience a temperature range of about thirty degrees throughout the year.  So, mild summers and mild winters--not much to complain about. 

But it does not really matter how cold I think it feels in the house--here at home, any time of year, there is always the chance that I will walk into a room to find my children naked.  (Yes, they are all stripped down to their panties/diaper on a chilly morning.  No, Smiley does not sleep up there with his sisters, he sleeps in the crib underneath, but has recently learned how to climb up to the top bunk all by himself.  Which mommy is not at all thrilled about, but which is sometimes very cute.  Yes, all three girls sleep in one single bunk.  We breed them small, for efficiency.  YES, we plan on coming up with a better sleeping arrangement . . . one of these days. . . for now they are happy and sleeping through the night, which is all I care about.)

Speaking of Smiley, here is what he was up to earlier this week:

No, wait, he looks too adorable--that picture does not quite do the moment justice. . .

There we go. 

I can't believe I managed to raise three toddler girls with not a single wayward lipstick.  But now along comes the boy. . . .  At least he was wearing old pajamas. . . and did show an understanding of what to put lipstick on. . . I am working on that whole gratitude thing pretty well, I think.

But I am sure many of you have your own tales of kids and lipstick--that's more common.  Let's see, what else can I find about our house that most of you would not experience in your own homes. . .

And, there we go.

That is a banana slug, native to the Santa Cruz redwood mountains.  This is a fairly small one, only about 2 inches long. My laundry machines are down in the underbelly--what I call the loosely sealed, mostly dirt-floored storage area under the house.  So, we live in harmony with all manner of God's wild creatures.  But this guy was really lucky I caught a glimpse of him there in the crack of the washer door just as I was shutting it.  Frankly, I'm lucky too.

They don't just keep to the underbelly--no, sometimes our kitchen has mysterious visitors in the night.  These tracks are tiny, so I have to assume were left by a garden slug.  But I have never seen a slug on any interior walls in the daylight--just sometimes find these shimmering ghostly trails. 

Our cabin is single-walled construction.  Which means the other side of those boards is the outside of the house.  Good thing we are not fanatic about being sealed off from the outside world, as in several places you can see daylight through cracks and holes.  Hence the occassional guest.  

I'll save the wolf spider stories for another post.

Yes, we could put sheetrock up, and insulate, and do all that stuff to their walls that most people do.  But then we would lose the beautiful, glossy old-growth redwood heartwood that currently lines our walls--stuff that is now so rare that a single board of the quality and size of one of ours would cost you well over a hundred dollars, if you could even find it.  

So we are choosing to embrace what our little house is--and enjoy it.  Like the ceiling, which got a fresh coat of paint when we moved in.  This is the view from my bed/the sofa, next to the fireplace.  I love how the light from the big picture windows plays on its beams throughout the day, different every hour, and how the glow of the night's fire dances above me as I fall asleep.  My ceiling is one of the things I love most about my house.

Oh, and if you have been trying to picture what 560 sq. feet looks like, well, that's pretty much it.  The window at the far end is over the kitchen sink.  The bedroom/bathroom/shower is off in a little shed-roofed addition to the right, through the kitchen. 

And while it is far less than ideal to have our master bed in the living room, I have to admit it does up the cozy factor for our family.  Some days this is what school looks like--another favorite view, just for fun. 

And finally, just because this is a photo gallery of my unusual home life, random stuffed animals.  Because anytime I download photos from the camera to the computer, I never know what I might find.  (Upon querying the photographer, Sunny, it seems the kids were playing Christmas.)

This is the little guy we surprised her with from San Francisco when my family was here.  He's a baby sea otter named Butterscotch Baby.  I think my daughter likes him.  I also think my daughter might have a future with the camera. 

So, there you go!  I hope you all enjoyed this peek into Life in My House. 

And HEY, any of my fellow blogging readers, if any of you get the urge to write an "If You Lived In My House" post on your own blog, leave a link in the comments below!  Those of you who don't blog, please feel free to leave a quip of some kind about your life at the moment.  I love hearing the details of your lives. : )