Ah-Ha Moments

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a fabulous weekend.  I had a a fantastic weekend.  It was filled with kitchen dreams and scenes playing in my mind of casa de Gardner somehow becoming the poster child of a home worthy of a tribute by Martha Stewart.  Then I woke up.

I did, however, experience a few “ah-ha” moments over the weekend. Thank you Ms. Winfrey. Though they may not be monumental or ground breaking realizations, they are going to change the way we live here in our humble abode. 

 Ah-ha moment #1: We don’t need a freakin formal living or dining room!  I know some of you may gasp at the thought of this.  But the reality is we just don’t need one.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.  I was going out of my mind trying to come up with color schemes, and design plans for a dining room when it suddenly occurred to me that we don’t even use the formal dining room.  Just because the floor plan labels it as that doesn’t mean that’s what it has to be.

Coming into 2012  I told myself that I would start to live my life on purpose.  Part of that entails surrounding myself with things that I need and cutting our excess: No wasted space. Ive always wanted to live in a house that literally every square inch was dedicated space that we actually used everyday in some way.  We don’t need a formal dining room, but we do need a library/office area.  Were lucky to have a really big dining area in our kitchen so as part of the kitchen redo we’re gonna put a huge table in that area and that’s going to serve as both everyday and formal dining.  I mean, why not?  When we entertain everyone always ends up in there anyway.

As for the formal living room, we’ve got some cool ideas for that space, too.  We aren’t quite sure whats going in there yet, maybe a lounge area, or a pool table?  We’ll figure it out along the way.

Ah-ha moment #2- It’s my kitchen, I’ll design it as I want to! Yeah, this one is a no-brainer right?  Wrong.  Well at least not to us.  As first time buyers we were warned against making any changes that were a bit too specific or personal. Because of this, we’ve avoided a lot of things (even in conversation) as we try to make this house our home.  The reality is: It is. our. house.  We cant predict the future, but we do know that although we initially only planned on being here about 5-6 years, we now know we will likely be here longer than that.

We have to cook in this kitchen everyday or the next ? years and it’s gonna be a space we love to be in.  This goes back to that living on purpose mantra.  There’s no point in paying for living in a home we don’t absolutely love.  Sorry future owners but if you don’t like that we took down a row of upper cabinets and replaced them with floating shelves in the kitchen, then you can just put them back up when this house becomes your home.  Until then we are doing what the heck we wanna do.  Hhhmp!

That felt good to get off my chest.  I know it was long, but, I’m a long winded person! (just keepin it real)  Have you had any ah-ha moments lately?  Do tell. Until next time……

XoXo-Shavonda

Posted By: Shavonda Gardner · In: interiors