Home Making

Last night I got one of the nicest compliments I think I've ever received. My friend, having come to my house for the first time the day before, said to me, "I just wanted to tell you that you have a beautiful home. It is very warm and welcoming." To most, it may not seem like much. But to me, with the home I have lived in for a dozen years, it was just what I've always wanted to hear.

My house is green. Not forest or olive or hunter. But a minty kind of sea foam green. I don't know if there is a "green" to describe it. It used to have green shag carpet (that was definitely olive) and brown and yellow striped couches and orange and brown kitchen wallpaper. There was stained linoleum, a leaky bathroom, and 1920's-style bicycle wallpaper. Mint green walls in the living room, light peach walls in the laundry room, and in one bathroom, metallic bird wallpaper.

{you thought I was kidding about the bicycle wallpaper, didn't you?}

We've chipped away at the home improvement over the years, Glenn and I, as time and money have allowed. Every wall in the house has been stripped of its drug-induced designs and has been slathered with paint. We've fixed the leaky shower, laid laminate flooring, and most of our furniture now has a 21st century style (there's still that pesky dining room table).

But there's still so much to do. All the projects with the biggest price tags (of course). Windows, gutters, siding.

And in some ways, it has been the siding that I am most uncomfortable with. The most visible part of my house is the most blatantly out-of-date. In my community, with my kids' friends living in half-a-million-dollar homes, I have felt a little self-conscious about the green.

But knowing that it's not worth going into debt over, the green has stayed. And I decided that I could work on how those half-a-million-dollar home owners (and everyone else) feel when they come over. We are working hard to have a home that is not just outwardly beautiful, but warm and welcoming. And I think it has less to do with what's on the walls than what goes on within the walls.

This house is where a family is growing up together, where there are many prayers said and scriptures read, where you can hear fights and squabbles and "Thank you, Mom, for making us dinner," and "I love you." This house is where we sit down to dinner together and watch TV together and read books and play the piano and do homework. Our home's shortcomings have been made up for by the life and love inside. And how rewarding to know that someone has seen it and felt it.

But don't get me wrong...I can't wait for the day when the directions to my house end with "We're the big gray (or tan or white or taupe...) house."