This challenge is a photo a day challenge – it’s not necessarily a blog post a day challenge!  But these are yesterday’s photos.  The theme was “inside your home”. Many rooms of my home have appeared in my blog posts over the past almost five years.  Usually my sewing room, or bedrooms/bathrooms reflected in mirrors.  This time I’ve photographed living areas.

We bought our house in November 1997, and the living room was pink then. We thought it was weird, and it was right up there on our list of things to repaint/renovate. But we very quickly learned to love our pink living room. It’s warm and cosy, and contains many elements that are sentimental to us. That rug? I bought it in Morocco (made from Australian wool however!) back in 1993 when I was a young thing travelling around Europe and beyond. I shipped it home wrapped in brown paper, along with one for my parents. And it arrived! Dad made the TV cabinet and the coffee table, as well as round side tables and a book case that you can’t see in the photo. The standard lamp was a wedding present from our best man and his wife, who are also Clare’s godparents. And on the mantelpiece are family photos and other objects of sentimental value.

The rest of our house was painted yellow, and we’ve kept with that too. As you know by now, I like colour! We renovated the house when I was pregnant with Stella and added the upstairs. My husband was working out of our garage prior to that, and it was time that he had a proper office inside the house! The renovation also gave us a third bedroom, bathroom, a massive linen cupboard, and my sewing room. And downstairs we gained a terrific under-staircase space where my computer now sits. And a back deck. The renovation was so worthwhile for us. This is our retirement house – we have absolutely NO plans to move anywhere from where we are. We love our local community and amenities.

Then there are the dining room and kitchen. The kitchen was renovated by the previous owners quite a few years before we bought the house, and will need it again in a few years time. But I’m hanging out to avoid that expense for as long as possible! The house floor was tiled throughout when we bought it, in very thick, very early 80s Southern European tiles. One of my husband’s first jobs after moving in was to rip up all those tiles and get the boards polished. He did a great job with the crowbar – those tiles were concreted down onto chicken wire.  Yes, the owner who laid them was a concreter.

We really do love our home. It’s a bit of a mish-mash of styles and it’s not one that would ever be photographed for a magazine, and it isn’t immaculately tidy (although I do my best to make sure that everything has a place and is mostly kept in that place). It’s plenty big enough for a family of four without being massive like many homes are nowadays.  It holds many memories for us and is comfortable and, well, it just feels like a home. Not a house, but a real home. We love it.