Inside Our Home

Proverbs 24:3-4 says this, "By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures". I enjoy this verse because it shows me that caring for my home is worth it and enjoying taking every little detail brings glory to God!

I like to think of our home as a space he allows me to be creative in. When I was a young girl my mom would send me to clean my room and I'd be there for hours moving furniture around and trying to use what I had to make things look beautiful.

My mom has many wonderful gifts and most of the gifts she has been given are very opposite of what I've been given. Now this is not bad, but decorating isn't her forte and well, I love it. This quality about my mom always drove me nuts when I was a kid, because I wanted our house to look good and clean, especially for guests. It's not that she didn't care, she just didn't always care as much as I did. First, she cared more about the people who came in... not what we had to eat or how clean the house was. Secondly, with 4 kids (3 of whom are boys) most of her decorating was pushed to the side to make way for the imaginary basketball court of football field being established in our formal living room. Holla to my mom for allowing this... for loving my brothers and allowing them to be masculine and making our house a home rather than a museum where you couldn't touch anything.

All that to say, I love decorating our new home... and maybe someday if we get to have children they might enjoy it too or maybe they won't... only God knows! Nonetheless, here are some things I've done with our home. None of will probably ever be sold at an art show, but I enjoy making them cheap and personal nonetheless!

As a sidenote... my favorite color is red and that is why it is in almost every room!

To start us off, this our room. We were given the "love is patient love is kind" plaque at the top and kept with the theme of brown, cream, aqua, and red in our room (red and aqua were our wedding colors too)!

These are the vows Joel and I wrote and read to each other on our wedding day. We joke that Jeff Dodge (our pastor) is the only one with his picture in our room besides us!


I painted these last year. I gave Joel the "God" one for Valentine's Day, the "Husband" one for his birthday (Feb. 25th), and the "Wife" one on our Wedding day (May 15th)! The grass idea was a theme at our wedding and is taken from our wedding invites.



The following pictures are in a tri-room (if you will). We have the side entrance, a weird room, and our workout room all connected. The side entrance and the workout room are both a dull lime green and the center room is tan. This is a window that used to be in our house (Joel bought new windows when he moved in) and I asked him to keep some of them. We placed some pictures from our experience in Turkey in it!


This is the side entrance. We bought these shelve units at IKEA (fun story) in MN with my parents. They were perfect for the odd area we had!

This is what I mean by tri-room. You saw the side entrance above, then there is the odd tan space, and we separated the workout room with curtains! We really like it!


This is the "odd tan room" We also bought this long shelf at IKEA and really like it! We placed pictures on it from our engagement in Turkey!


This is our guest room. It is light purple, white, and brown. I did these four paintings on one of my many snow days this winter. I took the idea from a picture I saw in a magazine!


This is our formal living room. It's colors are tan, brown, a touch of blue, black, and white. We use only black and white photos in all of the frames. Joel and I saw this picture at IKEA. I LOVE pictures of trees and he thought that it represented this verse well. So, on two of my snow days I wrote the following verse around it (talk about hard... writing on a bumpy wall)! "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Matthew 7:13-14


This is our little kitchen. It's colors are a gray/blue, black, white, and a hint of red. I was looking through a magazine and saw the idea of putting a chalk board in our kitchen! I couldn't find one with a white trim and so I just covered the chalk board and spray painted the trim! We write the verse we're memorizing on it. I hope we can continue this if we get to have kids in this home, or wherever we live!


We bought these baskets for our wedding... and they serve as perfect placemat and napkin holders! They add the splash of red to our kitchen!


This is our unformal living room. It's colors are a warm gold and deep red. Here is another old window. Joel is a HUGE ISU fan and since I did all of the other rooms, we thought it'd be fun to spice it up a bit and make this room a bit more edgy and masculine. These are all photos of him in his college years having fun with the guys (mostly painted chests and of him doing pushups while body surfing)!
My dear friend Jessie helped me with this one. While this house was a bachelor pad, Joel had the ISU stickers plastered on the wall. I wasn't a huge fan and so we modified them to make them look a bit more formal. Frames and matting board did the trick. We had to put a picture of the biggest ISU fans on this wall... my dear friend Jill Paullus and of course Joel (and I somehow got on there too)!

I'm sure there will be more to come!

While decorating my house I must also think of this verse, which probably has some to do with decorating, but more to do with a woman's inner soul. Proverbs 14:1, "The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down." I've realized that it really doesn't matter if I have a nice house because if I am a nag towards my husband and unpleasant to those to enter our home than all the decorating is in vain. It's like when you meet a really pretty girl with a horrible mouth.

Like my Mom, I want to care more about those who live there and enter and focus on how I can love them more than if they like the food or how pretty they think the walls are. In the end whether people thought my house was gorgeous will be minimal compared to if they knew me as someone who served and loved them like Jesus would. My prayer is that all who enter would be urged and encouraged towards Christ no matter where our home is. I mean, because someday our home will be in heaven and I sure hope all of our guests will be there! How much better will it be to be Jesus' guest and have streets paved with gold!