If there's one thing I've learned about myself over the past years, it's this:
It takes me two years to get used to a new relationship.
It took two years for it to finally sink it that I was the mother of Morgan.
It took two years for me to start liking our last bungalow.
And this new house has only confirmed this two-year pattern in my life.
We moved into our house in May of 2007 and promptly started a battery of fertility tests. All things design related were definitely put on hold.
During this time, we called the empty and extra bedroom in our house the "hope room" because, well, because we wanted to fill it with a baby. And somehow saying "nursery" was too hard to say. "Hope" fit.
Fast forward to December 2008: After a long fertility journey, our house was renovated by our new littlest designer, Miss Eve Lorraine.
Her style was mostly shabby chic, but the baby bottles scattered around the house as well as the baby burp smell added a new aura of joy in the house. We were grateful and stunned and tired and thrilled.
Once the two year mark of moving into our cookie cutter house hit, I was ready to invest joy in this house. I wanted to celebrate life and the best way I knew how was to make my home a life-giving place. I was ready to decorate and organize and tell the beige walls to be happy or be gone.
Now some will say that this is starting to sound more like a fertility post than a decorating one.
Somewhat, I suppose.
But I believe that each home reflects the emotional well-being of the people inside it.
It's the reason why some people who have lost a loved one during Christmas can't seem to take down their wreaths even though it is July.
It's the reason why excited, hormonal, pregnant women go gaga for scented liners in their baby's dresser drawers before their little one arrives.
And it's the reason why I want to bloom right here in this new place where I am planted.