Wanna come over?

I did it. I did something I absolutely hate to do, and now it's done. I invited people for a girl's night at my house.


I hate it because inevitably, no one will come. This happens every time. Book club at my house? Tiny turn out. Birthday party for my kids? Ha. But every couple of years I manage to convince myself that this time if I throw a little thing, people will show up.


Don't get me wrong, I like entertaining. I just don't enjoy feeling rejected. (The exception is dinner. Everyone always says yes to dinner. Huh.) So I decided I'd give myself a million outs by inviting people with less than 24 hours notice so that if no one comes, I can blame it on that. Kenny and James will be gone on a Scout camp out, and I'm going to hang out with the 1.5 out of 12 people that have accepted so far.


But you'd want to come over, right? To hang in your comfy clothes, share chocolate and watch Tina Fey in Date Night. Right? Right? (I don't sound needy. Right?)


Let me show me house. I think I kind of owe these pictures since we've been here for two months now. If you don't want a tour of my house, I'll never know that this is where you clicked away. (No rejection. See how I did that?)


All right. We're just doing the living room today because um, doing every room in my house would be boring.


Here we go:

I took this today. Not every where in Southern California is smoggy. Actually, Orange County is mostly all right.


Also, Kenny is fighting the good fight against the brown patches. It's epic.


This is what you see as soon as you walk in:

I'm going to go ahead an offend a large chunk of you by saying I don't care for oak. At all. It has to do with the looming walls/furniture/bookshelves of my childhood. I especially don't care for golden oak. Next week I'll show what we're going to do with the oak banisters, but for now, it be what it be. To the left is the temple we were married in (Redlands) and a bromeliad, purchased Tuesday because the tag says it's "hearty." Better be. I have the Brown Thumb of Death. Sleep with one eye open, Bromeliad. (To the left of that doomed plant is a closet that runs under the stairs and makes a great toy room for Grant. I love this house.)

This is the front door. I don't know what to do with that niche. I bought two things and brought them home so Kenny could help me choose and he liked them both in there together. Something about yin and yang. I don't know. Anyway, now they're both there and will probably stay that was for a lonnnnng time. But the light will eventually get swapped out for something cooler.


We didn't touch the carpet in the living room because um . . . we have kids. It looked pretty new two months ago. Now it doesn't. I feel smart every day for not getting new carpet.

We didn't do any painting in the front rooms because it's got big old vaulted ceilings and it would have been a pain. The existing paint was in good shape anyway. This was the furniture that came over from our condo and then I found the cool pillows at Target and the interesting drapes at Pier 1. The shelves display bowls Kenny turned on his lathe and as he turns more, we'll add more. (No pressure, honey.) We'll get to those books in the bottom picture in a minute.


If you're sittiing on the comfy sofa, this is what you see:

Our friends GAVE us that piano because they inherited a baby grand. It was ours for the price of the moving. I paid $200 to move and tune it and let me tell you  . . . Leo, a short potbellied man with a baby parrot named Tikki on his shoulder showed up to do it and I KNEW it would be worth every penny. He kept that parrot on his shoulder the whole time and he asked me for a bowl of water for his dog Bingo (I forgot the name, okay?) in the truck. The pictures on top of the piano are still searching for a home.


The top shadow box holds an original edition of Huckleberry Finn, a gift from Kenny on our first Christmas together. And I mean original as in over a hundred years old. It's awesome. The bottom book is signed copy of the 40th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird. That's right. Signed by Harper Lee. My oldest son's middle name is Atticus. I love that book.


This is the other thing you'll see when you sit on the comfy sofa:

 Fine. You'll really see this:

These are the first half of the shelves my awesome father-in-law built for us. They'll continue down that right wall when Kenny finishes designing them. (No pressure, honey.) Those boxes are all full of books. We have two bookshelves upstairs full of books. And we have this still sitting in the garage waiting to be unpacked:

So, yeah. We have a lot of books. A lot, a lot. A lot.


But Kenny and I have always wanted a library so I'm going to be so excited when this is done. We have to swap out the chandelier and throw in a couple of bean bags and it's going to be perfect. The shelf under the window is even with the sill so we can find some cool cushions and make it into a window seat.


And that's the tour. 


You'd come over for girl's night, right?