Houston Home

How about an impromptu and imperfect and mostly unstyled tour of our Houston home? There was a clean moment a week or so ago and we snapped some photos. Maya makes a cameo. She’s the cutest.

We live in an apartment in a building with only four units, two upstairs and two downstairs. The bottom floor was apparently renovated just before we moved in, which is so nice! The floors are polished concrete, which doesn’t photograph terribly well since it’s a little on the dark side. And totally worries me with Maya learning to sit, crawl and walk someday. But we’ll likely never live with concrete floors again so it’s kind of a novelty.

I’ve already shared a corner of the nursery. The few tweaks I’ve wanted to make still aren’t made to finish off the nursery, but this is the rest of the apartment (minus the bathroom). My one complaint about the apartment is that it’s darker than I realized it would be. I miss our light-filled living room, especially on days that are too hot to go outside or pouring rain. It can feel a little cooped up faster than our old apartment did and faster than our new house in Dublin will. There’s good light in that little house! But otherwise, this apartment has been a perfect little spot for us as a new family of three.  Here’s the view from the front door. You can see the patio out the back. The time has passed for us to spend much time back there — too hot and too many mosquitos! But Michael grills back there every day. This is also possibly the only time we’ll have stainless steel countertops. I’m not sure they’re my favorite surface since they show every mark. But they go with the concrete, so that’s fun. Know what else is fun? The disposal. And the dishwasher. We haven’t had either of those in seven years. And a little pantry on the right there, which is more storage than we know what to do with! It’s mostly filled with formula and pretzels.  I’ve enjoyed the open shelving, but I think it would be way more fun with all my pretty kitchen bits that are currently in storage back in Ireland. When we make some changes to our kitchen back in Dublin I think we might have just a few small open shelves for the pretty things. I’d rather the everyday things be tidied away. For the living room walls I picked up two big pieces of handmade marble paper with gold ink swished throughout. I tacked them onto mat board and had Michael secure them to the wall with copper nails. Cheapest and cheerful-est. Funny enough, we ended up with a used Ikea couch that was my vote when we bought our last couch in our old apartment. I didn’t win but now that we’ve ended up with this one, I think I’ll win when we get back to Dublin.  A tiny baby hand made it into this photo! Ha! Couldn’t bear to crop it out. We haven’t managed to cover the TV cords, but at least we hid the boxes and all that behind this little bookshelf. The bottom piece needs a better cover, but for now it has contact paper draped over. Like I said, we’re not shooting for perfection these days. Our Irish house is getting all my perfectionism when we get back. Maya’s toys are in the bin on the right. so far, they’re mostly contained and haven’t taken over. But as you can see there’s very little room if they do start taking over!  You can see Maya’s nursery on the left, dark from blackout material pinned over the windows. That kiddo needs total darkness or she’s convinced she’s supposed to be partying. Also, Maya in her hilarious jumper (here’s an action video!).  Kind of wonky curtains (left Michael in charge of that one weekend 😉 and a pillow my mom made from a Nicole Miller dish towel for me. I do really like our quilt but I don’t think Michael will let me take that back to Ireland. That won’t stop me from trying though! I found the side tables for $15 – for both! – on Craig’s List and painted them dark teal. The rattan boxes, if you can believe it, I’ve had since my first apartment after college. They fit perfectly. I found a lamp for my side because I am in charge of bedtimes. Michael gets sucked into books and keeps the lights on for hours and it drives me nuts. One day he’ll realize there’s a reason he never has a lamp, but for now it’s a very sneaky trick. I found this painting at the creepy second hand Sand Dollar store in our neighborhood. It came in the frame below, which I painted and put a Rifle Paper card. The painting is coming back to Ireland with us, I find it so cheery.  Michael and I have been walking two blocks over to the community tennis courts to practice for the family tennis match this summer. We’re going to win. Maya is a great cheerleader, so long as she gets to keep one ball at all times. Maya looks like she’s walking out the door. Won’t that be a crazy thing to see! My aunt made the batik fish wall hanging decades ago and it used to live in my dorm in college. My mom sent it down when we first moved in and Maya and I counted those fish a million times while rocking her when she was tiny.

Thanks for visiting!