February 6, 2018

Greetings My Friend,

In a few minutes I am going to go make dinner, while I sit here writing I hear Junior working on a shelf he is making for me in the kitchen. I am excited to have one more shelf as he works to  complete the kitchen renovation, we have been renovating our home for seven years now. The kitchen has been set up the way we want it with the wall from the enclosed porch knocked down, some rough cabinets along the windows that over look the back yard. The windows are the length of the wall that used to be the enclosed porch so we can see the entire back yard, the woods off of the yard and part of the road going down own street. We have our table facing this wonderful view and as we eat we see the beauty. I love the size of the kitchen it is large and gives me lots of room to move about as I cook, bake, dehydrate etc. As I think on the renovation process I realize we have come along way since we started this process of renovating an old farmhouse built in the 1920's. When someone says a house has good bones, ours had that add to the great bones, the house needed renovating from those bones up. There was no electricity, no heat source other than an old fashioned wood burning kitchen stove and it still had a few original to the house pieces of furniture including an old Hoosier cabinet, two old corner shelves the owner had made even a straw filled wood rocking chair and a straw filled pillow for the chair. Several times a day I find myself thanking God for this wonderful home He led us to, I have never felt so comfortable in a home as I have in this one and I have lived in many different homes in my lifetime. My main desire since my 40's has been to have everything in the home on one floor. Watching my Grandmother stuck in an upstairs bedroom when she was ill and dying made me desire a one floor home, God fulfilled my dream. When we first undertook renovating I became addicted to watching programs where people renovated homes, rooms etc. The fun part of all these programs is they got rid of all the old furniture and included all new appliances and furniture. I was taken in with the perfectly renovated home that was showcase beautiful and even dreamed one day we would live in such lavish beauty. As time went on I realized that I was not a showroom type of woman, I love down to earth mix and match to my likes types of decorating. I don't really need two bathroom sinks or a large walk in closet. I am willing to work with the appliances I have and when I replace them I can begin to match the colors of the appliances to my color scheme. The longer we renovated the more we lived in the home the more we were able to adjust for our needs like allowing room for me to walk around with a walker. God slowed Junior down last spring with a hernia surgery, 10 weeks getting Junior's bladder to work on its own again and last fall Junior's shoulder froze up on him. As we came to an almost standstill God laid on our hearts to enjoy the basic necessities of a home and let go of lavish ideas. Junior has extended our front porch so that it can be an outdoor room. We can sit and enjoy a fire in the fire pit, we have a container garden started at one end of the porch that he built up a bit higher. The porch wraps around to the kitchen door where we have a freezer, a couple of old dressers that store various tools etc. God has provided us with much and our home is a safe comfortable place to live quietly with our fur children. That is what I truly wanted more than anything. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet