Tuesday 4~Home Where the Heart Is

 

Home Where the Heart Is

Welcome back to Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4.
This week let's talk about home or the house in which you grew up.


1. What do you think of this picture.. the staircase. Do you like how it looks? Does it say "home" to you?
Would you like something that looks like this?

Although I think the staircase is beautiful, I am not fond of the floral carpet on the stairs as well as the floral wallpaper. It's a bit too much.  As far as this saying "home" to me? Well, not really. The home I grew up in did not have any stairs. And I really wouldn't want them now at this stage in life.  They are pretty, but very impractical for old folks like us!

2. Did you love growing up in your family home? Could you live in a house like that today?

This is a picture of how my family home looks today.My father built this home back in 1957, and I lived there until I left home to get married at the age of almost 19.  My parents lived there until they passed on from this life to heaven...my mother died on May 7, 2006, (19 years ago tomorrow!) and my father died on April 19th, 2011...14 years ago. It's hard for me to believe they've been gone that long and that our family home has been in the hands of "strangers" ever since my father died.   I've posted a few links at the end of this with some other old posts I've written over the years about the home I grew up in.  It was very special to me, and YES, I loved growing up there. 

There were six members of our family...my parents and us 4 children:

Here we were on probably our first or second Christmas in this house:

And here we are with our parents many years later in the same location: (you can see that I outgrew my older sister, and that is why I call her my "little big sister" to this day!)

3. What did your bedroom look like when you were a teen?

Sadly, I don't think I have any pictures of my bedroom...if I do it doesn't show much. I shared the bedroom with my sister until she moved out when she got married.  We had twin beds and my dad had built a nice big desk for us, picture a long table top about the size of a door, with a divider underneath with drawers, so we each had our own side of the desk.  My dad was a cabinet maker/woodworker, and he also built us a built in chest of drawers and a closet with cubby holes up above. It was all very neat.  I'm sure there's pictures somewhere, but I don't have them. When we were teenagers, my mother made curtains for our window that were white with big red megaphones sewn unto them, as we were both cheerleaders for our school. So our color scheme was red and white for a while, and then when Doris moved out I changed things to have lavender accents on white. I don't remember what Mom did with the red and white curtains, but somehow we changed them.

Oh, and our house only had one bathroom for all six of us. That was somewhat challenging, but we survived.  My brothers also shared a bedroom, and daddy built the same kind of furnishings in their room.


4. What kind of vibes or atmosphere do you like to foster in your home today? Sophisticated, homey?

(these photos were taken during the winter, hence the blanket on the sofa)

I think you've all seen enough pictures of my current home, and yes, it is very homey and lived in. I want our home to always be comfortable and cozy for anyone, family or friend or guests we've just met.  However, we do have more bathrooms now than when I grew up!  There is a full bathroom on the guest bedrooms end of the house, and then we actually have TWO bathrooms in our master bedroom!  Each bathroom has a sink and toilet, and then one has the shower, and the other one has a garden tub that we never use because it is too hard to get in and out of. The house came that way, which was a surprise to us, but I sure do love it!

These links are here for your interest if you wish, but also for me to be able to return to and remember!

Here is a link to one post I wrote about my old family home.

And Here is a link to more info about the town I grew up in

Here's another one!

I hope that no matter where you live or what kind of home you have, the most important thing is the love that is inside.