Bit of Sugar and Falling Snow

Google search :: Best white paint for north facing home

Google search :: Best white paint for south facing home

Google search :: Behr equivalent to Ben Moore Cloud White

Google search :: Scandinavian homes

Crisp clean open white walls have been an obsession of mine for the last decade. It turns out the internet has a lot to say about white paint! The best thing I came across was someone who asked a person who lived in Sweden how they choose the perfect white paint. Their answer, “We go to the store and buy it.”

I have no guilt about the hours I’ve poured into color swatches. Corona isolation was the perfect time to be in home, make home, fall in love with home.

Our renovation project is the Magic Lake House. A home Dave bought many years before we met, fulfilling his lifelong childhood dream of having a cabin on a lake. Because we aren’t able to live there year round as the kids live with both us and their other parents, our plan has been to retire there and build a forever home some day.

Last year we started feeling the drain of keeping up with this house that needed updates and repairs and a whole lot of love while raising 5 kids together in another state. After talking it through we felt ready to let go of this magical space. We decided to sell it. Then Corona swept in and our plans to renovate in March were replaced by staying home, staying in, staying safe.

So we began to dream into the renovation. What would we need to do to sell it. I came up with a vision and shared it with Dave. Pretty much all the things I’ve been drooling to do since living there, beginning with white walls to open the space and add light.

Removing all of the heavy furniture cluttering the space was my first tasks once we were able to travel to NH in late May and begin our work. Often these homes are purchased with everything in them, from the beds to the silverware. There is a lot of extra and we were able to donate most of it.

Somewhere along the way of choosing white paint we began to question our decision to sell it but we are proceeding as if. We are spending every spare moment renovating (stories to come) and if at the end of the renovation we fall back in love, we will play love it or list it!

The end result of the paint choices are…

Behr paint in Falling Snow for the kid bedrooms and Cotton Blossom for our bedroom and the rest of the house. Trim paint is Bit of Sugar.

…….

I haven’t blogged in years. After some time away from social media during the quarantine I decided to take some time to live offline for a bit. I liked it. There was a performative quality to being on Instagram that wasn’t feeling true to who I am now.

And. I learn a lot from social media. I learn about amazing people, especially since the world has cracked open and the truth of racism and injustice and the #blacklivesmatter movement is now part of my learning in the world, part of my change. And in my home with my kids, the resources I am pointed to are incredible and I am so grateful.

So I am figuring out how I want to engage with social media. I’ve taken time away from writing a newsletter and I’m excited to get back to that.

I also felt this special little nudge to just blog like I used to when the kids were younger. Stories of my days, not on social media, but here, in this space that is mine. A place where I can record my journeys, like this renovation project that has become a beautiful glue between Dave and I.

That’s where I’ve landed. Here I am. Hi.

Remember the old days when we left comments to each other? Yeah, me too.