Make Your Home a Haven From the World: Day 2

(image via)

One of the ways you can make your home a haven from the world, is by making it a place you want to be. A place you and your family like.  A place you're comfortable.  A place you like looking at aesthetically.  Find your style and then do the best you can with what you've got or what you can easily afford, and make it pretty.  Make it you.  I think that if we like the way our home looks, we want to be there.  We're happy there. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  Our homes don't have to look perfect.  Not every room has to immediately look like the cover of a magazine or exactly the way we want it to right away.  But I think over time, we can tweak things, move things around, find inspiration and copy it, until we really feel comfortable with it.

This is how our front porch looks right now.  It's not my dream look.  But I did the best I could with what I've got, and now I like it enough to feel comfortable with it.  It makes me happy.  As I turn the key to enter through the front door, I admire the new paint color, I like the boxwood that I transplanted from the backyard.  I like the simple wreath with the simple grosgrain ribbon and I like the orange pumpkin and the doormat with the key on it.  There's enough "I like's" here, that my eyes can move past all that I don't like about it and feel happy and grateful that this is the place I get to call home. 

It took us five years to go from this...

To this.  Now this room feels comfortable to me.  It took five years to get it this way, but I like it now.  I want to be here.  I feel comfortable getting on the floor with my kids and playing board games, or lounging on the couch watching a movie on Friday nights with my family, or gathering with my family in the morning to read the scriptures and pray together before we all go our separate ways for the day.  

Although the transformation process of this room took us five years, every day of those five years, this room still felt like home to me.  With every new pillow bought, every addition of furniture, every plank of laminate laid, this room felt more comfortable.  But don't forget that the real sense of home comes from those daily interatctions that occur in these gathering spaces.  I had to teach myself to enjoy the process.  

Enjoy every little tweak you make and it will feel like a comfortable haven to you all along.  Bottom line, make it a place you like to be at the end of every day.

*This is a 31 days series:  Make Your Home a Haven From the World .  I will be writing on this topic every day for the month of October.  Click on the link below to read the previous day(s).

Day 1