House Archives - Spoonful of Imagination

Moving Fast, Hanging On

October 27, 2014 By Erica Deuel 1 Comment

Life is moving fast.

I feel like I need to retire my flip-flops and replace them with running shoes to keep up.

You know I love the country life. Every time I visit my sister in Arkansas it has been good for my soul. My last visit was no different. Two weeks ago, I drove with another one of my sisters and three kids 10 hours to Arkansas to meet our new niece….and hug the rest of her fam.

It was a short trip, but so worth it. I got to catch up with two of my sisters (I’m one of nine kids), hug my nieces, and unplug from all the house showing craze.

We went fishing.

We gathered wild flowers.

We rode ponies.

We stayed in our pjs.

We played games.

and we laughed a lot.

We came home from Arkansas and received an offer on our house the next day. We went back and forth ironing out the offer and the fine details, but the end result was a contract on our house. We celebrated with ice cream out, like everyone should!

There was such an immediate feeling of relief and a huge weight lifted from our shoulders.

We were so thrilled to have the house selling step of our move behind us. It was and is a complete blessing. So, we packed up our little family for another trip and headed out the next day for Indiana. It was time to house shop!

Our kids were rock stars to get placed back in the van for another 10 hour road trip.

To make a long story short, we needed to find a house that weekend to be able to seamlessly move from our house in Georgia to a new house in Indiana. We saw a lot of old houses that needed a lot of work. I loved so many of them. But the amount of work that was going to be required in fixing up these 100+ year old farm homes with sloping floors started to get discouraging. It was cold. It was wet. And we were tired.

We did find the PERFECT home though. Only to realize it is under a contingency contract. I walked through this beautiful old home (that has already been completely remodeled) and fought tears. I loved it, but it seemed impossible. It was already claimed.

I walked out of that house and had a huge cry. It was cold and rainy. I was wearing flip-flops and I was emotionally exhausted. BUT then God stepped in. Friends encouraged us, loved on us, gave us safety in hugs, and Matt bought me a new comfort blanket to warm my toes…and as I was praying through tears…a rainbow literally appeared for mere seconds.

It was hard to come home without a house. I have buried myself in packaging up Love is Patient shirts and starting the packing of boxes.

You know though, I feel so blessed. I had that cry and it was like my final release of me.

Jesus knows the perfect house for us, even if we don’t. I’m ok with that. I have my little family, we are on a path of following God’s call on our lives, and we have all our basic needs met.

Including an incredible family who is welcoming us into their home in Indiana until we find a place of our own.

So, I will continue to pack up this house and prepare to move in a short 11 days.

Thank you for continuing to journey with us. You all have always been such an encouragement to me. Thanks for doing life with us.

If you feel inclined, please pray for us during this transition. Most days are really good. We are trusting and have a complete peace we are doing what we are supposed to. The small details of packing boxes (not knowing what room/place they will end up) is hard in the midst of starting to say good bye to friends and family here (which we don’t have a lot of answers for to all their questions). We are praying that we live “love is patient” with each other as we step over boxes and rest our tired bodies and souls in a place we are starting to let go of.

Love you all! To follow this journey more closely, my instagram (@ericadeuel) is my daily blog.

Digging Our Way Out!

March 6, 2013 By Erica Deuel 2 Comments

You know that feeling where you are always stepping on stuff and you feel claustrophobic in your own home? Our house felt like it was swallowing us with all the stuff oozing out of cupboards, closets, drawers, and counters. I’m not even kidding when I say, before putting our house on the market it was common to walk through the door and not have anywhere to sit my purse.

Our house attack process literally had us touching everything we own. We pulled everything out of all the dark stuffed places. I had stuff in all my old purses. Just junk. Like when I switched out purses, I never cleaned out the old one. To date we have given away 24 bags/boxes of stuff to Goodwill. I have four bins of kids stuff to sell at a local kids consignment sale this week. We have filled two trailers full of stuff and taken it to the dump, and I have thrown countless other bags away in our trash cans.

Lastly, there are a few things like the kids rocking chairs, bean bags, picture frames that I didn’t want to part with but I knew in order to make this house feel bigger and let buyers picture themselves here, that stuff had to go elsewhere. My in-laws are graciously storing some of our stuff in their basement until we are able to sell this house and move. I have updated Our Home tab at the top with pictures of our house. Before you click over and see the pictures of our house now, check out some of the before shots.

Our boys’ bedroom was one of the worst rooms in the house. Without having a playroom. They currently share a bedroom AND it acts as storage for most of the toys in this house. It was a mess!

I am so proud that we got those dressers cleared out, all the toys organized, and the furniture rearranged to look so much better! Another room that needed storage help and rearranging was Reagan’s room. Here are some before shots of her room.

There was so much stuff in this little house. It feels so good to have cleaned out cupboards and closets, so now there is a place for things to be put away and so the counters are even clean!

The den/school room/craft room is by far the most used room in our house. There were so many school supplies and things stored on counters and in boxes on the floor. I cleaned out the cupboards, so it all fits inside there now. We also got rid of ALL those dvd cases and are now storing the dvds in a nice thin case.

The after pictures are still astonishing to me. At times I feel like this isn’t our house because “where is all our stuff?” It feels so much better now.

If you too feel like decluttering, even if you are not moving, please go visit my friend Ann Marie over at White House Black Shutters. If you follow me on twitter or instagram you probably have noticed I use the hashtag #40bags40days often. Ann Marie started this whole movement of people decluttering their house of 40 bags of useless stuff in 40 days. That is one bag a day. Although I know I was kicked in high gear with getting our house on the market, it has been so encouraging to follow along as other people were doing the same tasks I have been doing. Go check out her posts and tips through this series!

Now, PLEASE don’t leave without going to Our Home tab and checking out the AFTER pictures. Thank you so much for stopping by!

*** The winners of our Out of The Box Art Studio Summer Camps have been announced in the rafflleocopter widget on the original post. I will email the winners later today. Thank you to everyone who entered!

Old Home Tour

February 23, 2013 By Erica Deuel 10 Comments

We laughed with our realtor yesterday about the use of the term “house” versus “home.” There is a difference between the two words. One seems matter of fact and the other is personal. Since we began this house attack process, our living residence was a “house” in most of my frame work. I had a list of to-dos and I just kept at them. This week, the list of to-dos got less and less until we were done. Now that I am not in task mode and breathing (and able to sit once again), I am getting sad about leaving this place that we call home.

We changed this old 1952 house from Matt’s bachelor pad to a place where we started our marriage and our family. So many memories exist here. Although I am excited for this next phase of life, it will be sad to close a huge chapter here.

Yesterday, I showed you a quick DIY Initial I made to complete one of my staged shelves. Today, I want to give you the full tour of our house. Almost the way potential buyers see it…a full video walk thru. I will be updating our Home Tab at the top with more pictures soon, but I want to get them organized and edited properly first. Until then, please come see our house! Welcome in!

If you made it through the whole video, you saw we have two huge beds for these rascals.

I don’t talk much about our pups, but they are fun (and trouble) and nervous wrecks right now with all the moving and changes that have been going on. You also saw in the video I couldn’t take down all my boys’ art in their bedroom. I took down LOTS of pictures for staging, but I just couldn’t take down all their art. The video goes from our house to our apartment out back that I have mentioned we rent out to my brother and sister in law. Tony is the wood worker that I always refer to, hence the big pile of wood at the foot of their bed. The last thing you see is Matt’s office that Tony and our friend Zach helped create. Its one of my favorite places on this property.

Well, there you have it! That is our home! I will be back soon with lots of pictures and some DIY of items you saw featured.

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