A Bloggy Tour of Homes

If you all haven't noticed and gone on to see, I've added Rocks in my Dryer to my blogroll - I was consistently surfing over to her through Queen Beth's place and, well, I decided it was high time I just added her to my own blogroll. Anyway, I now randomly and repeatedly surf Shannon's blogroll and happened upon BooMama who I have not yet added to my own blogroll but that's more than likely in the nearish future. Anyway, BooMama is having a "Bloggy Tour of Homes" today and I've always been a sucker for tours of homes. In fact, I'm one of those people who goes to see model homes and asks all kinds of questions and gets realtors all excited when, in actuality, I'm just looking cause I love seeing houses. So, as this is the closest any home I own is ever going to get to being included in a tour of homes, I figured I had nothing to lose by not participating. If you want to participate, the "rules" are here and BooMama said it was fine if you didn't get your post up until Saturday, so...you've got a whole extra day to participate. So go get clickin'!

We begin our tour with the front door - pretty surprising way to enter the house, actually, for anyone in the Sleepy family. Mostly we come in through the garage and so entering through the front door is a bit of an occasion. (Unless you're the pizza man, in which case you are very familiar with our front door.) It's not quite as much of an occasion as the front door was for me growing up - that door was opened so seldom that it actually stuck rather badly and often I recall running to the kitchen door and going through and saying "Come in this way!", much to the mortification of my mother. Our front door isn't quite that formal, however, and still opens just fine.


I promise you the door's not crooked and I'm not intoxicated - I was trying to avoid stepping on a frog.

The second photo is actually downstairs, in the basement, and is the office. It's where blogging and all manner of other computer activities take place. For example, Tim is currently on his computer killing aliens and other manner of bad guys whilst I type this up.

Many LAN battles have been known to take place here as well. Please excuse the messy desk, I'm also in the midst of organizing things.

Handily, the third photo is to be of our main living area, which is probably the theater. (This is handy because it's just down the hallway from the office, so it's a little more "tour like" to go from the office to the theater.) While not our living room, per se, it's definitely where we do the majority of hanging out, watching TV, listening to music (cause that's where the super good speakers are) and so forth.

See? Even Meg really likes the theater. And that's the corner of our popcorn machine. Sadly it's best as a decorative item than for the popcorn it produces, though we're working on something to try and keep it hot (which would add to the excitement considerably. I'm just not a big fan of cold popcorn. Neither, really, is Tim. Thus we usually just zap it.)

The fourth stop on our mini tour is the kitchen. I was glad to see that with these tiny pictures you can't see the state of my kitchen because, well, I just got over having company for seven weeks (yes, you read that right, seven!) and I haven't had a chance to break out the mop.


I tried to angle it a little better so you could see my Bing & Grondahl plates (they're the Mother's Day and the Christmas plates - I've got them interspersed), but alas you can only catch a glimpse on the far left wall. I really like them though. I think they finish the kitchen nicely.

The door goes to the garage - that's really our front door!

Oh, and that backsplash? I did that! (Well, Tim cut the tiles, but I put them up and grouted them.) It was our first real tiling job and we couldn't be happier with the results - so if you're at all handy and are considering tiling, I say go for it, it's tons of fun!

And I just realized my tablecloth isn't straight - that's gonna drive me nuts. But I will just attempt to resist the urge to go up there and fix it and take another picture.

The last stop was our choice and, well, I couldn't decide between the music room and the library. (I know it sounds impressive and snooty, but it's not really - it's just that there's two of us rattling around in this house that we bought while planning for kids, before we knew we weren't going to be able to have any, so we had to do something or the house was just this frustrating reminder of that lack. So the music room is the living room, converted to hold the piano and the library is one of the bedrooms - and really, I did need the book storage space, and it's just a lovely place to go and relax.)

So this is the "Music Room" - it's such a fun shade of red and so fittingly named (Drum Beat!) - I love to go in there and plunk on the piano (but only when no one is around to listen - I detest playing for an audience. And if I know that someone in the house probably has their ears perked, I flub much more than if I can convince myself that no one is home. The puppies are exempt from that, as they just seem to arrange themselves to listen quietly at my feet. It's very soothing.) The curtains have funky velvety starburst kind of things on them. They're from Ikea and when I saw how well they matched the red, well, I couldn't not buy them! And I love how they pool on the floor - I know I should hem them, but it just seems very Victorian to have them pooled there and it's lots of fun - when I'm not vaccuming.

Meg is apparently a photo-hog this evening - those are her ears.


Finally, the library. You can see the comfy couch and the ubiquitous Papasan chair - both delicious places to curl up and just read for hours.

For those who are interested, yes, my books are shelved in an order - they're grouped by subject area (SciFi, Fantasy, Mystery, etc.) and then alphabetical by author.

And yes, I know they make medication for that.

(But it really does make it easier to find things!)

Oh - and that color on the walls? Not actually the same as in the music room - this one is called Cranberry Zing and is a more orangey-burgandyish color than the red-red downstairs.

And that, my friends, is an abbreviated tour of my home. If you're just passing by on your own tour of the tour, I hope you'll comment and say howdy! And please do go visit other tours - BooMama has a Mr. Linky set up here.