Roots

It's official: I have roots.

Not of the silver variety atop the noggin (though, yes, I have those too), but of the home and hearth kind.

We've lived in our little cottage in this little community for 10 years now, as of this past weekend. That's a big deal to me. It's the longest I've lived in any house.

While I lived in my hometown for nearly 30 years, I had never lived in the same house for very long at a time. I grew up in a family of renters and I can remember moving around my small hometown at least 15 times. I lived in one rental house two different times; another, three different times. The longest we lived in one place was maybe a couple of years. The shortest was three months.

This house is the third my husband and I have bought together, and it is the third community we have lived in. It is neither the biggest we have lived in, nor the smallest.  As I've mentioned in the past, it's just a little house, devoid of any glamour. But living here - in this cottage on the corner across from the cornfield - has meant the world to me.

With this home came a new community. It didn't take long for us to realize we didn't need sidewalks to connect us to our neighbors. Through several separate threads - school, work, sports, hobbies, church, volunteer interests - we were knit into a welcoming community.

And with this home came a church home. Being a part of our small country parish has blessed us in so many ways.

And with this home came friends. Wonderful, lovely, loopy, supportive, hilarious, perfectly flawed, real, true friends. The kind of friends who become family.

And with this home, came projects. This house is not an old house. We have owned a very old house and there is no comparing the two, project-wise. Yet, even though this cottage was just 11 years old when we moved in, it still needed work.

And 10 years later, it still does.

Time gets away from you; leaves you with a false sense of, "We'll get to it eventually." But you never do. Life happens: work, school, appointments. Fun happens. Working on the house sounds too much like work.

And then, a decade passes and you're like, "What the hell happened to our house?" Some days, it's like a hillbilly Addams Family lives here. Rusted fence. Dried up, weedy lawn. Faded, gray driveway. [Side note: we could really use some rain.]

Those new woods floors we were going to install in the living room? Never happened. The super-organized garage? Nope. White painted kitchen cabinets? Ha.

I hate you builder-grade oak from 1992. Still. Hate. You.

So you just pick a project here and there, and just plug away.

Just finished this weekend: Message center on garage door painted with chalkboard paint. This door leads from the garage into the kitchen - it's metal and so magnets stick to it for easy, interchangeable postings. Chalkboard paint allows for headers and erasable notes. Perfect place to stay organized as you pass in and out of the house each day. Keeps clutter off the fridge.

Magnetic locker baskets hold coupons (above) or chalk (below) and were on clearance from the school supplies bins.

No house is ever completely "finished." For all the nesting you accomplish, eventually the paint fades, counters scratch, carpet snags. You replace; repair. Projects get bumped due to time and budget constraints. Priorities shift.

Regardless of what does or doesn't get marked off our cottage's to-do list, we have still managed to achieve a major accomplishment: we made a house a home, rooting ourselves in a wonderful new community ...

... blooming where we were planted.