Homestretch Hundred Winner: Emily

I was so excited to see that Emily had won an illustration! Emily is such a faithful commenter and follower of oohmoon that sometimes I feel like we are besties! I choose Emily as a winner because she has turned her very difficult move away from a place she really loved, into a lovely happily-ever-after story-yet-to-be-written. I loved the “horror” story gone fairy tale her new home has become! And best yet, now they happily have long-term plans for their home!

Listen to Emily tell her story:

I love our home for a lot of reasons. Three years ago, I didn’t want to leave our loft in Dallas, but you go where the work is and here we are. I’d been marking time in this house – it’s in the ’burbs and it’s in a town I didn’t want to live in…my first trip home was emotionally disastrous. It just reminded me that I didn’t want to leave. When I was sitting in the airport I realized that I was going home to my husband – and that where we lived was *home*. A few months later I was pregnant, and when we brought our son home, the house we rent felt even more like home. My son is growing up here – learning to crawl and walk – and now we’re planning on buying this house in a few years (when our landlord is ready to sell) and now I see our future here. Some renovations (I was an interior designer in my future life) are in the works, but I plan on building the rest of our lives here. We’ve got a dozen fruit trees on the lot and eventually at least one of them will have a swing…and maybe a tree house. I love our neighborhood, I love the life we’re creating, and I love that this house will be large enough to hold our family, our visiting friends and family, and hopefully – when the time is right – foster children, who can share the love in our home while they are in transition of their own lives. But that’s way in the future. For now, I love the hardwoods, and the kitchen that is perfect for an exploring toddler, and the lump couch that is so comfortable for napping and snuggling. And the kitchen – in which many, many happy meals are made.

In Emily’s answer for what she would like illustrated, she left it pretty up in the air for me to conceptualize. She told me a story she thought might inspire some creativity. Her and her husband love to cook… in the from-scratch-old-fashioned-kind-of-way our grandmothers and great grandmothers cooked. She said their kitchen is the heart of their home and she sees her son and husband finding the cure for cancer right in that very room! Fantastic!

So, between the two stories—their life-altering move, and their love for all things kitchen—I created a sort of compilation piece. If you look carefully, you see several layers (each layer represented by a different color). Imagine standing in Emily’s old loft in Dallas, looking out the window, over the mountains, through the fruit trees in her backyard, and into the kitchen window of her new home in California. Each layer represents another layer between past and present, one location and the other, bliss… and new-found bliss! Emily chose the colors. And you could say she gave me the concept too.

Thanks Em. For sharing of your life with us, and helping us remember that with time, what is undesirable can most absolutely become desirable. There’s hope in that.

Congratulations Emily and family!

xoxo,
Katie