Renting is freeing.  Sink is leaking….You call the landlord.  Water heater busts…..You call the landlord.  Heater goes out……You call the landlord.  Kitchen light stops shining….You call the landlord.  Basement is leaking….You call the landlord.  Get the point? And all these happened to us the last 2 plus years of renting this house.  

Not to mention, there were no weekend projects or money spent on the home because either we couldn’t or it wasn’t ours so we didn’t want to invest our time and money doing it.  Renting was nice for a season-I’ll admit it.  Especially, when our family was very young.  We were able to explore our new city every weekend, travel home to see family as much as we wanted, etc.  

But the decorator and desire to make our house our home continued to scream within us.  We terribly missed projects and home decor shopping, and we were getting tired of living in a home we loved but wasn’t us.  

I prayed about this war within me almost daily.  The verses I continued to come back to were Psalm 16:5, 6, “Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”  I prayed the Lord would make me content and joyful wherever he planted us whether the season was short or long.  We had a tug-of-war game with the freedom of renting and the desire to live in a house that was ours. 

Many mornings I would pray these verses asking for the Lord for guidance.  My Bible is completely marked up as I prayed over our family, homes, schooling, friends, etc.  I guess you could say these are my verses right now:

My Bible is all marked up here!  Haha!

So when deciding on a name for this blog, I came back to these verses and wanted to name it Pleasant Boundaries.  I pray this home will be a home where the peace, love, and joy of the Lord will reign creating a pleasant home to raise a family.

Okay, so here is our first home blog!  I’m so excited!!

First of all about our family:

Family of 4 transplanted to the Greater Atlanta area from Coastal Carolina 2 1/2 years ago.  We love the area and all it has to offer from Braves games, concerts, farmer’s markets, and festivals to hiking, biking trails, mountains, lakes, and rivers so we’ve chosen to settle down here and just purchased our first local home which is why we’ve started our blog.

We’ve been married for almost 10 years, and yes, are still madly in love.  We’ve always dreamed of buying an older home with character, charm, and quirks and rehabbing it but our first home (located in SC) was a newer cookie-cutter type home, and we chose to rent when we first moved to Atlanta.

He’s a print facility supervisor by day, a graphic designer by night and an awesome father and husband all the time. I’m a wife, homeschooling momma and small business owner by day……24 hours a day. 🙂

We are both creative-types.  My husband is mad talented with graphic design.  I’ve always loved interior design, and wanted to make a career of it but my dad encouraged me to get a business degree.  I’m thankful for that! We are both perfectionists….yes, we admit it.  However, my husband is a detailed perfectionist, and I’m a “let’s get it done so we can move to the next project and have everything looking pretty” perfectionist. I’m thankful for his detail because it balances me out but it makes for some interesting projects.  🙂

The last 2 1/2 years renting, we’ve daydreamed of projects, drooled over beautiful furniture, and  had lots of conversations of “one day when we own a home we live in again….” Last Thursday, our prayers and dreams were fulfilled, and we bought this house:

No it’s not a bungalow or even an “old home” but it is an “older” salt box-style home in a neighborhood and area we love with lots of charm, quirks, and great potential.  We know this since we bought the house we’ve been renting for the last 2 1/2 years! Yay! for no moving!!

We are VERY inexperienced DIY-ers set to make this house a home we love to share with these 2 beautiful souls:

Luke, Age 5, a  handsome little hunk, baseball fanatic and smarty.

And Elle, age 3, a beautiful, spunky little girl who loves pink sparklies, high-heeled shoes, princesses, worms, and rocks. Yes, she is diverse!

This is our online journal of our home renovations and the road along the way.