Dear friend, 

When I say that this is "a surprise", I sort of mean it's a surprise for you, but what I really mean is that it's a surprise for US, because when I started painting these house portraits last year, the last thing I expected was that we would soon have our very own home with our very own brick chimney, our very own bradford pear trees, and our VERY OWN RED DOOR!!! Well, truly it's more of a cranberry in person but I will not be complaining about any aspect of this dear little home. 

For the past two years, Manley and I have been happily renting a 900 square foot loft in downtown Nashville, and buying a home couldn't have been further from our minds. If you would have suggested, six months ago, that we would be buying a piece of property, and a whole house at that, anytime soon...we would have probably just looked at you like you were crazy. But then we...I, actually...fell swiftly and helplessly in love with this little home in East Nashville, just a few houses down from some of our very best friends. The whole deck of cards kind of fell into place after that, one by one, until it was over, and there we were: the bewildered owners of a tiny piece of land with a tiny yellow house on it. And we are SO EXCITED!

This year has been really good, and really hard, in so many ways on both counts. I turned thirty and was shocked to discover I felt like an actual grownup! My illustration career lately has been a dream come true. Our adoption process has been long and slow, full of delays  and uncertainty. But just last week, we got the first update about our little girl since our referral this summer! We even got to see a new picture, and I honestly didn't think it was possible for a human being to be so precious. The road ahead stretches on still, long and rugged.  But our hope has been renewed. Through all of this, I feel like in the truest of ways we are settling in to who we are, and I feel like this house will just further that settling. We are so humbled by the idea that we can be stewards of a  (very small) piece of this Earth and I'm already dreaming of the backyard chickens we will have. Two cats, two chickens, a little girl, and a partridge in a pear tree! A full house!

I've dreamed most of my life about decorating our "first home" and now that it's in our possession, I don't even want to decorate at all. I just want to paint the walls a warm, creamy white and fill it with flowers. Flowers and the people we love. That's all we need.

Well, and perhaps and antique chandelier or two. A girl's gotta have her crystal!

Love and happy weekends!

Rebekka