This house we moved into after living in a small rental house for a month and a half after moving from Indiana to South Dakota when our 4th baby (our rainbow baby) was only 5 weeks old. We always had in mind that our "outdoorsy whimsical coffeehouse" would be the one we grow old in, but God had other plans. We just had a strong impression we were supposed to move and my husband's family was 10 hours away from our Indy house, and he wanted to move closer to family. However, the cost of living was too high there, it wouldn't have been healthy for us at the time for multiple reasons, and my sister who I used to share a room with and was closest with growing up just happened to live about 4 hours away from them in South Dakota. She got married and moved away when I was 16, and it was incredibly hard on me. At one point, I lived with her family for 2 months, and even funnier is that my husband stayed with them at another point in his life as well, but both were separate instances and we kind of met through them and both loved Sioux Falls when we stayed there. So, we mentioned it and kind of had a peace about it, but my husband said there was no way he could be a teacher (like he had been for a decade before) if we moved here and me be able to stay at home with our kids as teaching jobs here pay one of the lowest in the states, and the cost of living and the housing market was higher than where we were in Indy. The very next day, an old friend who hadn't talked to my husband in about four years at that point called him up asking if he'd be interested in a managing position at a painting company he started up that his brother was taking over. We were baffled and thought what's the worst that could happen and maybe this was God's leading so he applied.

3 visits later and 2 days before I had our 4th baby, we got confirmation he was hired. We had planned to meet up with a realtor 2 days later only for me to go into labor that morning. It was by far my quickest delivery, and my husband still met with him that afternoon. Our realtor tried to list us almost $40-$50k less than what I had in mind, so I was finding comps in the hospital hours after delivery, telling my husband to show him them, plus, we kind of needed the extra money to put a decent down payment on a home here with the higher market, and he went with what I said. We had multiple people interested before ever having a showing and got an accepted offer within $5k of our asking price by the 8th day, plus they wanted most of our furniture and our riding lawnmower that we made an extra $2k from. We closed the day after my husband's school year was over & drove almost 12 hours away immediately after. It was such a whirlwind experience and so hard to leave family, friends, and the place we called home, but it's been good and amazing how much God has seen us through everything.

I was literally starting from scratch with such a big move minus our sectional, some kids' furniture, blankets, rugs, some artwork of mine, and our nightstands. We absolutely loved our house to begin with, but I found the colors too beige and boring. I found out how much harder it is to change something that already looks good as you can actually make it look worse then, and my husband already had a hard time seeing anything I envisioned with anything I've ever done and only somewhat started trusting me because his friends started telling me they wanted me to decorate their houses someday. The craigslist here didn't have as wide of a selection as in Indy (their online rummage is much closer to it I've come to find) & I just happened to find a dresser at a great price that I loved at a nearby store that happened to match some fabric my sister had made a pillow with that I had just told her might be the most beautiful fabric I had ever seen, and it would allow me to use some floor pillows my sister had already given me that I loved as well, and I could make our biggest rug work with it too. All had a Moroccan flair or could be used in the design, and I have always absolutely LOVED Moroccan design. Not to mention, going Moroccan would allow me to keep our trim wood to match the style, keeping contrast between the trim and carpet, and the type of trim in our house would have looked horrible painted anyway and taken sooo much time, especially with the majority of the house carpeted. With Moroccan design, you kind of have to go big or go home.

After our accepted offer and during the waiting process to move in while in our small rental house, I found 3 mirrors for the price of one on a major clearance sale at Hobby Lobby with a bunch of other stuff up to 90% off. By the time we moved in, I had already bought fabric and knew 4 colors I wanted to incorporate, and we were allowed to get in and paint the entire living room and entry way the turquoise color the night before we moved in. The walls were so hard to break up with the layout so there was so much green surrounded by beige and without the proper context, it looked so out of place. The next day, a guy from my husband's work who was helping us move in asked if we were going to paint over the color we had just painted. It didn't quite dawn on me up until that point that nobody in our entire state besides my sister & maybe a few friends who saw pictures online knew that I could do anything artsy or anything to do with interior design. So, not only would I have to prove to my husband I could do this when he was satisfied with beige, but I would need to prove it to everybody including myself who was somewhat terrified of messing up as I hadn't really had a lot of experience yet. I would need to re-establish my identity in a way here, and it was somewhat terrifying. Thankfully, an old friend had just loaned me her book called "The Nesting Place" before we moved, and I had never read an interior design book before, but I devoured it then. It was everything I needed to move past my fear and make decorating fun like I had always seen it in the past. The rest is a result of that feeling on a super limited budget. The majority of it was from the online rummage, different objects that I transformed with mod-podge and fabric I got early on, really good holiday sales or just sales in general that had things 70-90% off, lots of paint that my husband now gets on sale working for a painting company that really helped, some thrift store accessories, or a few things bought with coupons, or just given to me that I transformed to fit the style. Frankly, I loved it. Surprisingly, my husband ended up liking it too- though, he is color blind. He told me he preferred our Indy house style though better so I knew it wouldn't work long term as I wanted him happy too. We lived here for 3 years, I homeschooled my 3 oldest during that time, and we had our 5th baby.