Thoughts on Hospitality and some more house photos

Firstly, I want to take a quick second to share a beautiful blog post I read this morning. 
It's about the heart behind hosting, the heart of being open and available verses perfect and prepared. I loved it. 

Growing up my mom was always inviting people over. To me it makes sense that you would go to church, meet someone new and immediately invite them over for lunch. Even if you hadn't remembered to plan anything for lunch, or hadn't cleaned. People came before looking perfect. 

My mom always tells the story of her friend Ann. Ann reached out to my mom and she is the reason my mom was able to hear of the love of Jesus. Ann not only spoke it but showed it. Mom tells of the moment that Ann first invited her over for dinner. They were both young college students and Ann was only renting a small one room place with no real kitchen. She had a hot plate though. She had also recently run out of dishsoap and used perfume to wash her pans after her last meal. She'd made mom a meal using her hot plate and including carrots that tasted of perfume. They'd eaten on the bed since there were no chairs or couches. And Mom felt loved. While yes, she noticed the imperfections of Ann's ability to host in her space, she mostly felt the warmth and love extended to her. Thus began Mom's constant reminder, it's better to offer love imperfectly, than not offer it at all. 

This has stuck with me through basement suits and low income times, through business and in more prosperous times - my goal is to love people. 

Romans 12:13 (NLT)

When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality.

1 Peter 4:9 

(NLT)

Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.

I never realized this was a command in the bible before...it mostly just seemed like the loving way to act but now, oh now, it's on. Getting ready for hospitality to be ramped up a notch! 
Though to be fair, I'm not sure many more people we can fit into our schedule or homes, but that's not going to stop me from trying! I can not wait to move into our bigger house, purely to have the space to draw more people in!

Speaking of our house, while we were at the house on Saturday I took a few more pictures. When you're deciding how to decorate a house and how to fill the space it's helpful to have documentation of much of the space, and I'd realized there were whole rooms or sections of rooms that I couldn't see in the pictures I'd taken.
We also took measurements. We made some more plans.
There are so many things that are up in the air and that can't be planned for and that will just have to resolve themselves once we move in - for example how to set up the living room - until I can actually play around with couches in this space, we just won't know where everything works best.
But there are some things I can roughly decide on.

Here is another shot of the living room - I'm curious how to proceed with these brown railings in the window! Any ideas?

The living room is quite spacious, which I definitely like. And very bright!

Now to figure out how to set up the seating so that it's cozy for groups of 2 or 4 but also comfortable for groups of 20+.

Next to the living room and at the top of the entrance is a coat closet. I'm glad for that! 

We're always bursting coat racks at lifegroup. This will help!

And I'm making a personal promise now - this will not have our coats in it.

Biggest pet peeve; coat closets that aren't helpful for guests. 

Front Entrance! I'm going to put something to help gather guests shoes and to help contain the mail, since currently it just drops in. 

Storage room under the stairs.

I'm in love.

Extra storage for the win!

This goes into our laundry room. 

To my right is a bathroom (ugly) and a bedroom.

And the machines themselves.

I'll have a post coming on my thoughts to make this area less utilitarian but ugly, and more cute and super useful.

This is the ugly bathroom. 

1. Why is that toilet paper roll so high?

2. I hear you can pain tile/laminate - I think that wall ugliness will only be short lived.

Master bedroom! Nice bright window.

The room is bigger in real life than it looks in this photo.

Closet and ensuite.

Double the closet space we currently have now.

Win!

And our useful but ugly half bath.

I think if I paint the brown cabinets it will be slightly less terrible.

In our last house we had a purple toilet...now we'll have a pink one. At least we're consistent!

Coming up soon: Bedroom, office and laundry dreaming