Tudor Woods

 My home for the first 13 years was the perfect, little, cottage-y sort of place.

It was just dreamy. Here we have lovely tropical, very floridian plants. Later we planted luscious blue plumbago flowers in the front; reminiscent of an English cottage. There was a trellis (that I built) leading you to our tiny backyard with an overgrown--in just the right way--secret garden. I loved everything about that little house. The playground and backyard that became anything we imagined:

A waterpark

 A Princesses garden

A theme park. We names ours "Coopers Land". The green swing was the parks most popular "Trip to Mars" ride.

The perfect place for a picnic.

We could play anything and be anything. Like in this picture Carley is disguising herself as a tree. She wanted a bird to builed a nest in her branches. She special little thing.

 Treasure Island.

________________________________________________

 Inside, the rooms were tiny but just right.

 The sea foam green walls in our room & lavender quilts & the sun shining through the eyelet curtains.

Books and books and books and more books.

The colonial style dining room with a table hand stained by Mom.

The scratched, worn kitchen table where our schoolwork was done.

Carley is wearing not but an apron in the photo. The shirt is photo shopped. ;)

The cramped kitchen where we had so little cabinet space that we had to store our pots and pans in the oven.

The living room. Oh, I just loved that little living room with vaulted ceilings, book shelves, the antique secretary, piano, and creaky wooden floors.

  I never wanted to leave but, we did, and quite suddenly. I never got to say a proper goodbye. God is good, and I was able to later retrieve many special keepsakes from my childhood. But, the place itself is lost to me. It took me a long time to fall in love with my current home. Until a year ago, I still called that cottage from my childhood "home". It took years to accept these four walls on Little Dorrit, and even longer to love them. It does take time and care to turn a house into a "home" and now near 8 years have passed and "home" it has become. Now, I can't imagine living anywhere else....