Rainbows and Promises

Lest you be fooled by the words "Rainbow Manor" in my blog title and think that I live in a house as large, gracious and expansive as the name "Manor" would indicate, I am here to set the record straight. I do not. But, I do live in a house that was built in 1905 and has all the charm and character that a house from that period would be expected to have.

The main floor of the house consists of a kitchen (with a little room off to the south that I guess you could call a butler's pantry), laundry room (that was formerly the bathroom), very large bathroom with two huge windows (used to be a downstairs bedroom), dining room/living room that is one large room, and a hallway leading to upstairs.

Upstairs are three small bedrooms with three small closets.

The house has a porch that extends all the way across the front (which faces east) but has been enclosed. We currently use it for storage. We have grand plans to turn 2/3 of it into a library and open the other 1/3 so we can use the actual front door to the house and I can have room for a porch swing.

There was a second-story porch on the house which was also enclosed. It measures about 3-1/2 feet wide and 10 feet long. This will be my husband's office and room to store his hunting and fishing equipment. He wanted one space in the house that was his and his alone. It's not very big, but he's not claustrophobic.

Over the main part of the house is a HUGE walk-up attic. As attics usually are, it's filled with Christmas decorations, boxes of out-of-season clothes for the girls, coolers, suitcases, books that have no shelf to decorate, and many things that need to be donated or sold. This space will eventually be a master bedroom suite for hubby and me with a bathroom all our very own.

Over the kitchen, there is a smaller attic. To enter this attic, you must go into the south bedroom, into the closet and open the left wall of the closet which is actually a door into the attic. This space is currently filled with blankets, camping equipment, a mattress, a chair and lamp, and out-of-season clothes that belong to hubby and me. This space will eventually be a playroom for the girls.

Under the house is a cellar. It cannot be called a basement. It's probably very much like the cellar at your grandparent's house. It houses all the canning equipment, canned food, freezer, hubby's tools, furnace, oil tank and various other things. There are no future plans for this space. It can only be a cellar.

The first floor of the house has 9-10 foot ceilings, 6-inch oak woodwork around all the windows, solid oak doors and 10-inch oak baseboard. The floors are beautiful hardwood and the staircase is all wood. The ceilings are lower in the bedrooms but the hardwood floors and woodwork are the same except that the woodwork is painted inside the bedrooms.

One of the reasons I named my house Rainbow Manor is because rainbows have seven colors and there are seven people in our family. Each is unique and beautiful in its own way. Each of us has a different favorite color. Belle and I like red, Aurora's is yellow, Snow White's is green, Ella's is blue and hubby's is purple. There's only one color left -orange. The four older princesses are convinced that littlest princess can't have any other favorite color than orange. We'll see!

There are three leaded glass windows in my house. One in the dining room, one in the living room and one in the front hallway. The glass is the living room window is beveled. As the seasons change from winter to spring and fall to winter, the sun shines through the east-facing living room window and paints rainbows all over my walls.

The five princesses love the rainbows as do I. They run around putting their hands on the walls and feet on the floors so that the rainbows will decorate their skin. The rainbows make us smile. But, best of all, they remind me of my Heavenly Father. When I see a rainbow, either in my house or in the summer sky, it reminds me that God is thinking about me and being faithful in keeping all His promises. Thus, the name for my house and my blog.