Fun Monday - Front Porch Lookin' In

Our hostess this week, Julie over at Another Chance Ranch, apparently overheard me lamenting that I needed to clean my house and put away the Christmas decorations, because here's her assignment:

Instead of standing in your front door and taking a photo of what you see outside, let's turn around and take one of the inside. Maybe that will prompt some of us to pick up a tad (you know who you are). :)

So last night I diligently put away the boxes of Christmas decorations.  I even straightened up a bit.  Then today hit.  I thought of doing a quick deep cleaning, or taking the photo from a different door - but that just didn't seem right.  I figure anyone who is reading this wants to know what our life is really like, not see some great photo like you can get from buying a magazine of lovely houses that no one really lives in.  So here is the view, in all of its dirty glory.

Yes, I know the photo is a bit tilted, but sometimes so am I. If I'm not going to clean, then getting a straight photo probably isn't going to happen either.  Let me describe a bit of what you see when walking in.  

First, I don't have a garage, so this is our main entry to the house as well as our family room.  We use it to house our impressive collection of winter footwear, including the three pairs of ice skates (one still in the box) by the slider.  It also houses our collection of winter outwear.  You can see Diva's winter gear lying on the floor drying out after some tumbling in our latest 8 inches of snow -- and looking out the slider you can see some of that snow.  Lot's of it, actually.  A careful viewer can even glimpse the treehouse that came with our house.  

Next, notice the folded up treadmill.  I insisted we put the treadmill in this room so I might use it occasionally.  I knew if we put it in the basement I'd never step foot on it.  Need I tell you how well that strategy is working?

Then there's the Dell box.  Since Kilowatt is so handy, we periodically receive such parcels from friends and family with the message  - 'can you fix this?'

Finally, the boxes on the surround sound speaker that look like shoe boxes - those are train boxes.  Kilowatt picked out his birthday present yesterday.  And the surround sound doesn't go with the teeny tiny TV  you can see in the photo - there's more to this room than you can see from this photo. 

Finally, because I'm in rule breaking mood this week - here's a photo looking out. 

This photo is of Kilowatt using another one of those tools you just don't hear much about down south - the roof rake. Yes, when the snow gets too high on your roof, you have to clear it off just like your driveway and sidewalk, or risk something called ice dams.  

And the brown thing you see in the left - that's a snow shed.  If you want your bushes to look good in the summer, you've got to cover them in the winter to keep the snow from weighing them down.  Then you put fencing around them to keep the deer from snacking.  Hungry deer don't care that my front door is mere feet from their target.  

Well, I'm off to see what you see looking in at your house.  I hope someone else has a house as 'lived in' as mine!