Custom House Portraits

For my birthday last year I gifted myself custom house portraits.

I had a black and white portrait of each of the six houses we’ve called home over the years created by the talented Emily at Texture Design Co.

Our First House

This sweet little brick house saw lots of frozen pizza and ramen noodle dinners…….and plenty of yardsale furniture.

Our Second House

We didn’t even live here for a full year before we moved to Richmond, Virginia. This house had a really cool double-sided stone fireplace that separated the kitchen from the living room.  I did a lot of decorating experiments here.  And I may or may not have had a large ceramic frog cookie jar because it “matched our green kitchen countertops”.  #dontjudge

Our Third House

I’ll always have a really special place in my heart for this house as this is where we went from two to four.  We spent 3 and a half wonderful years here.  I painted the dining room walls Ralph Lauren Huntingcoat Red and the laundry room neon yellow.  The red was a good call.  The neon yellow was a good lesson.  😉

Our Fourth House

This house was built in 1953.  It had the coolest vintage bathrooms.  There was one with mint green tile, one with pink and one with a maroon and cream combination.  While we lived in Pittsburgh, our daughter had heart surgery.  This house saw lots of tears and prayers as well as many blessings like first steps and first words.  Every Christmas was white while we lived here adding to the magic of the holidays with babies and toddlers in the house.

Our Fifth House

This, as many of you know, is the house that inspired me to start a blog.  It’s where both of my kids learned to ride a bike and where my son spent all of his elementary school years.  Every house project was lovingly documented right here on this site.  We spent five wonderful years in this home, and this is the only house other than our third where I cried on our last day.

Our Sixth House

This, our current home, is where we finally made our dream of moving to Charleston a reality.  Two years in and we still feel like we’re on vacation.  We’re completely enamored with this beautiful city!

I will cherish these portraits forever.  Seeing them as I walk up and down the stairs makes me so happy. Visitors see pictures of the places we’ve called home, but I see newlyweds, first attempts at home improvement projects, fertility woes, pregnancy cravings, middle of the night feedings, little feet slowly coming down the stairs, bedtime stories, potty training, nerf gun battles, sleepovers, family movie nights, birthday parties…….all of our most precious life moments have happened inside the walls of these houses that we called home for a time.  To have a portrait made to commemorate our history was the very best gift I’ve ever given myself.

Gift Yourself or a Loved One

Emily at Texture Design Co. is currently offering a $5 discount of any order over $20 for Our Fifth House readers when you use the code FIFTHHOUSE. This code will be valid until October 31, 2017.  She will only be offering a limited number of custom house portrait slots between now and Christmas, so you’ll want to act fast if you want to gift yourself or a loved one.  They also come in color if you prefer.

*Note:  I ordered the 11×14 inch size for my house portraits, and then I bought inexpensive plain black frames from Target.  For a custom framed look, I had mattes cut at Hobby Lobby.