Cottage Tour My Practical Magic-Inspired Home

Hi everyone, welcome to our cottage. Today I'm going to take you for a tour of our home. This home is about 200 years old. I believe it was built sometime around 1830 and we just hit our three-year anniversary of renting here. So we've been here for a little while and in that time we've figured out some things to make it a little bit more functional and personal to us. This is really typical of older homes but it has a really quirky layout and the ceilings are very low. In fact there are some doorways in this house that are so low that Alex has to duck to walk through so definitely a bit of an unusual space but we love this house. It has so much character and we've done a lot to really make it feel like home the past few years. Okay let's get started, I'm going to show you around. So this is our front door. When you first walk into our home we have the kitchen and dining area over to the left and then we have the living room over to the right. And then across from the front door we have this big cabinet. This is where we store household essentials like paper towels, toilet paper, we even have our shoes and keys in here. And then over here we have a few hooks to hang our coats and bags. And then walking back we have the dining table and a couple chairs. This is pretty small but it's enough space for Alex and I day to day. And then on this side this is our little tea and coffee station. I have all my teas over on this side and the electric kettle. And then we have this tiered fruit basket. Because we have limited counter space it's really helpful to have things with vertical storage so we have a little more space. And in the drawers and cabinets I store things like measuring cups and spoons, extra stuff from my tea station and apothecary, coffee stuff and other things like that. To the side of the dining table we have the pantry. So this is another metal cabinet and we've found these to be really useful and affordable for storage especially working with a smaller space. They create an extra closet or cabinet where we need one. So we store all of our food in here. We also recently took some contact paper and wallpapered the outside of the cabinet which looks really cute. I think it kind of makes it look more like a piece of furniture. We also hide the microwave in here as well which has been really nice and it saved us some counter space. Over here next to the pantry we have a rug and Obie's food dish and water dish. He's a very messy eater so he does prefer a rug for his dining setup. So over here we have our kitchen table desk thing. This has been a difficult area of our home to figure out. We've tried a few different furniture pieces here by the window but nothing was working quite right. So recently we found this tabletop and these are actually desk drawers from Ikea and we decided to make our own kitchen desk. It's definitely quirky but it works really well for us because it adds extra drawer space and extra kitchen storage. We ended up getting a curtain rod and some curtains to go between these two desk units to cover up the space a little bit more and make it look less cluttered and then we store bigger items in here like Obie's food and litter. Adding curtain rods around the house has been a really great affordable hack for creating more storage space and making things look less cluttered and I'll show you there are a few other areas of our home where we've done this but it's a really nice thing especially if you're renting. So those are some of the functional things in our kitchen but I wanted to talk a bit about the design. So I've been really inspired by Practical Magic when it comes to designing things around the house. The kitchen was a place where I really wanted to incorporate things from the movie so one thing that they did with the set design that I thought was so beautiful is they filmed it in an older home but they brought in a lot of things from nature to make it look really magical and very organic. So over here on the kitchen table I have a mini greenhouse and I was really inspired by the greenhouse kind of conservatory room in Practical Magic and I wanted to make a mini version of that here in my kitchen. I have some plants growing in here, I also have this little terrarium off to the side that I made a few years ago. These are artificial flowers but I love how magical they look. And in this part of the kitchen I have my mini apothecary. I actually did a full apothecary tour on my channel if you want to see more about this in detail but I love how this looks over here on my countertop. It's very whimsical. And here over the window I have all these bunches of dried flowers and a moon garland and I love the way this looks. It's one of my favorite places in the house. It's very Practical Magic and witchy. I also have these little shelves behind me. I set these up when I did my kitchen makeover a few months ago and they turned out so cute. They helped fill in this blank wall behind me and they've also been really functional. We have a really small gas oven and stovetop here in the kitchen. I think this might technically be a half-size oven. I'm not totally sure on that but it's definitely a little bit of a challenge cooking with this sometimes but I also think it kind of fits the vibe of the kitchen and makes it very cute and charming. We were really lucky when we moved in here that the cabinets were painted this color. It's kind of a light gray green and we really like it and it works with a lot of our decor. Over here in this corner we have a small fridge. This was originally stainless steel but we went in with removable contact paper and wallpapered over the fridge when we did our kitchen makeover and it really transformed the kitchen. On the opposite side we have a small stacked washer dryer unit and this door behind me leads to the furnace. This kitchen window is one of my favorite parts of the kitchen. I just think it's so cute and we have our sink here and then the coffee and tea station is on the opposite side. We store glasses and mugs up here and some of our spices and we keep a basket over here for storing our kitchen towels and occasionally obi. On this side we have the living room. It's definitely been a challenge for us to figure out how to lay everything out in this room. On the far wall we have the bathroom and then we have a door that leads to our hot water heater. So that side wasn't very functional and we ended up putting our tv over here. This setup isn't ideal but it's working for now. We've tried the tv in different areas of our home and this feels like the best one. We also put a tension rod and some curtains on this cart just to hide Alex's gaming system and make it look more organized. On this side of the room we're really happy with the layout and we think it looks really cute right now. So we have obi's cat tree, our couch with the gallery wall over top. I really wanted the gallery wall to have a thrifted eclectic look so we combined a lot of different frames and styles of art and I really love how it looks. And then over on this side we have one of our bookshelves. I have a couple more upstairs as well and things are a little bit disorganized right now with my books. I definitely need to go through and sort everything but let me know if you're interested in a bookshelf tour and I can make a video for that in the future. Over here to the side of the shelf we have Alex's guitar and this is actually a cross stitch that my friend made by hand for Alex and I for our wedding and we love it so we keep it on display here in the living room. This is the bathroom. I just recently did a mini makeover in here where I replaced the shower curtain and I added this stained glass window film. I think the star and moon charms on the shower curtain and all the colors in the window film look really pretty and magical. This is kind of a strange quirky cabinet on this side because it's under the stairs. It's a very small space so we keep obi's litter box in there. I have a close right now because I thought I'd spare you the visual of that and then on this side we have a cabinet where we keep all of our bathroom stuff. And over here in this corner of the living room we have a big shelf with curtains where we store all of our food photo props. In this corner of the living room we have the entrance to the stairs. This is obi's favorite part of the house. He loves playing over here on the stairs running up and down with his birds. There's also a ledge at the top of the stairs that wraps all the way around and he loves playing on here. We haven't decorated much over here just because the stairs are so narrow and there's not a lot of space to work with but we have this celestial wall hanging that looks really pretty and fills up this part of the wall. It's really eclectic and I love the colors of the glass. We also have a couple windows here on the stairs which is really nice. It lets a lot of light in and there's a really pretty view of the trees and field in the back. This Tiffany lamp was here when we moved in and it's one of my favorite things about the house. I just think it looks really pretty and I feel like it adds so much character and we use them all over to decorate but I love this one here over the stairs. Obi and I like to look at the birds from this window each morning and I think this is the cutest window decoration. Alex's stepmom gave this to us after we adopted Obi. Okay so now we're at the top landing of the stairs and this is where things get really quirky. The ceiling is super low. I'm 5'6 for reference so it's almost touching my head. Alex has to duck every time he walks through this part of the house so it's not super functional but we have a couple little things over here. We have a mini linen closet. This is where we store our blankets and sheets and we have Obi's cat cottage on top and then over here this is a wood carving that Alex's grandpa made and we love keeping it here on display. It's a really sweet memory for him of his grandpa. So there are two rooms up here. This door leads into the library room and our extra office space and this goes into the bedroom. This is definitely a quirky room when it comes to layout because most of the rooms in the house are really small and then this one is randomly very big. It's the biggest room in the house so we've had to rearrange our furniture a few times to try to figure out a layout that makes sense and I think we finally landed on something that works for us. Over on this side of the room we have the bed and by placing it here it kind of divides half of the room into the bedroom area. For the color palette of this room we went with a lot of earthy colors and botanicals again pulling from that practical magic aesthetic and I love the botanical print on the duvet cover and the curtains. I feel like they work really well together. We have nightstands on either side of the bed and I love this Tiffany lamp so much. I think this is one of my favorite things I own. The colors are really beautiful whether it's on or off and I also keep some jewelry trays over here for my rings and necklaces and then we each keep our dressers on either side of the nightstands. We've been wanting to paint these for a while but we haven't gotten around to it and we also can't decide on a color so let me know if you have any ideas. And then over here on top of my dresser this is where I store some of my body care products and room sprays and I thrifted this beautiful vintage mirror tray and this is where I keep my perfumes and some of my jewelry and I keep some of my body care products and essential oils in this apothecary cabinet. I love this so much. It's new but it looks vintage and has that apothecary look. And then over here at the end of the bed we've added some extra storage. This is a wood bench that we got from Ikea a few years ago and we use this to store things like books and art supplies. On this side of the room we have the closet. It's relatively big which is great for storing all our clothes. Alex uses the right side and then he was kind enough to give me this side. I decorated my closet last year and I did a little closet makeover and I wanted everything to fit with this kind of natural cottagey vibe. So already the closet has these nice stained wood doors in this warm color and to fit with that aesthetic I also got some wood hangers for my clothes. They're really nice and durable and they hold up really well especially with heavier clothing. The frame and base of the mirror are also wood and then for storage on top I also use these woven baskets and I use these vintage style suitcases for deeper storage like my off-season clothes. And then to add more greenery I went in with some artificial ivy. I like to hang some of my favorite bags and accessories over here on this side of my closet and I also like keeping my crescent moon wreath over here that I made last fall. It's so pretty and it works really well with the color palette in this room. And I always like to keep a basket over here. This is where I store my clothes that I've maybe worn for a couple hours. They're not dirty but they're not clean. That is my re-wear pile. In this corner of the room we have a little bit of a strange setup but functionally it works really well for us. We have Alex's desk over here then my work desk and the art desk. Like I said before we've tried a lot of different furniture configurations in this room trying to make it work and we found that it's best to make this corner our little office corner. Both of us work from home so it's nice having dedicated work desks and the art desk is a really fun creative space. We also have a few different drawer units under the desks which is great for adding more storage space. Something really cool about the upstairs part of our house is this exposed wood on the wall. It makes the house feel even more cottagey and I really wanted to highlight it over here in this corner so I added some greenery and lights and put a little painting and a hanging basket over here to store extra magazines and notebooks. I use this little drawer unit to store some of my desk supplies and I also love cord organizers. They just keep everything looking a lot more clean so I keep this one here on my desk to store cords and external hard drives from my computer. On my art desk I have this little organizer where I keep my notebooks and then I also like keeping colored pencils and art supplies out on my desk. And I almost forgot one of my favorite decor items ever is this beautiful dragonfly Tiffany lamp that I keep behind me. It's so pretty and whimsical and I love all the different colors. We call this room our library room but we also use it as an extra workspace and for storage. This corner of the room is a bit of an eyesore but it's very functional. This is where we store our tripods and camera equipment. We also use this drawer unit for tools and things like that. This door above me opens up into an unfinished attic and it's really creepy up there. There are always bugs and it's just very scary looking up in there. One time we came home from a vacation and the door to the attic was wide open. We still don't know how it could have opened. It might have been from the heat maybe pushing the door out but it also doesn't make sense because it was locked. Either way it was really creepy coming home and having the door to the attic wide open and I don't know if that is a ghost story or what but we're in an older home so I wouldn't be surprised. We have a little closet in here for storage but it's not very deep. And over here on this side we have a spare desk. This is where I make and pack all the jewelry for my shop and we also use it as an extra crafting desk if either of us are working on a project. It's also really nice especially working from home to have a separate desk space in case either of us need it for meetings or just a place to focus. Over here we have a cart where we store some extra art supplies. We use this as more space for our desk so things like the printers, label printer, desk stuff, and we also have some workout equipment over here. And then I use this back cabinet for storing all of my packing things. When you run a shop you always need more room for packing supplies so that's what I keep in here. And this is probably one of my favorite parts of the entire house. This is our library wall. We keep a bunch of books over here on this shelf along with some of our favorite things. We recently converted this into a little CD player shelf where we can play all of our favorite old CDs. I keep some of my favorite books and decor on display. I also keep a little candle warmer in this corner which I will use for candles and mini simmer pots and even for keeping my tea warm while I read. We did a whimsical reading nook makeover in here last fall and that's when I decorated the bed and the pillows and I hung up the lights and curtains. One of my favorite things about this room is the beautiful beams on the ceiling and these are so great for hanging lights and decor. They really make the room feel very whimsical and magical. Over here in this corner we have Obie's bed. Alex and I set this up for him for his gotcha day but the bed frame is an antique baby doll bed and we got a little cushion for it. And then Alex's mom made this mini cat quilt for us. It's super cute and all the colors work really well together. It's such a cute little bed for Obie and I love how it looks in here next to the bigger bed. I also just got him a little copy of Enchanted Feline magazine to keep on his bed. Okay everyone I hope you enjoyed this tour of our home. It's definitely been a long time coming to get the house set up the way it is now and I think it's always going to be a work in progress but we're just really grateful to live here. We love how cozy and at home we feel here so I'm really glad I got to show you around in this video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.