Before Meets After: Home Tour: Jessica from Stay at Home-ista

While I'm taking a much needed break on the beach, Jessica from Stay at Home-ista is going to share with you her beautiful home. I feel in love with her house from the moment I saw her kitchen on pinterest. So sit back, and enjoy the tour :)
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Hi all you Before Meets After readers!

I'm Jessica from Stay at Home-ista. I was so excited by the opportunity to share my house with you. I think it's hard to image someone, and especially their home without seeing them, so here I am, complete with husband and three kids. As you can imagine, it's impossible to get a photo where everyone is smiling:)

Here's my quick story. I'm a Harvard-trained architect, now staying home with 3 small children (all under the age of 5 (I also have a love of parenthesis!)). I was lucky enough to be able to buy an empty plot of land, only 2 miles from where I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I designed and built our dream home. Throughout the process I acted as the Project Architect while my husband acted as the general contractor, so I probably know more about every nook and corner of our house than I would ever need to know! Now I'm in the decorating stage, spending my days mommy-ing, blogging, baking and occasionally craft-making. I'm putting my passion for design, food and family to work. I built the dream, but I still live in reality.

I have finally cleaned up my Living Room enough to be able to take "proper" pictures of it, you know, ones without children racing through the frame or a pillow fort on the couch.

Out those big doors is our deck.

We actually eat breakfast and dinner in our Dining Room everyday, so it's well used and usually has a high chair pulled up to it! It's very June Cleaver of me, but I love the family meals and when you see my kitchen you'll understand why I'm happy to cook everyday! I made the art on the walls myself, it's Linen and Paper art.

This is "my" Library. I'm still working on the styling of the shelves, most of the time I start, then just throw everything up there, toss the toys on the bottom two shelves and promise to try again another day.

Now for my absolute favorite. The Kitchen. I even have an organized spice drawer, kitchen clock, hidden trash, and a pantry. Then for my mommy-ing side we incorporated a morning launching pad, and redone family command center to help me keep track of all the goings on.

I've been working on our gallery wall that goes up the stairs to the bedroom level. Our entry also houses my mom's piano, that I grew up with. Too bad none of us play (yet).

The loft has an awesome 8' high deer decal (I have a *small* love affair with decals). And I know it also appears that I have a love affair with deer as well, if they giant, glossy deer head over the living room mantle means anything. I'll either have to work it out in therapy or get my big brother to take me hunting...

My Master Bedroom is a serious work in progress. So far I've spruced up the bedding (the pintuck duvet doesn't show any wrinkles!) and added art above the bed. In case you can't tell they are a series of photographs of Paris, all using the color yellow, I'm kind of in love with them.

The Master Bath is pretty much an all-marble room. Which is awesome until I'm trying to wrangle three wet kids out of *my* tub, then it gets slippery. And I did have dreams of relaxing in a bubble bath here with candles, music a good book, a glass of something... Guess how many times I've been in my own tub? Twice. It has to be one of my goals for 2013:)

Then we have some kid bedrooms, our Little Girl's Butterfly Bedroom, although now we've done a Nightstand Switcheroo, so she has more space for all her ~~hoarding~~ collecting.

Our Little Boy's Room has been through quite a few changes in the last few months, we took out the crib, gave him a big-boy bed with construction machine bedding, and we're still working. Here it is still "in progress" and "in use"!