Actually, we moved. Our new house has 8ft ceilings (yay! probably not the common sentiment but it's so much more comfortable than our last house). We do have a living room with an 11ft cathedral ceiling but the house was built in 1976 house so it was complete with beams and wood paneling (that we removed) but it closed off from the rest of the house (also love). The living room doesn't feel as cavernous as the cathedral ceiling in my last house. It would have been crazy expensive to change to a tray in our last house but it needed something since it was open concept and was lacking coziness. Before we moved we did a lot of stuff that helped with the feel of the room. Adding lamps and a variety of lighting at different levels and warm colors and textures made a big difference. It didn't fix it but it was better. I think it would have been cheaper to add some faux beams and/or tongue and groove than to create a tray and might have helped more. To simulate painting the ceiling dark, we taped garbage bags to the ceiling (weird way to test painting but it worked). It was terrible in a dark color. It makes me wonder if the lower ceiling would have achieved what I was hoping for. I don't mind the beams in this house. I would go for that before you do something expensive like a tray. Maybe tape some cardboard to the ceiling and simulate it. Good luck!

I loved reading these comments! It is fun to hear other people’s stories about growing up. My husband and I just built our first house a little over a year ago. We are 27 and 28 (no kids yet) and plan for this to be our house for at least the next 10-15 years. Ideally we would love for it to be our forever home if possible. Our lender wanted to approve us for a $300,000 loan (at 26 years old, yeah right) which around here would buy a VERY nice house. We opted instead for a 1240 sqft house at $167,000. We wanted a small loan with plenty of money to travel, buy a pool, travel trialer, nice vehicles, and do anything else we choose over the next decade plus. I’m also considering being a stay at home mom when we have kids one day so we wanted a small enough loan we could easily afford on one income. We built our house on a nice corner lot with a large, fenced in backyard. We have the backyard planned out to include a large above ground pool (to be installed this summer), a fire pit (also to be installed this summer), a shed to house pool and yard equipment, planter boxes for a garden, and plenty of room for a future swingset and room to run. We also have a large driveway with a basketball goal. We plan to have 2-4 kids that will be raised in this house AT LEAST into their early teens. (Would prefer longer). When we built the house we did so planning to utilize the outside as much as possible. We love being outdoors and plan to raise our children to love them too. I would much rather spend my days outside than sitting in a large house, this was true for my husband and I as children and as adults, so spending money on tons of indoor space was not appealing. Utlizing the outdoors (backyard tent camping as a slumber party, roasting marshmellows around the campfire, swimming all summer) is, in my opinion, an amazing childhood compared to sitting in your room. We were picky about where our lot was, we choose a housing addition that is close to the elemnetary school and middle school and park (about 5-10 minutes on bike), one minute drive from the major highway, and about an 8 minute drive into the big subburd. The housing addition has a country feel around it, but is close to everything which is something that was important to us. I could walk the kids to school on nice days with a country vibe around me and still be to the bowling alley or skating rink for birthday parties in less than 10 minutes. We wanted a big backyard but didn’t want to pay for acreage or land, so a large corner lot made the most sense. We have room for the things we want but do not have to pay a premium price. The house is 3 bedrooms and 2 baths with a large living room and good sized kitchen for the size. The table in our dining room fits 6 and we could probably upsize to one that fits 8 if we wanted to, but it would be tight. We have an attached 2 car garage with a 3 foot bumpout for extra storage. Right now we leave one car in the driveway and only park our Jeep in the garage so we have room for our ping pong table which gives us another hangout place when we entertain. We have easily entertained 6 other adults (8 people total) in our living room so I am confident 2 to 4 kids will fit nicely in there with room to spare. If we have 3 children then two of them will have to share a bedroom and all of them will share rooms if we have four (2 per room). However, the rooms are a good size for bunkbeds or 2 loft beds with desks underneath which is what I plan on doing. I also plan to one day turn our patio into a sunroom with a TV, video games and table for board games as an extra place for the kids and their friends to hang out. I firmly believe people live in way too big of houses today. I spent half of my childhood in a 1200 sqft house and half in a 2400 sqft house. I loved both houses, but the 1200 sqft house always felt more like home. The 2400 always felt empty and when I lived in it I envied friends who had smaller ”homier” houses. With proper planning, I think people can easily raise 1-4 children in a 1200 square foot house. If you have more children than that I think you should upgrade to a 4 bedroom house which would probably mean more around 1500-1600 sqft. I think the problem is a lot of people do not have the foresight to plan ahead. People like the OP buy 1200 sqft houses with plans to raise and homeschool over half a dozen children there. If you know you’re someone who wants to have lots of children then plan accordingly. I know sometimes life happens, but most cases of too-small-houses seem like they could have been avoided with better planning. I know our house will fit our needs at least until our oldest children are early teens. If, at that point, we feel too cramped we will move and rent out our house which will give us a nice source of income each month. If (hopefully) we do not feel too cramped we will stay and this will be our forever home that will be paid off by the time we’re 56! Woohoo! Either way it’s a win and our kids will spend, at a minimum, their elementary years in a fun house with a fun backyard and we will have plenty of expendable income for sports, trips, and anything else we desire! Small houses are the best in my opinion. They just require future planning which is something I do not think alot of people do these days! They either buy too small for the number of kids they want (OP) or they buy the largest house they can afford and then are unhappy becuse they have such little expendable income. Big houses don’t just mean higher mortgages, they mean buying more junk to fill them with, higher utilities, higher taxes, more expensive repair and upkeep costs… this all eats into expendable income quickly. I say GO SMALL whenever possible!! But, the right size of small for your family. 1200 sqft for 3 kids? Great! 1200 sqft for 7 kids… not so great.

The talk about snacks and recipes reminds me that the big takeaway for me from Noom, which has made it sustainable for me, is the concept of calorie density, which Noom takes from the Volumetrics and Dr. Barbara Rolls, which I think I mentioned in my original post above. This article is a good explanation of Volumetrics, https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/advice/2021/01/05/volumetrics-is-the-best-diet-youve-never-heard-of-and-you-can-eat-cake.html (If that link doesn’t work for you, try this, https://archive.ph/7MN9u ) A few excerpts from the article: So, what are some low-calorie density foods? Anything that has a lot of water—soup, fresh green vegetables, berries and other fresh fruits and sugar-free yogurt. Rolls says these can be considered “free foods” and you can eat pretty much all you want of them. … “I think one of the worst messages that we have out there is ‘just eat less’,” says Rolls. “When people have a half-empty plate, they look at it and, before they even start eating, they compute and think, ‘I’m going to be hungry’. “The thing about Volumetrics is that it shows you how to have satisfying amounts of food while still managing your caloric intake,” she adds. Rolls says that diets based around deprivation fail (at least in the long-term), because we like to feel full. Low-calorie density foods can make us feel full, both while we eat it and after. Studies have shown that we don’t feel hungry an hour later, as some critics have suggested. The next category up on the pyramid includes starchy vegetables, lean fish and meat, rice, beans and pasta — the latter being food you can’t eat on practically any faddish diet these days. Granted, on Volumetrics, you’re not supposed to eat as much pasta as you would, say, kale. Jeha says, if you’re still thinking about it in terms of how it would look on a plate, the pasta might take up roughly a quarter of the space. “One thing I like about Volumetrics is that it’s not telling you to eliminate anything completely,” [Toronto registered dietician Laura] Jeha says. “Inevitably, you’re going to be in a situation where you have a piece of cake — and that’s okay. I tell people to think more in terms of an average over weeks or months and that, if you’re getting fruits and vegetables and eating well most of the time, that’s more important than one day when you had some fast food or something.” I bought a copy of “The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet” Rolls for more in-depth info on the method and also more recipes in keeping with the low calorie density approach.

@Maria We just signed the contract for our new painted, Brookhaven frameless cabinets and there a a lot of them. Fridge and DW panels, island panels, two trash pullouts, all drawer bases (9 of them), pantry with rollouts, wall oven cabinet with inserts and 6 15" uppers, one with glass doors. Cost around $50K with very little customization. I did a significantly larger kitchen than this 5 years ago at our beach house with the same cabinets and the price was the same so things have gone up in price quite a bit. We did a much smaller, custom kitchen in our previous house 14 years ago which had cabinets made by Kennebec Company in Maine, period style for our old house. Inset, some glass, 15" uppers (3), all drawer bases (4, one highly customized), two pullouts, one for trash, one for cans, wall oven cabinet with inserts, fridge, freezer and DW panel, crown mold and furniture style toe kick trim, penisnula panels, quartersawn oak, hand painted interiors (even drawers) and they cost $55K. This is a long way of saying that $40K does sound low for high quality full custom painted inset cabinets. I might add that while my Kennebec cabinets were beautiful, like fine furniture, I hated myself for spending so much money on them which is why I chose mid range for my new kitchen. The joy/price ratio just wasn't high enough for me. LOL.