*Thank you to Article for providing the furniture to complete this makeover!
There are a lot of things I love about our house, but one of the biggest design successes is our breezeway. The breezeway is priceless...we hang out on it constantly; it's party central for our monthly potlucks, and it catches the breeze coming off the hill perfectly.
These pictures were taken a few years ago, right before we started our monthly potlucks. This is not what it looks like all the time... …
Read More
Hot Tub Patio Reveal!
*Thank you to Article for providing the furniture to complete this project!
Hey there strangers, hope your summer is going well! Ours has been good...busy at times, slow at others, sometimes I'm enjoying the heck out of it, and sometimes I look at the calendar and count the days till school starts again. Don't pretend you don't do it too. This is a safe space.
Honestly Adam and I haven't been doing many projects lately, and it's been kinda nice. We did recently finish the hot tub patio …
Read More
Entry Refresh and a Wooden Doormat Update
Today I have the most well-tested follow-up post for you ever. Not a year, or two years like most of my follow-up posts, but SEVEN years. So what project are we talking about today? These babies...
I made these wooden doormats back in 2012, when my blog was just a year old and I only had two kids. It feels like yesterday, but it wasn't. It's crazy how quickly time goes.
In the original post I said that I had no idea how these mats were going to work out...if they would catch dirt and …
Read More
Hot Tub Patio – Our 2019 Surprise Project
At the beginning of this year I wrote a post outlining our house goals for 2019. It had projects we for sure wanted to finish, along with projects we may or may not get to (you can read that list here). So as soon as Adam and I scratched the RV remodel off that list we started talking about what project we wanted to conquer next.
My suggestion was to finish the laundry room. We started it about a year and a half ago, and it is probably 70% finished. I would love to wrap that up, check another …
Read More
Six Months of Landscaping
For the past six months the big project around here has been landscaping. Its been labor intensive and expensive, but the final product has been completely worth it. So let’s dig right in....here is our house in November of last year (at this point we had been living in it for about three months).
Our property is slightly sloped, so drainage is something we needed to address, and Adam and I also wanted a lawn. Real legitimate grass...not something that comes easy in hot, dry, …
Read More
Breezeway Makeover and Family Dinners: No Excuses Edition
For years now Adam and I have said we should start hosting big family dinners at our house once a month, and for years now we have come up with excuses not to. Either we were too busy, or the old house was too crowded, or the new house was too unfinished, or a variety of other things. We ran out of excuses after laying sod a few weeks ago though, and decided that Mothers Day weekend is going to be the start of a new tradition. Once a month, every month, we will have a giant potluck and hang out …
Read More
The State of the House, 2017 – The Exterior
I feel like I need to give y’all an honest-to-goodness overview of the whole house. The entire thing, not just the pretty parts that we have finished, or the parts we are currently working on, but the whole house in all its unfinished glory. So today I’m starting with the exterior, since blogging about that part is quite a bit less intimidating that blogging about the entire inside.
So here we go, this is what the house looks like right now, May 2017. I didn’t clean it up for the internet, I …
Read More
How to Hang Outdoor String Lights
When Adam and I were designing our home we purposely enclosed the backyard, making it a courtyard that is surrounded by the house and garage on three sides. We plan to put a tiny little irrigated lawn in that area (the only way to keep grass alive in Texas) and have the rest of the property be native.
Over this part of the backyard I wanted to add pretty string lights...because no one looks at the photo below and thinks “no thanks”.
I originally wanted them romantically swagged …
Read More
Prepping to Sell – Curb Appeal and Porch Updates
When it comes to selling a house, I feel like curb appeal is the most important thing. Buyers make snap judgements on houses just like they do on people (even if we don’t want to admit it, we do.) If you pull up to a house and it looks overgrown and uncared for, you're going to decide (probably subconsciously) that the owners aren’t excited about owning it and you're not excited about buying it. Once you get inside, any features you don’t like about the house are going to stand out even more, …
Read More
A Shoji White Farmhouse
I think my favorite week of the whole year is the week between Christmas and New Years. I love Christmas, but it's nice to have all the chaos behind you and a fresh new year in front of you. Plus, it's the only week of the year where it's not only okay to be lazy, it's actually encouraged. I'm happy to report that I've slept in past 8 am every day since Christmas. I feel like a new person.
Anyway, enough chit chat...let's get to the good stuff. Check this out...
The house is …
Read More
We bought land!
Back in October I wrote a post about how we have been land hunting. Our current house was never intended to be our forever home, it was always a place we planned to live in for five or six years, fix up (and make all our DIY mistakes on, if that's possible), sell, and move on. We've owned this house for almost seven years now, and we are ready for the next adventure. So we've been searching for a piece of land for about a year, scouring realtor.com, walking properties on the weekends, and …
Read More
Building the Deck, Part II
I'm finally back with the second part of the deck post. Let's just pick up where we left off last week, which was with a fully assembled deck frame.
We used pine for the frame but decided to spring for cedar for the top, since it looks nice and it's naturally moisture resistant (which means it's less prone to twisting, cracking and swelling. Basically it lays flat.)
Before attaching them to the joists we went ahead and sealed the backside using Flood CWF-UV.
Then it was time …
Read More
Building the Deck, Part I
First things first...let's start with a before picture.
So our backyard....it's ugly. There's no denying it. It is so full of rocks that I'm at a complete loss at what do with them. For the last five years we've been picking them up and using them in landscaping, but I swear they reproduce at night when I'm not looking. Anyway, right outside our back door there was nothing. Well, not nothing...there was toys, dirt, and welcome mats (which were my sad and unsuccessful attempt to keep the …
Read More
How to Paint a Rusty Metal Shed
When we bought our house it had zero storage. No garage, no basement, an attic that isn't really usable, and no extra closets. We needed a place to store lawn equipment, paint, and general homeowner stuff, so Adam's parents offered us an old metal shed that was on their property.
We put it on the back part of our lot, filled it with stuff, and promptly forgot about it.
Or at least I forgot about it. My husband on the other hand thought it needed some TLC. He would casually say things like …
Read More
The Garden, the Yard, and the Fawn
This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
This spring I was pretty convinced that our lawn was done for. We installed it last year and it did well during the summer, but then I didn't water it one bit this winter and it showed no signs of life. This spring I watered and fertilized but I never got more than a few arbitrary green blades. Then one glorious day, out of nowhere, it started to hail.
And within about 10 minutes we had this...
And then, just like that, it …
Read More
A Different Kind of Before and After
This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
I love spring. I love the sunshine and warmth, rain showers and wildflowers, and rivers that are warm enough to tube. I love that my kids have started waking up every morning, running to the window and proclaiming "Mom! It's a beautiful day outside!" I love going to the nursery all energized for planting and having it be crowded as stink because everyone else is just as excited as I am. Granted, winters here in Texas aren't …
Read More
A Painted Front Door
So....front doors. It's one of the first things people notice about your house, one of the first thing that tells visitors anything about the people who live inside. Our door didn't tell people much...it didn't tell them that I like color, nor did it tell them that Adam is a wood snob. The only thing our front door really told people is that we have a dog that likes to scratch. Except that we don't.
Now it IS a nice door... but the finish was terrible, scratched to pieces, and looks like a …
Read More
The Rock Box
Once upon a time there was a man who built a playset for his children.
Upon completion of the playset he and his wife promised the children that they would turn the base of the playset into a sandbox.
Many months passed, but the promise was never fulfilled. The boy was very sad.
Then one day the boy's mother noticed a slight nip in the air. Was the earth scorching heat of summer finally coming to an end? Could they play outside again? She checked her mobile weather device and was pleased …
Read More
Front Porch Reveal and a History of Clutter
Oh, our porch. Those of y'all that have been following for a while know what a blessing and a curse it is. We love our porch...it's HUGE, shady, and pretty much amazing. It is also our dumping grounds...it's where most activities happen (like projects) and it is normally looks like a disaster. AND it is right out there in the open and the first thing people see. I want it to be a clean inviting place for people to sit, chat, and enjoy a drink. It's never been that place.
Until now.
Now I …
Read More
Make Your Own Birdbath
This project is an easy one, though it still started off as a DIY fail. So the first part of this post will be the perfect sparkling tutorial on how to make your own birdbath...then I'll let you know what NOT to do.
I made my birdbath out of a terracotta pot, saucer, and an old brass lamp...but you can really use anything. Go crazy. The motto here is "if you can glue it, you can do it." I literally JUST came it with that.
First I cut the cord on the lamp base and pulled all the extras …
Read More
Side Yard Reveal!
*This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
Last year we built our garage (which we love BTW) and added a sidewalk to connect it to the house. We also had a fence installed around the backyard, and all of that created a little triangle of secluded yard space.
I'm using the term 'yard' loosely, obviously. It looked terrible and needed some serious attention. When Miracle-Gro asked to team up this spring to complete a few outdoor projects, I …
Read More
