Well hey there strangers! Sorry about all the blogging I have not been doing lately, this summer hit me harder than I was expecting. Adam worked a ton of extra hours and the four boys were all-consuming, so I decided to put blogging aside and enjoy my kids until summer was over. The older two are back in school now (kinder and 2nd) and here I am! Having just a two-year-old and nearly one year old at home during the day is like a freaking vacation...they're so quiet. I love my older boys to …
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How To Install a Light Fixture with the DIYZ App
*Thank you to the DIYZ® app for sponsoring this post. All opinions are 100% mine.
Let’s be honest here....progress in the kitchen is pretty much not happening these days. We got it to where it’s almost completely functional and then quickly became sidetracked with other things. It’s looked like this for a while now -
BUT, we did hang a light above the sink recently, so yay for steps in the right direction!
So last month I was at a local home decor boutique and spotted this …
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The Reason We Have Sealed Concrete Floors
Whenever I post pictures of the inside of my house I get questions or comments about the concrete floor. I’ve never talked about it before, and just like most things there is a story behind it.
So why did we choose concrete floors for our new home? Was it because we love the look? Because they're indestructible and easy to clean? Budget friendly? No, no, and sorta.
The only reason we have sealed concrete floors in our new house is because we can’t afford to put wood …
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State of the House, 2017 – Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Loft
Alright, time for the final part of the 2017 house tour! I’ve already posted about the exterior, and the main living areas, so keep reading to see the bedrooms, bathrooms and the loft.
Let’s start with the loft...
There it is, truth...I bet you weren’t expecting to see a giant mess right off the bat were you?
The loft is the only thing upstairs (besides the attic) and it serves as the kids playroom. It’s perfect, because every single toy the kids own is up there and I can’t see any …
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State of the House, 2017 – Main Living Areas
Alright, who’s ready for an interior house tour? Fair warning, this is not some beautifully staged, perfect house tour that you find all over home blogs, this is a very unfinished and unpretty tour so you know exactly where the house stands. Today I’ll show you the main living areas (areas in red below), and in the next post we’ll do the bedrooms, bathrooms, and loft.
Just as a recap for any newbies, this is a custom home that my husband and I designed. We hired a builder to …
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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, …
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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 …
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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 …
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Master Bedroom Progress and the Nicest Draperies I’ve Ever Owned
Progress has been happening in the master bedroom! We haven’t done any big projects (there still isn't a ceiling or a floor) it’s mostly just been me shopping and dreaming, and its been fun. Last month I posted the plans for the room and showed you these before pictures -
This is the design mock-up I came up with (it’s not great, but you get the picture) -
And here are some of the updates I made -
There is still plenty to do, but it is certainly a huge improvement. The …
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Simple Faux Leaded Glass and Our Rustic Pantry Door
There's nothing better than character in a house. Old houses are unique and tell a story, and my goal is to make our new house look anything but new. I think the pantry door and transom accomplish that goal pretty well.
I bought the door from the antiques fair in Round Top a few years ago (not the failure of a trip I blogged about, but a previous one) and paid $80 for it. Even though the green on my cabinets and the green on the door don’t match (or maybe because they don't) it works …
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The Most Organized Pantry in the World
Okay, that title might be a biiit of a stretch, but either way...the pantry is complete! I posted the first part of the pantry redo months ago, and even though we finished a majority of it soon after I refused to post it until it was 100% complete. Adam and have a problem of only finishing things 90% of the way and moving onto the next project (I even wrote a post about it years ago) and I’m breaking the cycle.
So as a refresher, here was the before...
(Yes, my house is messy. It’s …
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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 …
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Plans for the Master Bedroom
In the last house I never finished our master bedroom, the entire time we lived there it was an unfinished catch-all for everything in the house that didn't have a place. We basically slept in a storage unit. Adam and I would crawl into bed night after a long day, and instead of feeling relaxed we would just look around and think “Ugh...there is so much stuff we didn't get done today” (even if we had each rocked the socks off our to-do list).
I know I'm not alone in this. I know the master …
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One of a Kind Double Barstools
Alright, let’s skip the fluffy intro and get right down to it - I’ve been on the hunt or barstools for the island. Originally I had my eye on these from West Elm...
They cost $199 a pop and I needed four, so with tax and shipping came to nearly $1000. I stalked them for awhile, but even with the best sale + coupon + rebate combo I couldn’t justify spending that much money. Besides, I had and idea...
Instead of getting four barstools that will never be pushed in just right and …
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Planning and Building a Pantry (Part I)
A few months ago Adam and I finished our master closet, which became the first finished room in the house. It was so organized and amazing that we decided to skip some of the bigger projects we had planned and instead pick another tiny room and finish it 100%. We debated doing a bathroom, the office, or the pantry, and eventually landed on the pantry.
The pantry is 3 ft by 7 ft and is situated under the stairs, which means one of the walls is shorter than the other. It’s a tiny little …
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Master Closet Reveal!
It’s master closet reveal day! I showed y’all the fully installed but empty closet over two months ago, then I had a baby, the holidays came, things got crazy, and the final reveal has been a long time coming.
First and foremost, I am so in love with it. I’m not usually one to gush over things, but I’m also not used to awesome organized spaces. It’s always a goal of mine, but it never really fully happens. Not only is the closet really pretty to look at, but it’s also extremely …
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Industrial Pipe Kitchen Shelving
From the time we started designing our house I knew I wanted some open shelving in the kitchen. Not all open shelving (because it would look cluttered), but just enough for our everyday dishes. We put open shelving in our last kitchen and really loved it, I liked having the dishes out in the open, and since we used them everyday dust was never an issue. So Adam and I designed the sink wall in the new house to have a big window with a view and shelving on either side.
I’ve always loved …
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Planning and Installing a Closet System
*This post is sponsored by EasyClosets...and by that I mean that I received the closet system for free in exchange for blog posts about the closet and my experience. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.*
When we bought our last house, the master closet had a single rod and shelf around the whole thing. From day one we planned to rip out that rod and build an actual closet system that utilized the space and gave us the storage we needed. A couple of months ago we sold our house after …
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The Search for a Vintage Farmhouse Sink
From the time I started sketching up our new house on graph paper nearly two years ago, I knew I wanted a vintage farmhouse sink for the kitchen. Not a modern apron front farmhouse sink that are popular today, but an antique one from the 20’s or 30’s. Those weren’t my only demands though, no...I also wanted it to have a single basin, high back, and double drainboards. I was basically searching for a needle in a haystack....a very expensive needle, as it turns out.
SOURCE - $2,695.00 + …
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Kitchen Progress – Dark green cabinets, a rustic wood countertop, and lighting
Last time I did an overall kitchen update we had just installed the cabinets and it looked like this....
Well now we have not only moved in, but I’ve painted the cabinets, we poured our concrete countertops, added a wood island top, bought appliances, and installed our island lighting.
First thing first, the cabinet color. I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how I went from wanting a light airy green to something dark and dramatic, and I have to say that I’m pretty pleased …
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The Boy’s Room – Then, Now, and Future Plans
So today let’s talk about the boy's room.
The room is 12 x 15 and will be shared by my older two boys. If you regularly read the blog than you’ve seen pictures of it while under construction...but here they are again (mostly to remind me that we’ve already come a long way and aren't just beginning...because it’s true, but I forget).
We have been in the new house for a little over a month now, and here is what the boy's room looks like today.
It’s nothing …
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