.Our Living Room: One Year In + Source List.

Happy Monday! 

How are you doing this fine morning? I am utterly exhausted from this past week and weekend. The girls I nanny (ages 5, 3, and 11 months) stayed with Adam and I for four nights while their parents were away not to mention I had them all day everyday Mon-Fri from 830am-430pm.

Phew, I'm wiped. Right now I am thankful for morning baby naps and morning Summer camp for the big girls. I have roughly an hour and a half before loading baby into the car and picking up the big sisters so I thought I'd write this post!

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Adam and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary on June 20th with dinner and a movie. We took our adventure trip here and opted for a nice relaxing night doing two things we love: eating and movie watching. We had dinner at a local Italian place who serves delicious gluten-free pizza and saw Men in Black 3. Both were hits, the food and especially the movie--I recommend seeing it, great great story!

 I blame my smiles lines, ahem, wrinkles on him ;)

Our wedding anniversary is also our house anniversary!  

Adam and I signed on our very first house together one year ago on our two year anniversary. Great timing and talk about best gift ever! :) Since we are exactly one year in, I wanted to show you the progress we have made on our living room. Remember where we started only 6 weeks after the move?

 And remember the update from November when our living room made serious progress?

I shared two crafting/decorating tutorials with you: Fabric Letters and Sliced Wood Wall Art. (I also made a sunburst mirror out of wooden shims but never got around to writing a post on that..is it too late to do one?)

And I posted an assortment of vignettes:

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Now here is the latest update of our living room! 

(These photos were taken after a good, thorough cleaning..please do not think my house always looks like this--with the 3 girls I nanny and a dog, believe me it gets dirty!) Enjoy!

There is still decorating to be done on our tv console and the curtains still need to be hemmed but the rest of the room is feeling, dare I say it--complete!

I have been asked before what my "style" is and to tell you the truth, it's a mixture of just about everything! During my pinterest perusing, I do find myself typing in the search bar these following things: "mid century modern" "minimalist" and "rustic modern". So maybe my style is a bit of all three? Or neither. Ha, who knows I just like it :)

Like I mentioned earlier, the sunburst mirror-fabric letters-and sliced wood wall art were all made by me using inexpensive things. As much as I love all three in the room, Adam is the star in my opinion because he built me that beautiful sofa table!! I love my man for taking on such a project..it was his very first wood building project ever--pretty incredible right?

Here is a source list for the big items in our living room:

Cliff the deer head is a Christmas present from Adam who was just hung about three weeks ago, sorry to leave ya hangin' for so long Cliff! It is from Z Gallerie, you can see the link here. We love him.

Our amazing couch, which has been the BEST purchase we have made recently, is from IKEA. Our dog has peed on the cushions and one of the girls I watch has thrown up on another and I am happy to report after a little dry cleaning action they are as good as new!

The curtains can be found here. They are crazy bright and cheery, enough said :)

Couch pillows are also from IKEA. Super comfy, super cheap, super big!

Lamps are from Big Lots. $40 each which I think is a great price for the lamp base AND shade!

Frames are from Target and unfortunately, I need one more and my local store has discontinued them and I cannot find them online. Arg.

TV console is from IKEA..yes, I know..we love that store! We purchased a BESTA shelf and then picked out two doors we liked, all under the BESTA series.

Woven ottomans/baskets are from Amazon. We bought them on sale for $39.99 I believe so keep your eyes open for them to go on sale again! They are fabulous--they act as a coffee table when we need something sturdy and they store all of our blankets and someday toys :)

Room light fixture is brand new and has replaced our big ugly ceiling fan. While many of you, aka my mom, think it is foolish to get rid of a fan, it has made our room feel so much bigger and lighter-we love it! The light is found here.

The Shiba Inu puzzle was purchased from Etsy at this great shop and the dried craspedia were from here.

The big white shag rug is our second favorite next to the couch. It is so soft and vacuums up well--no mess at all! Colden, our dog, can be found simply rolling around playing on the rug. Seriously, it is that awesome! We bought it from Overstock.

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I did it again--long post. I will try to keep them shorter for you, really I will. There is just so much to say when I actually sit down to blog. Maybe I should simply blog more often, now there's an idea ;)

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment asking questions or simply to tell me your thoughts on our living room one year in :)

.ADK We Love You.

Adam and I were able to sneak away two weeks ago to celebrate our third wedding anniversary (which is actually tomorrow!) visiting our happy place:

 The Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York.

Before I even really begin this post, I need to state one simple fact and that is

God has His hand in everything!

Adam is from Minnesota. 

I am from New Jersey. 

We met in Virginia.

We both LOVE the ADKs in NY.

How did this happen?

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I grew up in Northern New Jersey vacationing to the Adirondacks with dear family and friends. My mind and heart are instantly filled with precious memories when I think of two particular places: Lake George and Speculator.

Lake George was my family's getaway weekend destination growing up and gave me my love for all things outdoors and camping. 

Speculator is a small town in Upstate NY and the home of Camp-of-the-Woods. My church's senior high youth group would attend Camp-of-the-Woods every year for our winter retreat. After spending five days at camp four years in a row, it began to feel like a home and gave me comfort every year I returned.

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Adam grew up in Central Minnesota, hours (and hours and hours) away from the Adirondack Mountains and yet he became connected while attending college down in Virginia.

During his sophomore year at Liberty University, Adam's friend introduced him to Deerfoot Lodge and it was love at first sight..or in his case, love at first description. Deerfoot Lodge is a Christian all boys backpacking camp located in Speculator, NY. The more Adam heard of this Deerfoot, he knew he had to work there that very Summer.

And he did. 

Adam was known as 'Chief Adam' Summer of '05, '06, and '07. 

While working at Deerfoot, he would spend his days off relaxing at Camp-of-the-Woods and exploring nearby towns, one of which was Lake George.

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2006 was a great year because I met Adam and well that speaks for itself :)

 On our very first date Adam asked me if I enjoyed hiking, camping, and backpacking. He was obviously thrilled with my response of "yes" and told me I should work at Tapawingo, a Christian all girls backpacking camp. (Sound familiar?)

I honestly do not even remember getting a word in because he went on and on like a junior high girl talking about Deerfoot and Tap. It finally came out that the two camps are known as "brother-sister" camps in Speculator and that Tapawingo is affiliated with (you guessed it) Camp-of-the-Woods.

You can only imagine our conversation at this point.

"Oh my word--"

"Do you know--"

"What a small world!"

"Have you been to--"

"Me too!"

It was good friends, very very good.

The Summer of 2007 God saw His brilliant plan working just as He planned. Adam worked at Deerfoot and I worked at Tapawingo.

We wrote letters. Actual, handwritten letters to each other. 

Every single one has been saved.

We spent a few days off hiking, exploring, and falling in love.

It truly was magical.

God brought us back to the ADKs for our Lake George honeymoon in 2009.

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God is good. He has His hand in every aspect of your life. I did not realize it until recently, it was all God's planning bringing a Minnesota boy and New Jersey girl to the Adirondacks. What an amazing thing God created
for Adam and I:

A place that is special to us physically, emotionally, and spiritually..to us.


God provided us a solid connection with our hearts and more importantly, to His heart. I am forever thankful for the mighty plans of our Heavenly Father and for all the ways He continues to bring Adam and I together as one.

I praise God for pouring His love onto me and onto Adam. I praise Him for being omniscient. I praise God for His planning, for His promises. I praise God for blessing me with a husband who loves Him more than me and puts Him first. I praise God for everything He has given Adam and I. 

The list goes on in my heart and the Lord knows and feels it all.

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Now that I have gone in great details (whoops) on why we love the ADKs, I can finally get to our anniversary celebration!

Adam and I drove to Keene, NY to hike two of the forty-six high peaks. We stayed at the Roostercomb Inn and really enjoyed our visit. It was fabulous and great fun meeting other hikers, especially their dogs, and to cook our own meals in the shared kitchen. Here are a few photos of the place:

We enjoyed some gluten-free penne our first night in town and packed pb&j sandwiches, on gluten-free bread, for our hike day. It's extremely comforting packing a few groceries from home you know you can eat--we were thrilled to learn we had free access to the kitchen!

 Adam and I hiked Cascade and Porter, two of the forty-six high peaks. Adam is simply awesome and only has 11 peaks left to become an official 46-R. As for me, well I have only 44 more to go ;)

 The weather in the ADKs is sunny-stormy-sunny-stormy-sunny all day long, it's actually pretty cool. The clouds began forming as we were on the summit of Porter so we raced to the next peak, Cascade, and attempted to beat the storm. We failed but had an awesome time!

On the left Adam is standing on Porter and right standing on the top of Cascade which is his 35th high peak bagged--only 11 more to go! (Notice the clouds!)

 We ended our time in Keene checking out the local shops, all 2 of them, and bought a few goodies for our home to remember this special time. Adam and I ate at the Noon Mark Diner and check this out:

This is the perfect example of how God's hand is in everything! Seeing this menu thrilled me as well as humbled me in front of my Heavenly Father. He always reminds me to trust by blessing me with little things that bring smiles!

Adam and I ended the week in Speculator, home of Deerfoot Lodge-Tapawingo-and Camp-of-the-Woods! We were there not only to visit dear friends we've made over the years, but to celebrate the wedding of two great people. I will show photos from the beautiful occasion in a different post.

We ended our trip with an evening canoe ride on Lake Pleasant.

We had such a wonderful time together and left feeling energized physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It was the absolute perfect pick me up we both needed, thank you Father.

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Thank you for making it to the end of this post, it was a bit long :) 

I would love to know how God has revealed His hand in your life recently and if any of you have ever been to or heard of the places I mentioned in this post. 

Have a wonderful day!