.Our Home in PRINT.

I am eager to share some rather exciting news--

Our house was featured in our town's newest (and cutest) women's magazine called The Clutch Guide.

Take a look:

 Not only is our home featured but check out the photo credit, notice anything?--

My name :) 

It's the little things friends.

Thank you for sharing in my excitement, have a fabulous day!

.Saturday Pick-Me-Up.

There has been a lot brewing in my heart and head this past week. 

It's heavy and it's real. 

I have been trying to find the words to express it all but I am at a loss. 

When I woke this morning, I found my dog and husband asleep next to me. It reminded me of 

Psalm 118:24.

"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

I smiled and was reminded to be happy for all the Lord has given me..

Today, He gave me a new day. 

I wanted to do something small to bring a little "piece" of joy to my husband who threw out his back and has been out of work the past three days.

I came up with this:

My Saturday Pick-Me-Up was simple: 

Gluten Free Cornbread with blueberries and coffee. 

(I use this kind and love that it's available at our local Kroger!)

I am pleased to say it quickly became Adam's pick-me-up as well while he did a little work online.

 Thank you Father for all you have done and will do in this day. I praise you and rejoice in your promises!

 Happy Saturday everyone!

.Deck Makeover Reveal: Phase 5.

This past weekend I was finally feeling better and officially beat my cold! (I was sick for almost two weeks so I'm not certain I am the one who "won" BUT good news I'm healthy again!) I had the energy to finish decorating and accessorizing our deck to show you the final reveal.

We kept everything simple and relied on the power of paint and stain to 1. save us money and 2. cause the greatest amount of change. 

Phase 5: Decorating and Accessorizing 

And a reminder of where we started:

Our main goal was to add warmth to the deck and turn it into a living space to sit and relax with friends and family. You can read about our makeover process here and here. 

We chose to add navy shutters to match the front of our home and picking yellow came natural to us for a bright accent. (Both Adam's high school and my high school used blue and gold as their colors.)

I am very pleased with the oil rubbed bronze finish on the light fixtures and hardware. They really pop now against the white siding and yellow doors. 

The outdoor rug incorporates deep blue, lime green, and a neutral tan that matches exactly to the outdoor carpeting we had installed. I thought the green in the rug would tie in nicely with our ferns and the ribbon used to hang the wreaths.

I made three different yarn wreaths to "cozy" up our doors. I chose to hang them with sheer lime green ribbon to match the green in the rug, as I mentioned above, and I must say it came in handy I had it in my stash of craft supplies--gotta love when that happens!

We also used two outdoor chairs and pillows we purchased from Target two years ago to give us a place to sit and talk in the shade. 

Here are some close ups:

After moving last year, Adam and I purchased new outdoor furniture from Target and set it on the deck. 

Here is a picture for you:

While we enjoyed this arrangement, it quickly became annoying having to bring the cushions in every night. It may seem silly but it was a hassle, especially when we went out at night never knowing if it would rain or not. Our deck is also long and very narrow so it felt a bit snug. We now have a new set up with this furniture that I will (hopefully) share with you next week! So this year we wanted a place to eat and play games with friends and family. 

Take a look:

The table, chairs, plants, and bowl were purchased on a recent Ikea run. I chose this particular table because of the wooden panels. I thought the shape and color would play off nicely with the deck boards as well as the horizontal bars on the dining chairs.

I used our dishes, utensils, and glasses along with new napkins from West Elm (on sale!). If we have more than four for dinner or games, we can easily add the two brown chairs at the ends--instant seating for six!

The table runners were truthfully meant just for picture purposes. I simply bought the most inexpensive fabric that matched our yellow paint and had the girl at Joann's cut them to the size I needed. I spent a total of $4.00 and thrilled with their pop in the photos. It's money well spent in my book and who knows, maybe I will use them :) I wish the photos showed the true color match but the lighting was hard with extreme sun and extreme shade.

Because everyone loves Before and After photos:

 Thought I would end this post with pictures portraying our makeover progress:

 Source List:
Table: Ikea
Chairs: Ikea
Bowl: Ikea
Rug: Overstock (rug goes on sale frequently and comes in variety of sizes)
Shutters: Home Depot
Napkins: West Elm
Paint: Valspar Golden Delight Duramax Exterior Semi Gloss Finish (paint and primer in one--highly recommend priming FIRST)

Brown chairs and pillows: Target (2 years ago)

Wreaths: Made with supplies from Michaels 

Stain: Sherwin Williams Spiced Chest

{linking to some of these fabulous parties}

Happy Living--Happy Designing

and remember

--Little Things Bring Smiles--

.Deck Makeover: Phases 3 and 4.

Yesterday I shared the first part of our Deck Makeover, see here, including the addition of stain and shutters.

Today will focus on paint, paint, and more paint plus a little carpeting!

I spent two weekends, many weeks ago, painting every door trim a bright semi gloss white as well as painting four exterior doors a very bright (maybe too bright) yellow. What can I say, it's all rather--cheery :)

To save a little money on outdoor lighting, I bought some ORB spray paint and went to town spraying our existing fixtures. I love how our light fixtures now pop against the white when the original finish blended in.

Now for pictures!

Here is Phase 3: New Exterior Paint on Trim, Doors, and Light Fixtures

Before and After:

More After shots (and sneak peek of carpeting!):

Adam replaced the locks with brand new ones that actually work and come with sets of keys!! Trust me, this is super exciting for our family!

Phase 4: Outdoor Carpeting

When Adam and I purchased our home, part of the deck was unfinished with only plywood as the flooring. We found out the original plan of the previous owners was to install outdoor carpeting so they could easily move a family member who was in a wheelchair. At first we were not on board with carpeting and wanted wooden slabs to match the rest of the deck. Then we realized there is electrical work under the plywood and wooden slabs would allow water and moisture to absorb through. So we decided to just go with the original plan and have carpeting installed. We love it!

Before and After:

More After:

I feel I need to let you in on a few lessons I learned painting exterior doors because they caused me many many issues, phone calls to my dad, and even tears.

I am a confident painter and felt extremely prepared to tackle four exterior doors in one day. I taped and prepped my work stations and got to work.

Here is where I encountered my first problem..

I did such a good job taping off the weather stripping (using my fingernails to actually get the tape pressed under the trim and over the weather stripping) that once my trim paint dried and I pulled my tape off, it pulled my paint off too! I was crushed and it was hands down the most irritating thing that has happened to me recently.

Once my tape was completely off, a good chunk of my paint peeled off as well along the weather stripping. Adam thought it was not a big deal but I am a bit OCD, it's true. So..I had to make it just right.  

Fast forward a bit--I ended up removing my weather stripping, sanding where the paint peeled, and put a fresh coat on. Perfection.

So Lesson #1: Remove weather stripping first. (It is easy and inexpensive to replace!)

My next issue came when I taped off my hardware. At first we did not think we were going to replace all of the locks so I simply taped around them.

Well, after many coats of bright yellow paint, when I pulled the tape off you better believe it pulled off numerous coats of yellow paint leaving the original gray color. I cried. I could not believe with all the time and effort that went into prepping these things were happening.

This is when we decided to buy new locks since the majority of them did not work properly and we did not have keys for any of them.

Once the old hardware was off, I sat with a tiny paintbrush and very slowly added five more coats over the gray. It's definitely not a great match.

So Lesson #2: Remove hardware from door.

Another glorious lesson I learned involved priming the doors. Two of my doors had a very sloppy white-ish primer on them and two doors did not, they were the factory gray color. I decided to save time, I would buy paint and primer in one. Big mistake. The two doors that had no primer took five coats of yellow paint. Five coats--I was painting into the night.

So Lesson #3: Prime all surfaces before applying paint!

Lesson #4: If you scream, curse, and cry all at the same time your neighbors and spouse will think you are crazy and will not make eye contact with you for the next 48 hrs. (It's true.)

I think I covered all of it. Phew. Live and learn, right?

Phase 5 of our Deck Makeover is the fun part--Accessorizing! Come back soon :)

(linking up here)

.Deck Makeover: Phases 1 and 2.

This title may sound familiar because I used it here and wrote all about our big deck makeover plans.

{That was a year ago.}

We definitely did not think it would take us a full year to complete everything but what can I say--life just happens!

This Spring we decided to move forward with our deck projects and after a good pressure washing, our deck was stained a deep rich cedar.

Before:

Phase 1 After:

Before:

After:

Before (left) After (right):

More After shots:

We used Sherwin Williams Spiced Chest for the stain color. At first the color appeared more orangy-red than we were expecting but after a few good rain storms, a hosing off, and the summer sun, the stain has faded a bit. This Fall we hope to stain our fence the same color to tie everything together. 

Phase 2 was a simple but effective change--we added shutters! :)

We ordered our shutters from Home Depot in the midnight blue color. Adam installed each shutter while I held them in place--go team go!

Phase 2 After:

Before and After:

 More Phase 2 After:

 Stay tuned for Phase 3 involving paint, paint, and more paint! 

.New Light Fixture.

Hello friends! 

I am still rather sick which means not much of anything has happened in our home this past week except for one new addition thanks to my hubs--

Adam was a gem of a husband and installed our new light fixture before leaving for a business trip to NYC. Some of you may have spotted our new light in this post since it's a bit..what's the word?--oh right, LARGE!

Here she is:

I have been loving these basket lights from IKEA for many months now but had to work hard to convince Adam they were cool. (I'm still working on it..) They remind me of my grandma's house I grew up visiting so it makes my heart feel good looking at them, simple as that! When the price was marked down 70% back in May, we knew it was our time to pounce. We scooped up one large and two small fixtures. 

The original plan was to install the big fixture in the upstairs nook over the stairs and place one small in our dining room and the other in our kitchen. I listened to Adam's persuasion, and used the large 24" light fixture in our dining room. He was right, it just works.

It's big.

And paired with the curtains and Craigslist chairs it's feeling a little--dare I use the "R" word--Retro?! Yikes. That word scares me but I have to admit, I think I like it.

Please ignore the empty corner gallery in the background and pretend the piece of artwork behind the new light is twice the size..just squint a little :) I came across this image on Curbly a few days ago and after typing in 'nail and string art' on Pinterest, it's official--I am planning on doing this to the wall with the tree art! 

Stay tuned friends :)