2013 Out 2014 In

I can hardly believe that 2013 is almost over! I have had a true whirlwind year from finishing up our house, to selling and moving, a wedding, and having orders nearly full time since we got “settled” in June. I have been SO very blessed.

 

I have survived: A DIY wedding recap

 

I am coming out of the post wedding haze. I am still recovering and slowly try to get things cleaned up. I really really wish I had more photos to share with you all! Everything turned out beautifully. My cousin and I worked our bums off over the last 3 months to pull off one of the best weddings I have ever been a part of. From décor, to programs, and even the food (thanks to my awesome mom), I had a hand in pretty much the whole thing. And let me tell you... it is so nice to not be the bride and groom! I was pretty  much stress free. Wedding planning was SO much fun but I don't think I will ever do it again. I don't think anyone would want to pay my rates because I would not come cheap! :)

 

Lets recap some of the DIY...

 

At the ceremony site there is a very long driveway. I made this sign for entrance by the road.

Wedding Brain!

Has it really been over a month since I posted anything?! Wow. Well I my last post was about weddings and this one will be too! It turns out that my one of my dearest friends (who happens to be my cousin) decided to get married with only THREE MONTHS time to throw it all together. We are currently in wedding crunch mode with a little over 5 weeks to go. Somehow, it will all get done... somehow.

 

So what all are we planning?

The Wedding Bench

 

Do we all love weddings? Well, all women probably do at least, right? And our summers are usually full of weddings! I am trilled to be working on some custom wedding orders. It makes me feel so great to know I have a part in these gal's special days. <3

 

So here's some of the goods...

 

The Wedding Bench

 

 

Busy Bees

Well the month of May just flew right by! Aside from getting settled here at the new house I have been busy this past week making some gifts. First I made three of these for my boy's teachers...

New House: The Blue Bathroom

YAY!!! We have been in our new house for about 2 weeks now and I am finally kinda ready to start tackling a few projects. First on the list, "The Blue Bathroom". Checkout this realtor photo....

  

Decisions... CHECK!

As is probably quite obvious, I have gone back and forth A LOT on just what I want to do with myself in regards to "an internet presence". The time I have taken off from blogging during our sale and move, has given me lot of perspective. And I have decided that I get pretty annoyed by about 80% of the bloggers out there (I know, hate me, don't care). I can't stand shameless self promotion and from my point of view I feel like that has recently EXPLODED with the aid of Pinterest. Don't get me wrong. I love Pinterest. It is a great place to give and get ideas and I do love each and every new follower I get. But I am not going to go out of my way to try to get people to follow me. I am not going to go out of my way to pin things from posts made years or months ago. I am not going to spend an hour making an eye catching graphic in the hopes that people will click on it and magically come to my blog. Yup... I just don't care.

Long story short...

So here we are... preparing to move! The last month has been insane! We decided to contact a realtor who in turn wanted to list our house ASAP. And (this never happens) we had a contract in one day! Yes, one day! Long story short, we thought we were going to be homeless but we have finally found our new home! We are thrilled to have found a house that only needs some cosmetic changes (that's my thing). I am going to get to have my own craft room!!! We are going to have a family room!!! There are some things I will miss about our current home, like my giant soaking tub and my adorable laundry room  and my spacious kitchen. But I have high hopes that in due time our new house will be everything we have always wanted.

So stay tuned. I will be quite for the next month or so while we finish all this stuff. Then it's on! I look forward to spending all summer outside cleaning up the property... who knows what I might get into or discover!

Blog on Hiatus!

I'm taking some time off from creating, building, and crafting while my family is working on some life changes!!! All good things, I promise!!!

The laundry room makeover Part 3: The END!!!

Finished! Well, 98% finished as I am still adding in a few items here and there. I am so enormously pleased with how it turned out!

The laundry room makeover- Part 2 (gut, paint, floor)

When I last mentioned the laundry room update we were prepping to tear out and start painting and that's just what we did!

Here you can see how simply removing the nasty shelves helped so much! (Hubby had already removed one wall of shelves in the first picture).

Just getting them down REALLY opened up the space!

Top secret way to remove wallpaper!

I have a confession... when we moved into this house I was pregnant and thought I needed to paint every room in the house all at once. By the time I painted babies room I was worn out. So when the FUGLY wallpaper border that was up would not come down with a simple tear, I did what every smart lazy person would do and bought a new wallpaper border and hung it right over the old. And it worked wonderfully... until now. (BTW, I had no problems with this method. It hung well overtop the old and you could not tell. Just putting that out there incase yall are lazy smart like I was.) Now it is time to paint the room again and the border would no longer work. It had to go!

The funny thing is, I know a pretty awesome top secret way to remove wallpaper. Well maybe it is not super top secret since there are a few internet results for it... but hey, I thought it was a top secret secret. Wanna know???

The laundry room makeover- Part 1

The time has come! After over 3 years of owning this home and loathing the nasty MDF that is my laundry room... I am FINALLY taking a hammer to it! To show you just how AWFUL my laundry room is I made a very real video... no cleaning before... just real life. Take a look...

Wallpaper!! Yes, I said wallpaper!

This weekend we spent a few hours applying a beautiful graphic print wallpaper to one wall in our bathroom. What's that? You didn't know that wallpaper is trendy again? Check it out here at HGTV.com... it can be super awesome when used just right. BUT it is hard to find an affordable and pretty print.

Here is how our's turned out...