Looking for Christmas decorating inspiration? See our red, white & gold Christmas decorating plan and how I'll be incorporating it throughout our home. Believe it or not, this year I'm adding red into our Christmas decor! As a lover of neutral colors, I haven't had red in my decor in several years, but I woke up the other day and decided the house needed something fresh and new... and vibrant. Bring on the red! To go with it, I'll be adding in plenty of white and gold too, and I'm loving the color combo already! I think I'm most excited to decorate our flocked tree. And even though Ania won't remember her first Christmas at just five months old, there's something magical ...
The Willow House
Art In The Entryway
Looking for a quick, budget friendly way to add art to your home? Digital prints are a great way to personalize your home while staying within budget! Our entryway is still going through a transition period. There's so many things I want to do, but until we can get it done, I've been focusing on easier ways to give the space the fresh look it's been needing. Adding new art in the entryway has done just that. It's been a fun, budget friendly way to really update the space, all while being cost effective. Affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here. Adding Art To The Entryway Digital prints have long since been one of my ...
Vertical Planking & Open Shelves In The Kitchen
See how we installed vertical planking & open shelves in the kitchen to make it feel bigger and brighter! Our kitchen has come a long, long way. After we had our backsplash installed, it was time to add vertical planking and open shelves in the kitchen. From the very beginning when we were designing the kitchen, I knew I wanted open shelves to make the kitchen feel larger. We don't have a big kitchen, but the new addition of the open shelves makes the kitchen appear bigger and less crowded. Before we could have the shelves installed, the first step was adding the vertical planking. Todd and I decided to tackle the project a few weeks before I was due to have our baby ...
Our Fall Front Porch
Our front porch might be small, but it sure does look good dressed up for fall! See how to recreate the look below! It's time to share our fall front porch! We've been working so hard on our yard these past two years. Last year, we focused all of our energy on the front yard, and this year we spent our time on the back yard. And let me just tell you, it's miraculous having grass and a yard. It's basically night and day difference and it's literally given us a breathe of fresh air. This year, we had a large garden area which allowed us to grow our own pumpkins. There's nothing I love more than a porch filled with beautiful pumpkins... problem is, I don't want to pay for them since they ...
Laminate Countertops & Backsplash
The secret is out: Our kitchen has laminate countertops & backsplash! See how we made it look like real marble! It's been a hot minute since I've shared anything about our kitchen, but so much has changed lately! It's time I shared an update on one of the biggest additions yet, our laminate countertops and backsplash! When we designed the kitchen, we knew we'd need to splurge and save in different areas with the countertop and backsplash being one of them. But just because we needed to save in that area, didn't mean they needed to look cheap! Quite the opposite really! Laminate has come a long, long way from what it used to look like. These days, you can get patterns that look ...
Summer Home Tour
It's a been a heavy few months and weeks, hasn't it? Not only with everything going on in the world, but also on the home front. A few weeks ago, my grandpa passed away. Sadness has been heavy in my heart and I haven't had the desire to share anything new here on the blog. I'm sorry for being quiet, but stepping away for a little bit was much needed. Today though, I'm looking forward to sharing our summer home tour. A big thank you to Marty from A Stroll Thru Life for inviting me to join in and share our home. If you're visiting from Heather at Southern State of Mind, welcome! She has a beautiful home with a stunning outdoor area! Lately, we've really been trying to get as much done as ...
New Dining Room Table
We recently added a new dining room table to our dining room! Suddenly, things are feeling much better! Our dining room... sigh. It's a hard space to figure out. With it being small in size, and right in the middle of two major walkways, figuring out the right furniture placement has been tricky. Since we've been moving furniture around to make room for the baby and her nursery, we recently moved the office furniture to our basement where we'll be reworking everything to make things fit. The table I was using for a desk however, wasn't going to fit. I wasn't sure if it would work in the dining room, but it was a chance I was willing to take in order for us to have a more ...
New Garage Doors
Our New Garage Doors are installed and our exterior is looking better than ever! If you remember back when I shared our 2020 project goal list, adding new garage doors was at the top of our list. We worked on the exterior of our home so much last summer, and we made really great progress with new paint, windows, the addition of our front pergola, and all the landscaping we completed. The last really big item to finish things off, was having new garage doors installed. I've mentioned it time and time again, but the previous owners of this home really beat things up. They didn't take very good care of the house or property and the garage doors were just as much evidence of that as ...
Nursery Design Plan
With our sweet baby girl due the beginning of July, I've been working hard to pull together her nursery design plan and our baby registry. It's becoming really real that she'll be here soon, which is both incredibly exciting and making me a little bit nervous at the same time. We still have so much to do and prepare before she makes her arrival! Last weekend we removed everything from our office, which has been relocated to the basement, in preparation to start working on her room. I've thought long and hard about what I want her room to feel and look like. I often find myself sitting in her room, taking it all in and letting my imagination take over. This is the room we'll be ...
DIY Staircase Makeover
Are you ready for a big transformation? Our DIY staircase makeover has made a huge difference for our home! If there's been one project that's been glaringly obvious that we need to finish, it's our stairs. When we were knee deep in demo'ing the house, we went through and removed all the old, super gross carpet, but other projects became more important and we ended up moving in with the stairs still in pretty rough shape. We've hated them, but we've dealt, just as anyone does when living in a fixer upper. With this project being one we wanted to complete this year, and the fact that it's been holding us up from finishing any base trim that connects to the stairs, we decided the ...
How To Install Wall Moulding
We've been doing some work in our master bathroom and it's coming along beautifully. When coming up with the design plan for this bathroom, I really wanted to add some extra character, especially with the bathroom being such a small space. Wall moulding was an essential part of my plan, and we just recently installed a few walls, with one more to go. Today though, I wanted to share our method on how to install wall moulding. It's such a beautiful way to add character to any space. How To Install Wall Moulding Before we get started, if you haven't caught up with progress in our master bathroom, you can read my last update here. This bathroom has come such a long ...
Our Spring Home Tour
Who else has been so excited, and ever so patiently waiting, for Spring to arrive? Maybe it's because I spent so much of the winter months sick and isolated to the couch, but I've been so ready for the warmer weather, the green grass, birds chirping and the coming days of planting flowers! I also love sharing our spring home tour. It's refreshing to air out the house, give everything a good cleaning and add in fresh elements that really make the house feel ready for the spring season. Today for our spring home tour, I'm joining Marty from A Stroll Thru Life and the beautiful tour she's created. She planned a whole week of amazing spring home tours. You can tour them all below, but ...
Installing & Painting Our Interior Doors
Let's just take a minute to celebrate the accomplishment of installing and painting our interior doors! It's been a long road getting here, but it's such a sweet victory in having every single interior door installed! Let me just tell you, you'll never fully appreciate the function and beauty of a door until you've lived without them for nearly a year! Yes, a year! When choosing our interior doors, I knew I wanted something a little more traditional in style, but we also didn't want to order custom doors. We found our door style in stock at Lowes, and since we've slowly been adding them to each room for the last year or so, it worked best for us to be able to buy them when we needed ...
Master Bathroom Design Plan
I can't even explain how excited we are to start on our master bathroom remodel! It's been a project we've wanted to do, but held off from finishing while we prioritized other projects that needed done first. It's finally here though, and I've spent so much time working on the new floor plan for the bathroom, as well as the design plan for the space. Before I share the design plan, and the new layout, let's take a walk down memory lane and look back at where we started... The Master Bathroom Before: When we first bought the house, this room appeared to have been one of the only rooms in the house that had undergone some sort of an upgrade. Even with that said, the ...
Our Project Goals For 2020
Since we're still fresh into a new year, and baby girl will be joining us in July, Todd and I took the time to sit down and go over our house project goals for 2020. We have several spaces and areas we'd like to finish this year, so it felt right to sit down and work up a list so we have a good idea what we're looking at, and which projects we need to budget for. While living in a fixer upper, there's never a shortage of new projects that come up. We tackled so many big things last year... projects that really set the foundation for this house and the direction we see everything going. Now that the majority of those larger projects are finished (yay!), we get to add in all the fun ...
Our Christmas Home Tour
It's time to share our Christmas Home Tour! These past few weeks I've been nestled up on the couch battling a nasty cold and wishing it away so I could start decorating for Christmas and spreading the holiday cheer throughout our home. Inspiration wasn't coming to me easily, but I'm finally on the mend and our house is ready for Christmas... even if I'm still doing some shopping and wrapping! Today I'm so excited to be joining Marty from A Stroll Thru Life and the amazing home tour she's created with 30 other bloggers! If you're joining me from Kristen at White Arrows Home, welcome, welcome! Her Wisconsin cabin is beyond lovely and so cozy during Christmas. I could curl up by her ...
Designing And Buying Our Ikea Kitchen
I'm late in sharing this post, but better late than never, right? Designing and buying our Ikea kitchen was a new experience for us. We'd never went through the process of designing, creating and purchasing Ikea cabinets, and while it was definitely an experience, we're still glad we did it. When we first bought our Willow House, basically everything needed gutted. There really wasn't anything worth saving, and the kitchen cabinets were in really, really rough shape. We knew, just like with the rest of the house, the kitchen would be getting new everything. And because we needed to remodel the house on a budget, we'd be leaning on Ikea for the cabinets because of their solid ...
Changes To Our Entry
Now that we're finished with demo and have all the big key items in place, we can finally start playing around with all the fun things in the house. One of the first rooms I wanted to tackle, was our entry. Given that it's one of the first things our guests see when they walk in the door, I wanted to make it tidy and presentable. Changes to our entry our have definitely given the house a breath of fresh air, and it's so nice having a pulled together space when we walk in the door. When we first moved in, and as we were unloading furniture, we put one of our dressers in the the entry and it stayed there until recently. I knew the dresser would never be a permanent solution, but ...
Our Fall Front Porch
What a happy day it is, when I get to share our fall front porch. I love decorating our porch. It's one of my favorite ways to give our home an instant boost in curb appeal and it always gets my creativity rolling. Since I've never decorated the front porch of our Willow House, I was even that much more excited. This is easily the smallest front porch I've ever decorated. There's not a ton of room to do extravagant things, so I leaned heavily on my simplistic side to welcome guests into our home. But as always, I included corn stalks. I always get them from our family farm, and this year my brother let me take some from one of his fields. I must say, I love the way the ...
Four Reasons We Chose Carpet For Our Bedrooms
Since I recently shared the tutorial for installing our laminate flooring throughout the house, I wanted to also share the four reasons we chose carpet for our bedrooms rather than installing the laminate floors. To be honest, we thought long and hard about installing the laminate in our bedrooms as well, but in the end, carpet won out. I know there are so many people who prefer a hard surface flooring throughout their entire home, but that's just not us. Here's why. 1. Carpet Is Soft & Warm Underfoot One of the biggest deciding factors, was the fact that carpet is soft and warm underfoot. We enjoy stepping out of bed and landing on a soft, plush surface. Sure, we could ...
Painted Front Door Interior
There are a few existing things in our house that we're temporarily keeping until the time comes to upgrade and replace them... our front door and the stair hand rail being two of them. In order to stay and blend in, they both desperately needed painted. I'll share more about the handrail later, but when we painted our exterior, I went ahead and painted the exterior side of our front door as well. Since we were still knee deep in demo'ing out the inside of the house, I didn't spend the time painting the interior side, knowing it would get scuffed up. After we moved in, the interior side of our front door looked really out of place. I put it off for a little while, making it out to be a ...
