Creative Do-It-Yourself Ideas and Inspiration for Your House and Family. Currently making _______________.
A couple weeks ago, Joe and I took a few days off work for our very first staycation. I’ve got to say, it was really exciting! We hardly told anyone where we were going – I know, it’s pretty anticlimactic when you realize our big getaway vacation was actually… nowhere. But to us, it was our time to truly enjoy the house for the first time between moving in, work, and a summer of nonstop commitments.
If you have a summer/fall party to go to, or just can’t resist baking something, this easy campfire cupcake recipe is really fun. It takes about an hour and gets 10 points for the cuteness factor. Plus, my sweet tooth just can’t say no to those chocolate creme filled wafers. Yum!
Here’s the backstory.
We’ve been moved in for awhile now, but we can finally look back and decompress. Although, we still have a box or five that still need to be sorted.
Moving day was a crazy blur. We left the old house and did both closings the same morning. We handed over the keys and a few tears were shed, but we were really happy to learn a disabled military veteran would be buying the house. We were just excited to get an offer, but this was icing on the cake. He was most looking forward to the running trails and impressed by the neighborhood. We thought he’d be an excellent fit!
So, we were homeless for a few hours before going to our second signing.
It will be fun to one day look back and reminisce about all the changes we’ve made to this house. Our little fixer upper is growing up so fast already. Sigh.
It was about time we decided to set up a patio table on the deck outside our bedroom. And pillows were the most exciting part! It was actually my first project that I had planned, even before we moved from the old house. I had bought fabric weeks before we even moved. Call me crazy, but it was my #1 project idea since May.
There are so many fun and funky patterns of outdoor fabric, why would you buy them from the store? And I think they’re a little overpriced if you buy them from a Target or Home Goods. So I headed to Joanne.com to find a few patterns I liked. Luckily there were many! And a few cute ones in-store too. They were even all 40% off! All I needed to do was buy some stuffing and I used my sewing machine to do the rest.
Here’s what I found on my first round of shopping in Joanne.
In love with the geometric one.
I ordered these three on Joanne.com.
We got so many nice and beautiful cards from you guys, we couldn’t let them go to waste or hide them in a box for all of eternity. They needed to be displayed! And displayed they shall be.
We have a total crush on this house. Guilty as charged. Joe’s long-time family friends bought a rambler in St. Louis Park Minnesota and completely gutted and remodeled it. The work is amazing! So much attention to detail. The 3,000 or so square foot space feels way more spacious on the inside than expected. That’s how so many rambler renovations seem to be lately. If there’s one word I could use to describe this house it’s “details”. We’ve been there a total of twice now, and took the opportunity to sneak a few pics. 😉 Thanks guys!
If you’re in the midst of trying to sell your house, you know how stressful it can be. But if you follow some of these basic tips, it doesn’t have to be hard.
Here’s how we did it. We were pretty confident in our staging abilities, and guess what? We didn’t do too bad! When Barb the professional came in, we didn’t have a whole lot to change. Mainly this is because we had already cleansed the premises and shipped all our possessions off to various garages.
If you’re currently trying to stage your home, you don’t necessarily need to hire a professional staging person. Although, you may find it helpful. Luckily Joe’s parents had some furniture to lend us and his mom got to be the personal shopper for staging. I’ll try to give as many details as I can.
I found this recipe in our staging cookbook that we used for house showing decor. It’s the Better Homes and Gardens annual recipes 2003 cookbook. We picked it purely for the colors and photos, but hey, I’ve already made two recipes from it! I put a different spin on it to serve up for Sunday. Easter has always been my favorite holiday, and I’m so excited! If you’re looking for a good spring recipe, I would highly recommend this one. (Unless we’re going to the same family function.) It’s fairly easy, and there’s even a surprise filling inside. Hope you enjoy!
It was truly March Madness for us – A month for the record books. We put an offer on a house, had it contingently accepted, had to make a mad dash to sell a house, and a bunch of aftermath that we’re currently weeding through. There were many, many things that needed to take place in order for everything to fall exactly into place. There was probably some divine intervention, because whatever took place was of superhuman effort. Good thing we know some pretty super humans 🙂
This is a sampling of what we needed to do. The majority of our work was taping, mudding, prepping walls, painting walls, shampooing carpet, getting everything into boxes and out of the house, repainting coats of paint and generally polishing and deep cleaning every square inch. Joe’s house cleaned up pretty nicely! But few of us got to be behind the scenes. Lemme tell you, it wasn’t so pretty. But it was all worth it in the end.
