Creative Do-It-Yourself Ideas and Inspiration for Your House and Family. Currently making _______________.
It’s official! We’re finished with the movie room. Or at least, finished for now. Truth be told, most of the work was done towards the end of last year, but all the finishing touches took some time. Instead of posting a play-by-play like we did with the big bathroom remodel, this time around we thought it would be fun to do one big reveal.
Enter if you dare.
Woohoo! My bookshelf dreams are officially actualized. We are so happy with how this whole wall turned out. DIY built-in bookshelves don’t have to be hard. In fact, they went fairly smoothly. If you missed the original build, check out this post first. Then come back here where I have the easy job of showing a bunch of finished after pictures. I got to play with my new camera Joe gifted me for Christmas, so it made photographing these shelves extra fun.
…Or lake hockey.
Right after the first snowfall Joe was looking for deals on hockey nets. And it’s about time we got some snow! Everyone has been waiting on edge to get out there.
We have a pretty slick four-wheeler plow attached to the front Joe’s dad’s four-wheeler that we use to shovel the driveway. Wayyy faster than snowblowing. So we used that to shovel off an oval-shaped area for the rink on the lake, just offshore.
But when Joe told me he was making a zamboni, I honestly thought the idea was one big joke. He’s not actually serious, right? Silly me. I should know better by now… He already had the blueprints in his mind within minutes. So, now we have a redneck ice resurfacer.
It only took him 4 hours. Here’s the materials you will probably need:
We hope you are enjoying the holidays and are looking forward to a great 2016. I’m definitely enjoying some down time – keeping all the Christmas lights on for a few more days and polishing off a few leftover cookies.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what my 2016 goals/resolutions will be, and I keep coming back to one word: Abundance. I like to choose a theme or word instead of a traditional resolution to focus on throughout the year, and this year I want to embrace the abundance that comes my way. Remembering that there will always be enough time, always be enough money; the things I sometimes feel lacking in. Shifting a scarcity mindset to one of abundance, trusting in myself and God’s provision and plans. This can be hard and scary, but I’m so excited to see where 2016 takes us and the gifts it brings into our lives!
It’s been a great year for us with many firsts, new traditions, new memories, new friends, old friends, family, and lots of love. And of course, challenges too. But I think I really did my word from last year justice: Celebrate. We’re so grateful for the blessings this year has brought. Now, on to a year of abundance.
These site stats are super interesting to me, and I thought you might like them too. If there’s anything you would like to see more of next year, please let us know! It’s really nice to hear from people and which types of projects are most inspirational/helpful to you. We have a boatload of projects backlogged that I’ll be posting, and some new construction sites in the house as well. It’s hard to keep up with Joe!
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,500 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people
Click here to see the complete report.
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.
Did you have a restful weekend? As much as Joe tried (or I tried to coax him) to relax, he found ways to work. We snuck away to my grandparents’ cabin in Wisconsin for a couple days and soaked up the summer/fall goodness.
Activities included the mandatory games of Phase 10, walking around the lake, boating, giant garage sale in the city of Siren, Shell Lake Days, and plenty of stories and laughs. But by Sunday afternoon, we were right back to fixing up the yard and boat.
July has been fun, but August looks just as bright! This week we’ve got some legitimate updates, some random things, and some cute things… So let’s just dive right into them, in that order.
I’ve purchased a lovely new plant. The YMCA was selling them for charity, so I picked it up for $10. I seem to do ok with tropical plants, and nothing else.
It’s called a Sago Palm and is not really a true palm at all! It’s doing well so far. (2 weeks)