New Kitchen Chandelier- Goodbye Swag Lighting!!

I wouldn't normally dedicate an entire blog post to a chandelier, but I'm making an exception today as our new chandelier over our dining table has brought an immense amount of joy to me and I'm here to show you that making small changes in your home can make a large impact (and bring you sanity). 

Kitchen Floor Update

This kitchen floor update is long overdue, so thank you to everyone who reached out to me about them and waited patiently on me getting this up! 

In case you forgot, the last place I left off regarding the kitchen makeover was painting the cabinets white, you can read about it here. After the kitchen cabinets were done, we tackled replacing all the floor as we wanted to get rid of the last bit of orange color (the floors weren't as orange as the cabinets but still too orange for our liking).  Continue reading to see what it looks like now! 

Basement Update

I've been a little MIA  on the blog and Instagram lately, but that doesn't mean that we haven't made some progress on projects in our home! Last May I shared our basement makeover design plans, and today I thought I would give you an update as to where we are since we've been making progress lately. We still have a ways to go, but I always think it's fun to see progress shots on projects before the final reveal. 

Organization Ideas for the Home

If you read my blog post last week about my 2017 New Years Resolution goals, you saw that this year I want to work on organizing our home. I made some progress in 2016 with this goal, but this year I really want to make it a main focus. When I go on Pinterest, I'm always so in awe of all the beautiful organizing ideas. Although some might be impractical or costly for my house, I thought I would round up some of my favorite inspiration photos for all of you to be inspired by and for you to feast your eyes on! 

{Via }

2017 New Years Resolutions

 I love the New Year as it is a chance to change habits, improve upon yourself and show 2017 whose boss!! The month of January is the perfect time to reflect upon the past year of what didn't work and to start fresh on resolutions and make yourself proud. So today I thought I would share some of my own resolutions that I'm hoping to work on in 2017.

2016 Gift Guide for Her

Today I'm sharing a gift guide that includes some bits and baubles for the ladies in your life from stores that should still deliver or you can pick up from in the next 10 days! I hope you enjoy and find it helpful in your shopping!  

1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 // 16 // 17 //18 // 19 // 20 

Christmas Tablescape Must-Haves with Hayneedle

 Disclosure: I was given the products mentioned in this post by Hayneedle, but all content is my own and reflects my own style and opinions.  I partnered with Hayneedle because I love their products and want you to enjoy them as much as I do. 

You guys! Christmas is only 13 days away! If you haven't already, it's time to get your Christmas tablescapes put together!  I've teamed up with Hayneedle to create my Christmas dining table and to share with you all of my must-haves for this look that can all still be delivered in time for Christmas!

Kitchen Makeover Next Steps

If you missed my post from Tuesday, I finally shared the reveal of our newly painted kitchen cabinets (you can catch up here)!! Now that cabinet painting project is finished, that means that we can continue on with the other projects in this space! We could easily stop here with this kitchen project, but there are only two more aspects that I'm very excited to be changing that I think will really complete the look of this space!  Want to know what those two things are, then keep reading! 

How to Paint Kitchen Cabinets

Friends, the day is here! I’m FINALLY sharing the rest of cabinet painting projects as well as revealing how it turned out! I'm sorry that it took me awhile to get it posted but thank you for being patient with me!

 As I’ve vented in the past, when we bought our house I was not all that impressed by our kitchen but I knew that with a little TLC we could make it our own.We don’t have a large budget for refinishing the space, so painting the cabinets has been a GREAT way to update the kitchen without paying a high price tag or replacing all the cabinets. It might have taken quite a bit of time, but if done correctly they will save you a lot of money and should last you for years (or so I’ve been told, I’ll let you know if that is true in a year or soJ )  

Last Minute Simple Thanksgiving Tablescape Ideas

I think it's safe to say that if you are reading this blog post that you probably appreciate a pretty tablescape for Thanksgiving, but if you're like me, sometimes you might not have the time or desire to create a lavish spread similar to what you might find in a Pottery Barn magazine. That said, with Thanksgiving in 3 days I thought I would round up some last minute simple Thanksgiving tablescape ideas if you're still in need of some last minute inspiration.  Here are some of my favorite:

{Via}

Spray Painting Pumpkins & How to Keep from Rotting

As a blogger, this Fall I completely failed at decorating and doing DIY projects for this season, but I did manage to squeeze in one!   Last year I did the exact same project of spray painting pumpkins (since I love me some white pumpkins) , but they started to rot rather quickly so I never blogged about them. This year, however,  my pumpkins have lasted 2 months so far and since I consider that a success I thought I would share what I did differently this year. 

Painting Kitchen Cabinets Part 2: Priming

Happy Thursday, and welcome back to part 2 of my painting my kitchen cabinet series. Two weeks ago I shared the first part of how I prepped the cabinets, so if you missed it you can read about it here. This past Saturday I headed down to Charlotte, NC for my company's yearly national trade show, so my goal was to finish this project and post about it before I left. I was able to finish the project before I left (can we say Hooray!!!) but due to my hectic work schedule, my blog posts are a little behind. Better late than never, right?! Plus, I promise the result will be worth the wait!   Before I just jump into the final result and the painting process, stay tuned for it early next week, I thought I would quickly share with you the next step after prepping which is priming! 

Painting Kitchen Cabinets: Part 1 Prepping

Yes you read the title of the blog right, our kitchen cabinets are in the process of being painted! THEY ARE FINALLY GETTTING PAINTED WHITE!! I can’t say that or read that enough. If fact, while sanding the cabinets while my neighbors glanced in curiosity of what I was doing, I wanted to shout and tell them all. Literally, I thought this day was never going to come so it’s surreal that it’s finally here and I’m doing it. It’s happening and there’s no going back now!!

Some of you might be confused because I’ve gone back and forth on this project many times on the blog and you might be thinking,  ‘wait, I swear you wrote a blog post the other month about you keeping the orange maple cabinets!’. To spare you all from my own marital DIY home improvement project drama,  (If you have ever worked on a project around the house with your spouse, you know this is real thing), simply put my husband changed his mind like 10 times of whether he was ok with it and after much begging and reiterating how much better it will look with the rest of our house and the added value it will bring(since he is numbers person) he finally was okay with it. Right when he approval I jumped on it so he wouldn’t have time to change it.  Also, a huge reason why he didn’t want to do the project was because how time consuming it is and he didn’t want to have to do it, so I have signed up to tackle this project on my own! 

OK now that you have the background story let’s start talking getting into the fun project details! I’m going to break this kitchen project up into multiple posts, so today I’m sharing the prepping steps. 

First let me take you on a walk down memory lane of the progress of our kitchen so far. He is what we started with...

Ottoman Coffee Table Ideas

Dining Room Design Board & Dining Table Must-Haves

The other weekend I was over at my parents house to celebrate my father’s birthday. If any of you know me personally or have been following me on Instagram for a long time, then you might know that my parents were living in OR for the past couple of years. This May, however, they made the decision to move back to Michigan and only be 1 hour away from me. This change has been pretty exciting for me, to say the least. 

Anyways, in my parents new home they have a formal dining room, so when they had everyone over for dinner my mom realized she had no table settings to create a tablescape so she enlisted me to bring some of my own stuff.  which I happily brought. After the fact, though, she decided it was about time to get her own stuff and spruce up the dining room so I was happy to help her out! 

Here is the design board that I created using some of her existing stuff to keep it an easy transformation. It was fun to create because it challenged me to create something beyond my own personal style! 

Sources 

Light fixture ||  Hurricane Candle Holder ||  Greenery Centerpiece || Table Runner ||  Charger ||  Napkin ||  Napkin Ring

My goal in the design board was to keep it rather simple and something that can last throughout the year. I myself like to change things up regularly, but I can respect those like my Mom that like things more permanent.

Once I started searching for sources for her, I quickly realized that there were so many knockoffs for higher end products. That said, I created a splurge vs. save image and sources for those of you who might not like to invest top dollar in home décor items like my myself:)  I couldn’t believe in some cases the items were exactly the same!

Sources 

Charger Splurge \\  Charger Save 

Table Runner Splurge \\  Table Runner Save

Napkin Splurge \\  Napkin Save 

Napkin Ring Splurge \\  Napkin Ring Save

Hurricane Holder splurge \\  Hurricane Holder Save 

Centerpiece Splurge \\  Centerpiece Save

Thanks for stopping by! Fall is finally here so I'm SO excited to start my projects again and share them with you! Stay Tuned:) 

Portland, Seattle & Vancouver Recap & Travel Guide

Hi there! As I'm sure you've probably noticed (or possibly not), I've taken a lot of time to myself these past few months and haven been pretty MIA on the blog.  Last summer we spent a lot of it working on home projects, so this year we decided to lay off the projects and try to soak up this summer as much as possible. So although us being busy making memories this summer (and me training for a half marathon) has meant me be being MIA on the blog, I feel like I have been re-inspired and I’m excited to begin posting more often and get back to home projects! Before jumping back into home stuff, though, I thought I would share a recap and travel guide to our road trip to the Pacific Northwest that we got back from a week ago!    

On our Pacific Northwest road trip we went to Portland, OR the Oregon coast, Seattle and Vancouver and boy was it beautiful. I had been to all these places before when I was a teenager, except for the Oregon coast, but this was Paul's first time to all these cities so it was exciting exploring the cities with him  as an adult and finding our own favorite spots. 

Keep reading to see what our favorite places were in each city! 

Friday Favorites: Beach Must-Haves

Happy Friday!! It’s been a very long time since I’ve done a Friday Favorite’s, in fact I can’t even remember the last time I’ve done one, but I've been to the beach the last couple of weekends and am heading to a pool party this weekend so I thought I'd round up my favorite beach favorites that I currently use and currently love. Check them out!

1   // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5  // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 

Kitchen Update and How to Create Visuals

It's been a loong time since I've blogged about my kitchen, so I thought it was about time that I give you an update. 

If you remember, originally my plan was to keep the existing cabinets the same mainly because my husband was completely against me painting them white. Slowly but surely, however, I was able to convince him. 

At first, I wanted to get them done in June, but my husband was NOT happy about tackling a huge project in the middle of the summer, so that's why our kitchen projects have come to a complete halt these last couple of months. We both decided we would rather enjoy the summer than spend it working on our house. So instead of painting our cabinets, we have been thoroughly enjoying going to his parent's cottage, the beach, hanging out with friends, and in a couple of weeks we head to the Pacific Northwest for a 13 day vacation, woot woot! Once we get back from our vacation in Mid-August we are planning to finally start our project so we are in the process of finalizing details!! 

Now if we rewind a little bit, some of you maybe asking, how did you convince your husband to do this project? I can't say that there was just one thing that convinced him, but one thing he struggled with is envisioning how it would look.  So, that said today I'm going to show you my favorite way to create visuals when it comes to painting a space! 

Deck Makeover and Sources

Long time no see! I can't believe that it's already July! It's been awhile since I've blogged, but lately I've just been trying to enjoy the summer and this beautiful weather that is so limited here in Michigan, and in the last couple of weeks I've just been very un-inspired when it comes to design so I took a little blogging break. 

BUT.. I'm back and feeling more inspired so today I'm giving you the full details on our deck makeover. I've also included all the sources to the deck at the bottom of the post.

Last month I shared how I stained our deck and also shared a post of some Lowe's products I used to turn our deck into an oasis, but in case you saw neither here is a before and after picture. 

Tan Sectional Source

Happy Thursday! One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked on Instagram is, "where is your sectional from?" so I thought today I would share all the details on it as well as at the bottom I've included 14 other tan sectional ideas.