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DIY Pom Pom Blanket

    Here’s a tutorial that is months in the making! I made this blanket at the beginning of September, took photos of the process to share with you, posted the finished cutie on instagram and promised I’d show you how I did it. Then I uploaded… Continue Reading…DIY Pom Pom Blanket

    hardwood floors – the delivery, the demo, the install

      new-hardwood-floors

      We have new floors in our house. We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the right time and finally made it happen. Things have gone smoothly and fairly quickly and we’re now ready to clean out all the dust, move our furniture back in and get ready for hosting Thanksgiving.  I’ll take photos to show you the finished spaces (it looks so good!) once we have everything put back together, but for now let’s talk about the process of replacing our floors.

      To recap, we had blonde maple in our entry (see it here), front bathroom and kitchen. The rest was a taupy/gray carpet (we still have it upstairs) in terrible condition from the past 8 years of kids and dog and entertaining and living. It was time for it to go. We ordered a million hardwood flooring samples, narrowed it down to our top picks and after a few days of staring at them, made our choice.

      floors-arrive

      We ordered from Build Direct and the process was super easy. I measured, the customer service guys helped us figure out what trim pieces and overage we needed and it was official: our floors were on their way! Delivery day was pretty exciting … except when the handtruck couldn’t get the pallet up the driveway so Ryan and I had to carry each box one-by-one into the house. Let’s just say it was good exercise (ps. there were two of those pallets).

      The second I had the chance, I tore that first box open to see our new floors.

      open-box

      We went with the gray-brown (here is the exact floor) and are very happy with the choice. Yes, we knew going into it that dark floors are a pain to maintain, but the matte finish and dirty brown color will hopefully do a good job of camouflaging dirt. Ask us in a few months if we’re still in love.

      With the wood delivered, it was time to rip out the downstairs floors.Continue Reading…hardwood floors – the delivery, the demo, the install

      diy thankful string art

        string-art-diy

        This year, our thankful tree sits on the bar cart in the dining room. I thought it would be fun to have some sort of interesting art to hang nearby and decided to try a technique I’ve seen and loved all over the web. Here are a few of my favorite string art examples (1 / 2 / 3). My version is subtle and the white string and linen backing look pretty next to the vintage gold frame.

        thankful-string-art-bar-cart

        Want to see how I made it?!Continue Reading…diy thankful string art

        our process for picking white paint

          picking-white-paint

          Our house is a disaster. And I couldn’t be more excited about it.

          We’ve been waiting years to do a few big projects to our house and finally took the plunge. The floors were ripped up last week, the walls needed a fresh coat of paint and the new floors will be installed this week. In the meantime, we’re living in a construction zone with all of our furniture moved out and no stove to cook on (which just means eating out or at friends’ houses and I’m not complaining about that!).

          I posted about our flooring options and it was helpful to run through all of the choices and hear what you had to say. We made our final selection, placed the order and have let them acclimate in the house for the past few weeks (sneak peeks coming!).  Well, once we pulled up all the carpet and existing hardwoods downstairs in preparation for the floor install, we decided it was the right time to paint the walls. Normally I’m the painter. I really don’t mind it and do a decent job. But the places that needed new paint the most – the stairway, ceilings, hallways and tall walls in the living room – were not areas I was excited about working on. Besides the difficulty factor, it would also take us weeks, and we just don’t have time with kids and soccer and work and the holidays coming up.

          So we hired painters. I’ll tell you what, I may never go back to painting myself again. They do such amazing work and they are quick. Yay for nice people who paint houses for a living!

          The only problem is that it costs money. And when you’re paying a bunch of money to have nearly every wall in your house painted, you really, really want to make sure you pick the right color. There are a million bigger issues out there than choosing paint colors, I am well aware. I felt ridiculous going back and forth, painting swatches, staring at five whites that looked exactly the same and yet I also didn’t want to waste money on a color that we didn’t love.

          white-paint-sample-pots

          We knew we wanted white. I’ve been craving clean, fresh, light, bright. One peek at my living area pinterest board and you’ll instantly see what my eye is drawn to. We moved into our home 8 years ago and the walls and ceilings were all the same khaki-ish color. It’s a fine color, but started feeling dark – especially during our dreary Pacific Northwest winters when the sun doesn’t show up much. So white was the obvious choice.Continue Reading…our process for picking white paint

          art from art (woodland animals + templates)

            art-from-art

            Today I’m joining in on a fun ‘think outside of the box’ challenge so if you’re here from Perfectly Imperfect, welcome!

            My blog friends Jamin and Ashley published three awesome books filled with removable 8×10 art prints. The idea is brilliant and makes switching out art affordable and so, so easy.  The art work is all great, but no one can hang all of it in their homes, so they challenged a group of bloggers to come up with other creative uses for the artwork – the only request was that we could not place them in a frame (which I sort of cheated on …).

            the_handmade_home_button

            I was inspired to use the pretty paintings to create these cutie royal woodland animals. I call it making art from art.

            woodland-artwork

            They were so simple to make (and I even have templates for you so you can make them too!).Continue Reading…art from art (woodland animals + templates)

            thanksgiving table

              thanksgiving-table-inspiration

              Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. I know I say that about every major celebration, but truly, Thanksgiving ranks high (like right at the top with christmas and easter). We have the best memories of Thanksgiving from when we were kids – big family gatherings, weekends at my great Aunt & Uncle’s house in their small town, cutting down our christmas tree – and it’s continued to be a time of year that feels festive and filled with tradition even now.

              thanksgiving-table-setting

              I love watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with the kids, then the dog show after (weird, I know. But I tend to be a bit like my mom and she always kept the dog show on so naturally, I do the same), then football for days. Our house fits the most people in it, so we often host here which we love. We do some of the cooking, and the rest of the family each bring a favorite dish (sweet potato puree, sauteed green beans with shallots and bacon, sweet potato cranberry crescent rolls – yum).Continue Reading…thanksgiving table

              start today: a thankful tree with printable tags

                For the past three years our family has done a thankful tree and it has become my kids’ favorite tradition for this time of year.

                make-a-thankful-tree

                Our entry table was the spot for our tree last year, and this year it sits on the bar cart in our dining room (photos coming tomorrow!)

                A full explanation is on this original thankful tree post, but the idea is simply to grab a few branches, pop them in a pretty urn and put out tags to write on and then hang from the tree. As the boys went out the door to school this morning, each stopped to think of something they are thankful for and put it on a tag. It was so sweet to watch them do it on their own and take a few seconds to reflect before they went on with their day. You can dedicate a time each day to do this as a family, or just let them go at it – which is probably our approach this year – every time they pass the tree, they are welcome to use another tag.

                thankful-tags-in-silver-bowl

                thankful-tags-hanging-from-branches

                There are thankful tags from that first thankful tree post which you are welcome to use, or choose your favorite from these designs.

                free-thankful-tags

                free-thankful-tag-dowloads

                Just dowload the pdf, print on your favorite paper (see my favorite sources here) and cut around the edges. Punch a hole in the top if you’ll be hanging from branches, or just use as little cards to keep in a pretty bowl, or on your thanksgiving table or as lunchbox notes.

                Continue Reading…start today: a thankful tree with printable tags

                bow pillow (tutorial)

                  bow-pillow-diy

                  A simple, understated pillow, with classic detailing and menswear-inspired fabric? Yes, please.

                  One of my favorite pillows I’ve made is an oversized bow pillow (which you can see in the background of this picture and in this post about pillows). The inspiration came from those silky bow blouses from the 80’s, but with a slightly more masculine feel with the gray plaid of the original pillow. It’s such an easy one to make that I thought maybe you would like one in your home, too. I’d love to show you how.Continue Reading…bow pillow (tutorial)