House Hunting

This past month we put our house on the market. It was a hard decision, we love our neighborhood. But we live pretty far from Mouse's school, work, church and activities. With her going into Jr High we know that those things will get even more time intensive and we need to move closer.

We cleaned the house, we're working on the yard and we are house hunting.

It's hard to fit three opinions into one house.

It's hard to mesh three futures into one house.

We all have different goals and dreams for the next space.

I have dreams of projects and relaxing nights.

For me I found the house that fits those dreams.

But also adds a space for bringing people together.

In my mind water always is the answer.

Now to convince the other two.

And to find a buyer for our house.

~Cassi

Tops from 2012

This past year has seemed to fly by. Looking back through the post of this last year, I must say it's been a fun one.

My favorite part of last year was a family trip to here. 

I love that we can take these trips and experience all that there is. So looking forward to our family trip to Jamaica this year.

We also managed to get a lot of projects completed this past year. My favorite one being our new door.

Seriously the difference this made to the look of our house is incredible. Still months later this makes me smile when I pull into the drive.

Another remake we did that I love is our thrifty bench find.  

 I can't wait to get some pictures taken using this bench. Which brings me to a huge thing from last year. I started my own business. That has been challenging and fun all at the same time.

Thus being said my picture taking in general has increased a lot this year. And I have been looking at different ways to document those pictures. That is when I stumbled on this thing called Smash Journal / Art Journaling. So I combined the two (though this one is much more just a smash journal).

I hope to work on more of this in this next year.

 I haven't forgotten Mouse. Her and I did some fun knock offs for school this year. No Mini Boden budget here but you couldn't tell with the shirt we made. I had so much fun planning these out with her. We will have to do move of that next year.  

 So what else do you our readers (and us) have to look forward to next year. I am hoping to get our project page done. Then you can see all that we have been working on in one place. I am hoping to do more recipes. I cook all the time I need to post more. We have one more room in our house that needs to be finished and a few more outdoor projects. But for now it's New Years and we have a party to get ready for. So see you all next year.

~ Cassi

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New Front Door

We have been in our house now going past seven years. It is the longest we have lived any where. So of course we I am going crazy with lack of a new house to decorate. So Steve did the next best thing for his new house loving wife.

He painted a new entry way!

Here is a quick before picture.

Ok, it really needed a new coat of paint, dang Minnesota weather.

Then since it's Minnesota and freezing he sealed off the entry way and warmed it up a bit so the paint would stick.

And then we had a whole new house. So excited with the way  it looks.

And it's holding up well through rain, winds and snow already.



~ Cassi

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My new Craft Table

My craft room is getting closer and closer to completion. It has been exciting to see my drawings from 6 years ago come to fruition. Steve has been working on my long table for weeks now and it is finally done! He did a great job designing and building it. We started with three metal file cabinets. We painted them a brushed nickel so they would match. Then Steve was great at reusing some wood from an old box spring we had.

For the top we used white laminate wood. The base was tricky, we had to add an inch to each side since the middle cabinet was taller than the other. Look- there he is working hard.  

 For the final piece he added trim to the sides. This really made the table solid and finished looking. The table spans 10.5 feet by just over 2 feet. One side will be for sewing and the other side will be for scrapbooking and other paper crafts.

Check out our links page to see the blogs we've linked our project to.

~ Cassi

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Chalk Board Wall

We took inspiration from this picture for our wall. Of how we wanted to do a half wall of the chalkboard paint. We chose the wall in my craft room. First we painted it with just the normal wall paint. Then we painted over it with black chalkboard paint we picked up at Menard's. We followed the required three days of curring before seasoning. Which really just consists of dragging chalk all over the wall and the wiping it off.

Before we did that I loved the wall, it was perfect black contrast in the room. Once we seasoned it. Well, lets just say it is a messy look of gray now. And no amount of cleaning makes it go back to the nice black. (yes, I used a wet wash cloth even) One a good note Mouse loves it, the neighbor kids loved it so much they put one in their house too. Here is the wall: With Mouse's note to Santa on it.

Here is how I decorated part of the wall for a photo shoot with Mouse.

But it does let me take pictures like this with just a bit of editing in Photoshop.

 ~ Cassi
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The look of new paint!

There is nothing as great as the look of fresh paint, especially if the walls have needed it for about 3 years. See those still pale doors in this picture they are now clean looking. I love how the finished doors look. I promise to post a picture once the electrical overs are on the wall.

My in-laws came over this weekend and helped us paint. We painted our 2 and half story entry way. This was a lot of ladder moving to get to the edges.

 Then we painted that same color downstairs to the top half of our game room and TV room. Not that you can see either of these two things in the unfinished basement. But it is getting there.

The bottom half of the room will be board and batten. I can't wait to see it finished. The floors will be carpet in the part you are seeing and the wood flooring for the rest of the rooms.

 We also painted my craft room. I wanted this one to be very pale gray and white. I will have a lot of fabric on display along with buttons and all sorts of colorful stuff. So I wanted to have a very calm backdrop to that. I think the color worked perfect.

Look at Steve paint my room! We also pained the bathroom. We don't have lights in there yet so the pictures don't look right. The paint color in the first pictures is Behr Studio Taupe and in the last picture it is Behr Graceful Gray.

Next up the ceiling guy meets with us next week. Then we pick out some flooring.

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