Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home ~ Our South Garden in bloom in early September 2022.

 

Hello Friends,

Today I want to share with you a message I recently read from Charles Swindoll that made me smile. I think it will make you smile as well.

The beautiful music of living is composed, practiced, and perfected in the harmony of home. The freedom to laugh long and loudly... the encouragement to participate in memories and deepen our roots in the rich, rare soil of authentic happiness. 

It made me smile, because it is so true of how important home is. I love when I can invite others into the comfort of my home. I enjoy decorating my home for the seasons. I love when my boys are excited to come home. 

Home Sweet Home

   And speaking of home. Below is a photo of our chicken coop and the chicken run. I love when the leaves fall on the roof of the run.

The below photos where taken in early October on a lovely sun dance day. 

The coop is all winterized for our dear hens. A cozy.. home sweet home.

 

Progess on the Kitchen

 Hello Friends,

I have got good news.. the kitchen project is coming along well. The walls are painted, the upper cabinets are painted and installed. The floor is complete.

To give you a little peek.

 

Our kitchen was all white with a few accent colors.

Ripping out the lower counter top and cabinets.

 

Taking the wallpaper down was not as hard as I thought it would be.

 

We are keeping this cabinet.. it will have a fresh coat of paint and new hardware.

And for a little peek at what we are doing.. 

Our kitchen is playing off the colors of the one below called Sunny Backdrop.

 

My husband has named our kitchen, A Summer's Day.. it is coming along.. thank you for cheering these DIY's on.

♥

Carla

The Start of the Kitchen Project!

 Hello Friends,

We have started on the remodel of our kitchen. This has been a long waited remodel. We are excited to update our little kitchen, with new counter tops, cabinets, flooring and paint!

We have decided to do a fun new look. I will be excited to show you what we have decided on color and design. Yes, we are going with color. Our kitchen is currently white.

We had tile on the kitchen floor. We are going to be replacing it with wood, to match the rest of our home. We will have a 100% wood floor home after this project.

 

 

Ripping up the old flooring. 

This was back breaking work.. here are a few quotes from the day, compliments of my husband..

"Carla, I can feel that I am not 25 anymore."

After a few more pulling of nails and ripping up boards..

"Carla, I can feel that I am not 35 anymore."

After a few more pulling of nails and ripping up boards..

"Carla, I can feel that I am not 45 anymore."

 

 

Pulling nails.. lots of nails.

This week my husband is taking a week off from work and we will tackle this project.We hope to get a lot of it done this week, we will finish on the weekends. The BIG goal is to have a new to us kitchen by the first week of March.

We are doing all the work.. teamwork makes the dream work.

Thank you for cheering us on with the BIG kitchen project.

 

Online Auction ~ 2 Floral Design Chairs

 2 Floral Design Chairs

My husband has a coworker/friend who enjoys online auctions and Craigslist.

He will ask Jeremy if we "need anything" .. we usually say no. This time, Jeremy shared a few items we were looking for.

And the story of the 2 Floral Design Chairs and how they came home with us starts here.

My husband shared with Brian, when he first saw the chairs, "Oh, those are not really our style." When Jeremy came home and told me about the online auction, I said, "Can I see the photos of the chairs?"

 I liked them from the start! I had plans!

We won the bid. 

The chairs came home with us. 

I gave them a good scrub.

 

And then went fabric shopping.

 We recently painted and redecorated our boys playroom/school room. It was yellow. We painted it two shades of grey. I will share the painting project and how we completed the room in a future post. We created the room to be a sitting / family room.

 With some helpful tips from Kris at Junk Chic Cottage

the makeover went well. We are very pleased with our online auction chairs.

Guess what .. another online auction is going on this week! Featuring garden items.. well I will just have to take a peek.

Penelope Approved!

 

We are still plugging away at some home updates. We are working on our boys playroom/school room and making it into a sitting room.  And at the same time we decided to update the dining room. I will have more photos as we complete the project. I wanted to share that our new rug for under our dining room table.. is Penelope approved.

My mom's handiwork.. is Penelope approved.

 

 

The new rug for the guest room, looks to be Penelope approved.

I asked my mom if she could design and create a fun rug for our new guest room using the color grey. She did a fantastic job matching the colors. I like the design.

 

My mom is a seamstress and master at crocheting. The rug is crochet.

 

Penelope's colors match as well. 

 ♥

The Guest Room!

 
The Guest Room! 

We recently painted our boys room and created it into a guest room. We still have some finishing touches to do. We plan to replace the light fixture. It was a light and ceiling fan. During the teen years of the boys growing up it became a two bladed ceiling fan, creating a noise that was like a helicopter. 

When asked"how did two blades of the ceiling fan come off?"     

"We don't know mom?!?" A mystery yet to be solved.

I also plan to sew curtains, add furniture and art work. 

The room was blue with a wall paper border.

Miss Penelope checking out the bed.

 

My decorating theme for the guest room is travel. I am using some of the boys travel LEGO sets in decorating. I also am using some of my husbands vintage camera's.

 

A vintage Wisconsin puzzle our son Atticus put together. I used Mod Podge to make the puzzle into a perfect wall hanging for the travel themed guest room.

We used Benjamin Moore paint, the color is Timber Wolf. My mom crocheted a lovely rug for the room that I will share soon.. more updates to come.

A Simple Make over in the Dinning Room

 

 

A simple make over .. new curtains in the dinning room. My blog friend Kim is so creative in the ways she updates a room. She makes new curtains, cushions, and more. She has fun ideas for crafts and is currently sharing Christmas crafts.

 Click here to learn more from Kim

Well I did update a room, but I cheated and purchased my curtains from Vermont Country Store. I am not getting credit from Vermont Country Store for mentioning them. I just wanted to share this fun online store with you. We are very pleased with our new curtains.

Vermont Country Store

 

How about you, have you done any simple makeovers lately?

 

5 Gallons!

 Hi Friends,

My husband and I tackled a big project the last few weeks. We stained our home and changed the trim colors, replaced a door and two outdoor light fixtures. Our friend Deb helped two of the days and she brought us lunch. We had a few unexpected things happen along the way, but that is how it works with house projects.. right? 

Our home is stained brown, it had gray and yellow trim.

Old door and old light fixture.

 We used 5 gallons of stain to freshen up our home. We used the same color as before, a dark brown color. Our home is two story, and my husband did all the "high spots"  and I did the "low spots".

My photo above shows one of the  unexpected things.. we had a freak thunderstorm roll in. We had rain and hail mixed in and at the bottom of the trim area, the rain and hail acted like a pressure washer to our paint that we had painted earlier that day. It all cleaned up well and we touched up the damaged area.

 Looking up at the "high spots" my husband did a great job reaching those, while I supervised down below, " you missed a spot."

We spray painted the hinges of our garage black. Did I mention we live in a 100 year + house. It has a lot of character, but it also has many updates still needed. We want to be careful on how we remodel so we do not change up the character of the home. At some point we plan to replace the garage, for now we painted the door, trim and hinges.

 Looking at the finished project. We are so pleased with the blue.

Can you spy the new door and light fixture?

We used Benjamin Moore paint. Click here to visit Benjamin Moore

This is just our opinion, we loved working with Benjamin Moore paint. We were very pleased of how it went on the wood and it was true to color.

 We are so pleased and it makes one feel so good when you complete a project.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Our boys do not know about this project. They will be coming home the last weekend in October.. I can not wait to have them see "the new house".

 ♥

Carla

Sweet~Sweet~Summer and it is the Hodgepodge.

It is Wednesday and that means it is time for the Hodgepodge.

 Joyce asks the questions.

We answer the questions.

Click here to join the fun!

 1. The sweetness of summer...where have you found it recently? If you're in the Southern hemisphere, feel free to tell us about the sweetness you're finding in winter.

 Enjoying summer nights with my family.

We usually go for a walk in the evening. Watching the sunset, hearing the crickets and seeing  fireflies, all are sweet summer memory makers for me.

2. Take your sweet time, sweet tooth, home sweet home, short but sweet, the sweet smell of success, sweet talk...choose a sweet idiom and tell us how it fits your life currently?

 Home Sweet Home

 Our travel plans for this summer have been cancelled. We have been enjoying our backyard, garden and neighborhood friends.

 3. Sweet as honey, sweet as sugar, or sweet as pie, which phrase do you use when a sweet phrase is called for? What's the last sweet treat you indulged in?

Sweetie Pie.. I am known to say that to a certain Mr. in my house.

"Hey, Sweetie Pie"

 Below is a photo of my last sweet treat I indulged in.

4. First thing that comes to mind when you hear the word fidget?

A neighbor that use to live down the street.

  5. Share with us one of your favorite childhood travel memories.

A road trip to Michigan with my mom and grandpa.

Our destination was taking my grandpa to visit his brother, Steve,  who he had not seen in years and years.  

We took the ferry across Lake Michigan.

Witnessing my grandpa reunited with his brother was very special for me. 

The trip was a special time with my mom, it was just the three of us, my mom, me and my grandpa. We shared many laughs. 

One of the best laughs was when I fell asleep during the drive holding my milkshake. My mom was trying to wake me, my body jumped and my milkshake flew all over my grandpa.

 

To learn more about the ferry, click here 

 6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Continue to pray for protection and healing from COVID19.

 

Our Wisconsin National Guard son has been helping with the COVID19 testing.

He has been deployed to Milwaukee since April and his mission will be complete at the end of July. Over the weekend seven of his teammates got ill and tested positive with COVID19. One teammate has been hospitalized.  Sam is currently quarantined, he was tested Monday for COVID19 and will have the results today. At this time he is feeling fine.

  

What is up Doc part 2

~source of photo~

What is up Doc part 2

How can there be a part 2? Things have got to have settled down over my way, right?

If you read my September 29th post also titled What is up Doc 

you will know that our birdfeeder was struck by lighting and the current from the lighting, struck our internet cable. The bolt followed the cable into our house. 

Over the weekend we got most of our electronics replaced. 

This morning I was ready to roll, when all of a sudden I heard this strange noise.

It was like a growl.  

Another growl and another and one last loud growl and the lights went out.
The loud growl was the sound of an electric pole slowly falling to the ground one block from our home.

One block from our home our electric company is changing out electric poles. Sunday evening we had a thunderstorm with heavy rain. The water saturated the ground the new pole was placed in. Timber! As the morning rolled in the pole came down.

LIGHTS OUT!!

All of a sudden you remember how much you love electricity!

 It has been an Electric few weeks over in this neck of the woods .

 

Home Sweet Home

 On a road trip back in March, I saw this house.  I always wonder if I should take photos of peoples homes. I get so nervous. How about you? Can you take photos of strangers homes?

I just thought this house was so amazing. It was setting up on a hill over looking a small town. 

I always wonder who had this home built? Was it a founder of the town?  If the walls could only speak! I would love to peek inside and see all the character and charm.

It is hard to see in my photo but the home has a rock siding and rock porch.

The  decorative gable ends. The roof. It is just full of old time charm.

"Home is where your story begins"