Home Tour {craft room}

This is the last "tour" of the current house, which I'm super stoked about! I'll probably be referring to this house in the future as the "Hickory House" {since it's on Hickory Street}.  All of my home tours  can be found under the "My house" button at the top of the page.
When we moved into this 4 bedroom house {which looking back, was pretty unnecessary for us} I knew I wanted to make one bedroom a craft area. So then I started sketching up all these crafting units for Caleb to build... which he was super thrilled about. :) After he denied my first few ideas of entire wall units... I simplified it to a desk with cubbies on the ends for storage.  I found a plan online that we followed for building the desk, although this was a long time ago and I don't remember which one we followed. It should be pretty simple to google or search on Pinterest for plans if you were interested in DIY'ing a craft table. I also planned on putting 2x4 boards on one wall of the room for some added "texture," painting the entire room, and doing a couple of small projects to hang on the walls.
Unfortunately I do not have a before picture of the room. Just picture the entire room a very tan color with wall paper {that was supposed to look like sponge painting} on the top half of the wall.

Here's a good view of the "board" wall & the desk Caleb made

Here's a zoomed out picture of the room...

The cute antique stool that normally sits at the craft table was free from my mom! She was going to put it in a garage sale before I snatched it up!

The cubbies on the ends of my craft table hold shoe box sized storage boxes that I've gotten from Michael's & JoAnn.  I stuck to about three colors {white, teal, cardboard tan} that went with the rest of the room.  All the boxes are labeled for what they hold... examples of my labels are: batteries, glue/tape, fabric paint, acrylic paint, swatches, photos, etc. I also picked up some antique locker baskets to hold things like fabric and yarn.

The three open shelves on the board wall are from Ikea, as well as all of the magazine holders on the shelves.  I put old magazines I want to keep, plus some of my crochet booklets in those.
The pegboard that is on a small wall in front of the craft table also gives me lots of storage.  Caleb whippped it together for me with some leftover peg board and trim. I love the mounted mason jars for brushes, pens, pencils, markers - that way I can find it all quickly and I don't have 5 pencil holders on the table.  I do have a very cute pen/pencil holder from West Elm that is an owl. He sits on one of the shelves {he's real cute - see below}.

Owl pencil holder from West Elm, 2 antique locker baskets, my washi tape collection & some baker's twine

I have started a small collection of antique file drawers {see below}. Right now they are situated on top of each other and hold just some random stuff {twine, washi tape, notebooks}.

Antique file drawers, a collection of crafty books, Rifle Paper Co. notebooks, my twine collection

 Here's a close up of my fabric covered bulletin board... one of my very first post on this blog {see here for details}.

Well that's it for this Hickory House... can't wait to start transforming the rooms of the new {old} house!

*All pictures taken by me unless stated otherwise

Home Tour {family room}

Well I really need to finish up the house tour of a couple more rooms in the house...and I'm kinda on a deadline.  Why's that?  Because we are moving!  That's right, we've bought a really old house {like 100+ years old} which we are both so, so in love with!  I cannot wait to get in there and start making it our own!  But for now I'd thought I'd try to share with you all the last couple of rooms we did change in our current house.  I've already posted about the living room & the kitchen, the only other rooms we really changed were the family room in our basement {today's tour}, my craft room, and our master bedroom {which I kinda already shared in a "before & after" post here}.
I also choose a bad time to share about our family room because I am going to have to dig back to find pictures since we just sold our sectional that was in the family room and Caleb started packing up all the decorative items! Great timing by me...

Anyway, here's the before picture...

Kind of a bad before picture, but you get the idea...

 The main thing we did right away in this room is paint.  The color is Amazing Gray by Sherwin Williams. I gave the trim a fresh coat of white as well.  My trim color for the whole house is Dover White by Sherwin Williams.

We also removed some glass doors off of the built-in above the TV.  We liked the look of a built-in bookcase rather than a built-in cabinet.  The doors of the Cabinet dated it a bit, so it looked better without them.

The rug is from Urban Outfitters, sofa is from NFM, gray chair is passed down from my family

One bigger project I did was a gallery wall on the back wall of the room.  I made this a place for travel pictures.  My frames are from a variety of places... some are really old from my college days, Target, Ikea, thrift stores, etc.  I decided to have a color scheme of wood tones, off-white, and a few different shades of purple.  For the purple ones I choose a purple paint chip from Home Depot, and had them make the small samples of each color.

My "where we've been" gallery wall

For one of my odd shaped thrift store frames I made a "pin-it" map.  I cut a piece of thin cork to size and glued on my map of the United States.  Then we stuck pins in all the places we have been!

Sorry, bad phone pic! And all the pins are gone because Caleb had already packed it up!

I collect a few random hooks from craft stores, thrift stores, and Anthropologie to create a little area to hang something.  I found a weaved market bag on Etsy and hung it on a hook.  While on vacation to NYC, I found a hankerchief with an NYC map printed on it, so I decided to stick that in the bag.  I did the same thing on our Colorado trip, with a hankie that had Rocky Mountain National Park on it!

My NYC handkerchief

Here's a few other things from around the room...

The left side artwork is something I had made custom for us off Etsy.  It came from the shop Poppy & Pinecone.  They now sell this same Kansas/Missouri print... which I feel somewhat responsible for. :) It's not pictured in the pictures of the gallery wall above becasue it was a later addition to the group. The black and white pillow came from Ikea, the purple and blue ones all came from West Elm.  I got the West Elm pillow covers on clearance for $9 each - I got a total of four {an additional light purple that isn't pictured} and I love them so much!  The handkerchief is from Rocky Mountain national park, like I mentioned earlier.  I'm now making a point to try and find handkerchiefs from places we visit!

Well that's it for that tour... in all reality I may be able to squeeze in just one more, probably the craft room... then it's on the new {very old} house!

meal planning & cookies

Meal planning... one of those things I've mentioned on the blog before that I was going to "start doing" {<---- when you read that, feel free to make air quotes}.  I believe I talked about starting it during my freak out, crazy-list-woman post... ga'head and read that here if your unfamiliar with that wonderful trait of mine.  Anyway... similar freak out senario while I was at the store yesterday after I text Caleb and asked...

"What should we do for dinner?"

{It was six o'clock - I just got off work and Caleb was at a master's class}

Caleb's response was "Something good."  

Gonna be real honest here... I'm not your gal to just whip up "something good."

So I'm walking through the store picking up 2 more cans of refried beans when I already have about 5 cans at home, because I have no clue what food I have nor do I know what to make. So then, after I spent $60 at the store and Caleb calls me afterward and asks what we are having... my repsonse was...

"I still don't know... :( "

At home, I proceeded to give Caleb and lecture {which was really directed at myself} about how we were going to start meal planning for real because with my new job and new work schedule, I can't be getting off work at six and going to the store.  So here I go again, let's try this one more time...

To make this much more fun for myself... I designed my own weekly meal planner in photoshop! :) I will share it with you in case you need something similar. I know there are a ton of free meal planners on Pinterest, but I really just wanted to make my own for fun! Here it is....

The size is 8.5 x 11 - to make sure it fits within the margins, choose "scale to fit" or similar when printing. Link to download is below.

 Download the meal planner for yourself:
{Weekly Meal Planner} click to download

While I really dislike cooking and think it's a pain, I really don't mind baking. Last night while I was going through my own Pinterest board with meal ideas, I ran across a M&M cookie recipe I pinned a long time ago and never tried.  I really felt like some homemade cookies and I just happened to have all the ingredients... {including the secret ingredient of vanilla pudding mix powder}.  I found the recipe here.  Let me tell you, they are glorious!!!  I love them so much and will make them for many years to come!

I used my Silpat baking mat, which I have almost never used before... but the original blogger used one and I think it contributed a lot to how perfect the cookies were!

Happy planning & baking! :)

a week at table rock

This year we were able to take a week long lake trip with my side of the family to Table Rock lake.  It was so much fun!  The place that we stayed at was unbelievable!  We had a large cabin with enough rooms for each small family to have their own room.  The cabin also had it's own hot tub, two large decks {one of which was screened-in}, cable TV {hey, that's an amenity for us!}, an amazing shared pool, and plenty of taxidermy on display {to give it that really lodge-y feel}!  Not everyone was able to stay the entire length of the trip, but luckily we were able to.  So here are a lot of my pictures from the trip...

Pic of the cabins - Antler chandelier in the living room - The name of our cabin was "Lazy Bear Lodge"

Lots of ways to relax!

One of my favorite desserts ever... s'mores!

Mmmmmmm s'mores!

We got in LOTS of pool time at the amazing pool!

That last picture... well you judge for yourself... :)

The amazing pool slide! As you can see there are all types of ways to go down the slide...

Caleb & I were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset out on the water...

 

Dogwood Canyon Nature Park is a must-go in our opinion if you are down around Table Rock.  They have great activities to do there; and while you do have to pay for the different activities, we loved it so much we went there twice! It is so serene and well taken cared for, you feel like you might be in Hawaii with all the waterfalls and crystal clear water around.

 

Feeding the fish!

We did some biking while we where there, which was really fun.  Lainey enjoyed her carriage ride as well, while Leanne burned 10x more calories than the rest of us!

How about these two guys in a hot tub?!? :) No words for these two...

 On our way home from the lake, we made a stop at Persimmon Berry Farm which was just down the road from our cabins. Any former Kanakuk workers out there??? They know of the infamous "thunder muffins" that are as good as gold when you are a counselor at Kanakuk.  It was fun to stop there on the way out of town and eat some memories! :)

What a great way to spend a week!  Can't get enough of Table Rock!

recent product love

Recently I've been doing some eye-balling of some lovely things... a lot of which are from Target because, well... I spend a lot of time there.  I went yesterday when my husband was going to be trading in his cell phone for a new one and renewing his plan... I was disappointed when that didn't take very long. :(  So here is a little list of some of things I've been admiring lately... the first being one I purchased a while ago...

This is a necklace mentioned here in a previous post... well I bought it! It's from an Etsy store called HansonDesign.  I really love the coral color paired with two of the neutral colors {gold & white} because then I can wear it with so much!

This necklace it definitely worth the $25, and I always love supporting Etsy stores! It comes in other great color combos too!

When I've been at Target lately, I've been thinking about the types of items I'd like to implement into my decor in my next house {for whenever our house sells}. Here are a few things I've liked...

A wall clock...

My current wall clock is definitely not much of a statement of decor in my current house. And actually the time has been wrong for over a year, probably because it's hung too high for us to access easily! I think this clock could serve a useful purpose as well as be an element of design. I like the retro-ness of font and the simple black and white.

Next a curtain... I've always seemed to struggle finding curtains I like for some reason, at least ones that are within my budget! Although, I am really liking this pleated one from Target.

 

 It's simple and provides a sutle stripe. It comes in three other colors as well.

I also found a rug I would like for my kitchen or bath, but I did have one problem with them though... Does this bother anyone else??? 

 I cannot stand that this rug isn't symmetrical! With such few stripes I find it's kind of awkward not being symmetrical.  Hmmm... maybe this is just me... yes?

I haven't seen this pitcher at the Target store recently, but I did find it online.  I love it, it would look great sitting out in a kitchen somewhere.

And to break the Target run here at the end, another Etsy item from the shop MerriWeatherCouncil.  I have been wanting to try some embroidery art, kind of like this one...

Hope you enjoyed looking at some of my favorite things!