Secrets to a Joyful Home

While I'd like to think I channel Donna Reed and Martha Stewart while performing my homemaker duties, cheery and creative disposition is not always the case.

Sometimes I can be quite grumpy and I know it needs to stop. I'm so privileged to be a homemaker and caretaker of my family.

I'm trying to take stock of the times I'm the grumpiest so I know how to prevent a "Roseanne" attack from coming. Cause really, who wants to be married to her?

Here are just a few things I've noticed that keep me in the best of housekeeping moods...

credit: Country Living

Keep laundry maintained: Nothing sets my teeth on edge more than laundry room full of overflowing dirty clothes bins. For my family, all it takes is one load per day to keep us looking organized like the picture above (which sadly is not my laundry room)

Keep your dining room table for eating: I can't tell you how many homes I've walked into where the dining room (or breakfast table) was the home to careless clutter! A dining room is for just that-dining. It's not for housing the bills, or the laundry (see above) or the kid's school project.

While I admit, I do sometimes craft on my dining room table because it is so large, I clean up afterwards. Once I had a quilting project stay on my table for weeks and I winced every single time company stopped by, or I even passed by the room. It was an eyesore. So, do your mood a favor and keep it nice and tidy.

Invest in picture frames: Don't keep your cherished memories locked away. Frame them and show off your family! Every time I walk by a framed picture, I'm taken back to that specific memory. What a joyful thing it is to walk about your house and get to smile each time you walk through a room.

Be thankful: No matter if you have 1000 sq.ft of space, or 10,000 sq.ft., be thankful for what God has given you. Discontentment means that you don't trust God's judgement to give you what he thinks is best for you. Be thankful for the roof you do have over your head and work to make it a welcoming place to come home to.

Have parties: There is no better way to create special memories in your home than to invite people over for parties! It brings a special energy to the house and let's you flex your hospitality muscles. It also gives you something to work towards to beautifying your home- whether it's mopping those floors, or mowing the grass.

Candles: This one goes without saying. I'm always uplifted when I light my candles. Always. And more often than not, it puts me in the mood to make my surroundings as clean and homey as possible. I once told Southern Hubby that the greatest compliment someone can give me about my home is that it smells good. Hearing that just makes my soul soar! :) My favorites are Circle E, Luxe, and Tyler Candle Co. I just ordered some Scentsy stuff so we'll see how that goes. ;)

Be prepared for unexpected guests: Nothing puts me in the worst of moods like when there is a knock at my door and I know that I'm not prepared for guests. Whether it be an un-made bed, direty guest bathroom or a sink full of dishes, I'm always so embarrassed! Keep your home as if you were expecting someone to drop by. Might I add that this also includes having several different drinks on stock for people's different tastes. I can become quite mortified when all I have to offer people to drink is water and Diet Mountain Dew. Yipes!

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Theses are just a few things that I like to keep in mind while I go about my daily life. It really takes quite the effort to keep a home maintained and clean. I really do applaud those women who go out there and work for most of the day, only to come home and have to do what I do at night. Thank God we women are equipped to handle the stresses of daily life. :)

Are there any tips you have for keeping a happy and joyful home? I'd love to hear them!

Savoring today

These are the moments this homemaker dreams of...

The kitchen is clean from the breakfast rush. The dishes are washing. Cups of coffee have been consumed. Laundry is folded. The pups are quietly sleeping in their comfy beds. (I even had a few quick moments to knit this morning.)

So, I figured I'd take advantage of this time to blog.

As of right now, we're still in the midst of getting the house in order. I'd say the downstairs is about 90% finished. We just had some built-ins installed in a space that was wasted and I finally got around to decorating them.

I did some fall decorating. Not my best work, but it will have to do.

I'll be back soon to show you some of them,  but for right now I wanted to share this awesome coupon class. In no way am I a coupon diva. I don't clip. I don't print. I don't save. BUT- I want to be! I'm fascinated by those women I see at my Kroger with the huge coupon binders. I want to be her! Weird, I know, but true.

So, I was thrilled to stumble on The Frugal Find. She just made her coupon class free to everyone! I may not be a coupon diva, but I do know free is a good thing! :) I don't know this girl from Adam and I wasn't paid to endorse this class, but I just had to pass it along. Right now, I'm only a couple classes in. Before you know it, I will be one of those cool coupon divas! Yay!

I'll be back later this week with my quick attempt at making my house look somewhat fall-ish. :)

PS- If you do take her class, don't forget to give her some love. She's doing this out of the kindness of her own heart (and out of her pocketbook!) and as a ministry to others. :)

The Move. The House.

 I can sum up the whole moving process in one word: STINKS.

I can sum up the house in one word, too: LOVE.

It doesn't quite feel like home yet, and we're not settled in all the way, of course- but we love it. During our devotions at night, we are constantly thanking our Father for this wonderful blessing. And I'm just so dang happy to be done with the whole packing/moving process. That fact is almost as wonderful as the actual house. ;)

Anyway, here are just a couple of pictures of the main living areas. We still have the entire upstairs to unpack. And our master bedroom is still in need of some work. Oh, and the master closet is begging for attention. And...OK, I need to stop thinking about the unending list or I'll drive myself crazy.

                                 Don't worry, we're getting the wine shortage fixed very soon. ;)

Needless to say it's still a work in progress and I have yet to decorate for fall. (Wonder if I'll ever get to that?)

But my babies and Southern Hubby are here and that's all I could ask for right now. :)

22 more days!

22 more days till I call this place home.

22 more days until I can get back to regular life.

22 more days till endless weekend errands and honey-do lists.

22 more days until I feel home again.

What Would You Do?

*click on the picture to make it bigger

Things on our house are moving along quite nicely.

Yesterday we got our cabinets and island stained. We're loving the dark coffee color! But we have our island (and ONLY our island) scheduled to get an antique white stain treatment. We were looking for that gorgeous contrast between the dark cabinets and the creamy island. But now we're loving the look of the dark island.

Our floor tile (naples nola), granite (santa cecilia) and backsplash selections (travertine) are pictured above.

 

To the right is an example of what it can look like with contrasting island and cabinet colors. Our floors will obviously not be that red/orange.

As of right now we're undecided on if we should leave it stained dark or get the antique white treatment.

What do you think?

PS- Not doing the second stain will save us a bit over $1k if that helps your decision. ;)

Fabric Scraps and Wine Racks

Last week I found myself working on my rag quilt from many months ago.  Y'all know how long it takes me to complete projects, right? A long time. I got the idea from one of my favorite Southerners, Amanda, from Kevin and Amanda. Love this girl. I'd move next door to her if she were in Texas.

Speaking of Amanda, she's the genius behind Fonts for Peas. If you missed it the first time around, she turned my handwriting (named after my babies) into a font. Click here to be taken to where you can download it.

In house news...this weekend workers began bricking and doing the stone work. The cabinet designer emailed us the final design plans for the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry at the end of last week. We corrected a few things, added a wine rack, and sent them back. They're scheduled to go in mid-week. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

Thankfully, the builders gave us September 30th as our closing date. I could not have been more excited. It made my weekend. That leaves us roughly two more months in this apartment. Can I get a hallelujah?

Hope everyone had a great weekend, too. :) Oh, and stay tuned for a fabulous giveaway on Wednesday!

In 86 days...

...I'm hoping to be cooking Southern Hubby his breakfasts here.

 In 86 days, I'm hoping to be greeting my guests at this door.

In 86 days, I'm hoping to be moving furniture up these stairs.

In the next week, I'm hoping we get some brick and stone up.

After the next 86 days, we will be in mid-October. That is the estimate that our builders gave us to have our home completed. I'm chomping at the bit. I literally cannot wait. 

I'm dying to be 'home'. I can't wait to bake again. I want to set up my craft room. I want to entertain again. I want to sit in our backyard with a glass on wine on cool nights. I'm so excited to do all the things that make a home a home.

But I'm trying to remember that this is a good problem situation to have. I need to look at the bigger picture here. My waiting is nothing compared to some people's real problems. But patience is something that I've always struggled with. I'm praying and working on it, cause that's about all I can do.

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

                                                          —Philippians 4:11

 

Skoy and Me

For all my whining and pleading about recyling and being green, there was one nasty, un-green thing that Southern Hubby and myself were addicted to- paper towels.

Now, when I say addicted, I mean you'd have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands. We used them for everything...as napkins, to wipe up spills, to cover items in the microwave, to dry our hands, to wipe the counters with...you name it.

Enter this article that was passed along to me via Twitter: 10 Things to Try Really Hard Not to Buy Again. Lord have mercy, you could have speared my heart when I read just how bad paper towels were.

Fact: If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 180-sheet virgin-fiber paper towels with 100% recycled paper towels, it could save: 1.4 million trees, 3.7 million cubic feet of landfill space, 526 million gallons of water, and prevent 89,400 pounds of pollution.


Fact: About 900,000,000 trees are required to feed America's paper consumption each year, according to the Clean Air Council.



Fact: With over 90% of US households taking advantage of the convenience of paper towels we produce over 3,000 tons of waste each day.

Is that enough to convinvce you? It was for us! Now, enter my new best friend- Skoy Cloths. I won't list all the reasons why these are a much better alternative to paper towels, but they're 100% biodegradable, are reuseable, and are highly absorbant. One Skoy cloth is equivalent to 15 paper towels in an average home.

Now, I won't lie, I still have a roll handy in case of pet accidents and the like, but we've drastically cut our use.

I keep mine right by the kitchen sink in a cute little basket. Unassuming and handy. :) And the good news is that since I've brought these into our home at the end of May, we've only gone through ONE roll of paper towels. Seriously.

Alright, enough of my whining and begging. Go buy some and save a tree. :)

xoxo

For the Birds

Moving is for the birds.

Seriously...I wouldn't wish a move on my worst enemy.

This was our house. We are now staying in a 2 bedroom apartment until our new home is being built. Try cramming 2700 sq ft. of home plus two crazy dogs into 1000 sq ft. of apartment. It ain't pretty.

So, will you please excuse the lack of posts while I try to get our lives back to some resemblance of a life. :)

xoxo

Thank You Cookies & Dishtowel

I know I mentioned it previously, but we hadn't technically seen the house we were going to spend lots of dough on. We saw the floorplan, saw the elevation, but never saw it actually built out with walls and stuff. (Yeah, you're not the first person to think I lost my mind.)

Thankfully, Mr. and Mrs. Same Floorplan came along and opened up their home to us! We were able to see the house with real life walls (imagine that!) and fully furnished. We were so grateful. Not only did we get a real sense of the house but they also let us in on some design and building tips they learned while they built.

They live just around the corner from our future home so I wanted to make sure to thank them for their hospitality. I decided to bake them some chocolate chip and walnut cookies from my favorite cookie book and deliver it to their doorstep. I've done this before several years ago to welcome a couple across our street to our neighborhood. They loved it (why don't people do things like this anymore?!), so thought I'd try the idea again.

To add some pressure to myself, cause I don't have enough stress, I thought I'd dabble in whipping up my own dishtowel. I've been dying to try a project from this book I got for Christmas and this was the perfect opportunity.

Man, I love patchwork. I was so intimidated to try it at first, but it's not bad at all.

However, it wasn't as easy to 'whip up' as I thought it would be. I needed to teach myself a mini lesson on mitering corners. And hemming the edges gave me some trouble just cause I was working with some tiny hem lengths.

In the end, I think it all turned out just fine. The dishtowel didn't look completely homemade and the cookies turned out delicious! :)

I'll have to continue this story later cause we decided 100% we're going with a different floorplan now. (I told you we are some crazies!) We're very, very excited in this change of plans.

I won't lie. I had one of the extras for breakfast this morning.

I'll update soon! Have a fab weekend, y'all!
xoxo

I'm a peeping Tom

I'll admit it. I'm addicted to snooping. Especially when it comes to homes. Make that beautiful homes. Make that beautiful, fully decorated homes. (Free decor ideas, y'all!)

I don't think I've mentioned anything yet, but we sold our house a couple weeks ago. :) We were beyond thrilled but are just hoping all keeps going well as we don't close until May. We were very surprised to have sold it so quickly, but are so thankful. God is awesome.

With that being said, we'll be spending the upcoming summer in an apartment while our new home is getting built. Oh, and about that- we're thinking about building a different floor plan. The one we're eyeing is little bit bigger than the one we originally signed on for, but the kitchen just blew me away. I fell in love with it. *BUT* because the house is bigger, it takes up more of an already cramped backyard. So, that was my biggest worry. I was hoping to put a pool in someday and every January, I get these lofty dreams of planting a vegetable garden. :( We're still trying to decide on which plan we should purchase.

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Ok, on to the peeping! (DISCLAIMER: This is NOT my house. It is of a model that is in our neighborhood.)

Because Southern Hubby is really a 14 year old boy in a 31 year old's body, we're up cruising our new street pretty much every day. I try to tell him that we're just passing a big rectangle of dirt, but he can't help himself. He's wildy giddy. We've wanted into this particular neighborhood for SO long. Ok, ok. I'm wildly giddy, too.

And I don't mind obliging him on this trips because, A. It's only 7 minutes from our current home, and, B. I make him stop at the model homes so I can snoop around and take pictures. I figured y'all wouldn't mind if I shared. :)

  I swoon over this entrance and staircase.

 This color palette is gawgeous! But unfortunately won't work with my current dining room set.

 I told Southern Hubby I wanted to be buried in this kitchen.

 I know I'd probably never use that little reading/desk nook off the breakfast nook, but I wanted it.

 Bad.

 Really bad.

 I want to marry this chair. Like, for real.

 Hello!

None of the other rooms made the cut cause I didn't have time to make it upstairs. But I'm sure we'll be back again soon. And I can get those and the other model home for ya! There are some fab decorating ideas in these pictures!

xoxo