There's No Place Like Home..

Four and a half years ago we moved into this home. Since then, we haven't really made it our own. It has a very eclectic feel to it (so we've been told) but it's eclecticity is quickly approaching cluttered-ness and it is making us both crazy! We moved in only 5 months after getting married, so we've accumulated a lot of stuff since then, considering we didn't have much to start with. Other than a few personal touches (the lime green bedroom, for example) it's really..how to put this..very blah. I think we've felt that since it's a rental, we didn't need or want to put much effort into it because we knew we'd be moving 'soon'..fast forward to 4 1/2 years later..

I've been doing little projects the past few weeks in hopes that the simple effort would produce great results. I think I'm on the right track! It's gotten depressing, because it's an old house, things just don't clean up as well as we'd like so even with our best efforts, it never really looks good. Here are some of the projects we've done, or are planning to do:


This is the nightstand I painted a couple of months ago, with the tree design on the side. Here I'm showing off my 25 cent candle holder! It needs different candles, but we get the idea, right?


AMAZING FIND!! A friend and I made a quick trip to the farmer's market while and it was love at first sight! This adorable little spice rack was -brace yourselves- $6.50!! How could I pass that up!? I also got a $2 zucchini .. no really, its huge.

Let's zoom in for a moment.

My good friend Whit got me this amazing-beyond-all-words plate set at a thrift store a couple years ago. It has 8 mugs, 8 each of salad and dessert plates and a pedestal/platter ..all for $13!!





I'm also working on a bed-side table that came with a dresser my mom got for Toby. She cleaned and refinished it but there was a big black stain on top, like a messy paint can was set on top of it. So I decided to paint it and I love it more than I thought I ever would! I was afraid painting it would ruin the antique-y-ness but I really think it brings out the design really well! It's not finished yet but again, you get the idea.

My mother-in-law gave us this great little hutch and I finally decided too put something in it. I love old books and Daniel has some great ones -King Arthur, and the Lord of the Rings set.. and Toby's special rocks from some of our trips.

Daniel wants to build raised garden beds to fancy up the outside of the house and the first one he wants to build will be around the base of this not-so-lovely pine. You can see the string marking the outline. I'm very excited about this!



There are more projects we hope to do (like painting our dining room that is currently wears hunting-dogs-and-geese-wallpaper) but I'll post those when we get to them. God has blessed us with an incredible deal on our rent and we're just realizing that no matter where we live, we need to make it feel like home.

My wall-art projects last week: (scrapbook paper=cheap art!!)