Previously, we had a white duvet cover which we had gotten as a wedding present 12 years ago. I loved it when we got it but it was starting to show it’s age. Really, that is a pretty long time for a duvet cover or, actually, anything in this house! (There really aren’t that many decorative things that have had that kind of longevity for me.) We also alternated with a brown coverlet depending on the season. They both have had a good long run but it was time to switch it up. As soon as I saw the chevron duvet cover from West Elm earlier last year, I knew it had to be mine :) Then, it went on sale and the dream became a reality! Yay for me!!

Just as a reminder, here is the room with the white duvet:

And now, here is the new duvet:

Oh my, I am completely in love!! Now I need to work on some new pillows for this room. The previous pillows are striped and don’t really work anymore. Plus, I have been using them in the living room for a while now and so new pillows are definitely in order. I have some ideas, we shall see how they turn out. I also wouldn’t mind some new curtains (since the current ones are left over from another room anyway) and I have some other things I would like to tackle in this room. Isn’t it fun how things are always changing and evolving? I love that!

Also, looking at this photo, I realized I could have done a bit more primping. Oh well, it is what it is :) When I do a final reveal, with new pillows and everything, the cover will be free of wrinkles and the pillows will be to perfection. At least with this photo you get to see how we roll…

So stay tuned! It will be interesting to see what changes next time!

Now onto photos! Most of these photos are still left over from vacation but there will be one or two from yesterday :) Here we go…

As I mentioned last week, while I was in Oregon I stayed with Jason’s parents. My Mother-in-law made me the most wonderful lunch while I was there and I can’t wait to repeat it at home. A turkey-provalone-avacado-tomato sandwich on half a toasted bagel. Plus, some turnip slices, carrots and a couscous salad. Everything was wonderful! How is that for a gourmet lunch at home?!

I have 4 nephews and one niece. Their favorite thing to do is wrestle. Especially when my younger brother (their uncle) comes for a visit. It is always wrestling time. It’s pretty cute!

Noah getting ready for bed, already in his pajamas. Can you believe my sister-in-law makes pajamas for all 5 kids every Christmas? She seriously is super mom!

We spent some time with my Grandma and while we were there we looked over some old photo albums. There is a rumor that we are related to Abraham Lincoln through his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and this is the paper that maps it out. Whether it is true or not, I don’t know. I have never done any research to figure it out. The bottom name on the list, Iris Wolfer Yoder, is my paternal Grandmother.

Wrestling isn’t the only favorite pastime. They also love reading. And once you start reading to them it’s hard to stop because they all want to pick a book out for you to read :) And they are so adorable it’s hard to resist their charms!

My niece, Lily, turned 2 years old yesterday. We celebrated her birthday while we were there and she requested a duck cake. So, my sister-in-law, Jodi, made this cake for her. I was wondering how she was going to do it and I think it turned out pretty amazing. Lily loved it. She wouldn’t share her duck with anyone :)

Jodi and Lily share the same birthday. Since Jodi made a cake for Lily, I made a cake for Jodi. I had never made a multi colored cake before but it was pretty simple and I love how it turned out. This isn’t a very good photo but you get the idea! The kids decorated the outside with figures of the family made from candy. It turned out so cute and tasted pretty good as well!

I didn’t really take any outfit photos while I was there. I just never thought of it. But in this case, I was at Starbucks waiting for Jodi and my Mom and I snapped a photo. Gotta love leopard print purses!

My older brother (yes, the one with five kids!) is in his first year of nursing school. He is super dad! We got to go visit him at school one day and take a little tour of his classes. It was fun to see where he is spending his time.

Part of the tour included seeing the mannequins. It was really interesting. They can do so many things. I would really like to be there while they are working with them but just seeing them was good too!

And finally, after 12 days of vacation, we headed home. It was a great trip!

We had an awesome pilot on the way home. There was some reported turbulence so he flew lower than normal and then pointed things out to us. We flew low over Colorado and it was so beautiful. We got to see Pike’s peak and lot’s of snow. It made me want to go to Colorado again! Although next time, I hope I go when it is my idea rather than how it went down last time :)

Yesterday, when I was back in town, I went to the library. I sat for a bit and looked at magazines and I loved seeing Oprah magazine with the chalk drawings by Dana Tanamachi. You can see some more of them here and on her site here. She also did lettering for West Elm at Christmastime and it was so awesome.

Last night we celebrated a birthday for a friend of mine at a local Mexican restaurant. I almost always get chicken tacos on corn tortillas but this time I added avocado and it was wonderful! I love Mexican, it’s one of my favorite foods.

And that pretty much sums up my week and the rest of my vacation. Now I have to get back to work on things around the house but first I am going to go on a date with my husband tonight because I missed him while I was gone!!

Have a great weekend!

It’s an interesting thing that I love it so much now because growing up we didn’t eat much of it and so I always thought I didn’t like it. Then, after we got married, Jason introduced me to the recipe his Mom always made and I was hooked. It became my new favorite thing. I’m not sure where this recipe originally came from but, as we do with most recipes, we have tweaked it to our liking and now (we think) it’s perfect. Make it and see for yourself…

A glimpse into our recipe book. From my experience, the hand written recipes are the best!!

Chili

2 pounds ground beef (we have never tried ground turkey but I bet it would be good too!)
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 quarts tomato juice
1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, drained
1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained
28 oz can pork & beans
28 oz can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
2 or 3 teaspoons chili powder
1 bay leaf
4 shakes Tabasco sauce
a dash or two of hickory smoke
a bit of cayenne pepper

Using a large kettle, brown the hamburger and onion. Drain off grease. Add all of the other ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 – 2 hours (do not cover). Remove bay leaf and serve. This recipe is better with age :)

Browning the beef.

Spices, Tabasco, and tomato juice, all ready to go.

The line up. Just to give you an idea of what brands we use.

The chili while it is simmering.

When your chili is ready you can doctor it up to your hearts content (try adding sour cream or cheddar). My favorite thing to do with it is pour some over a baked sweet potato! You may be a little bit skeptical about it but trust me, it is so good. Just bake your sweet potato by adding a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper and wrap it in foil for 1 hour at 450 degrees and it’s super good. And then do it again the next day because the chili is even better as leftovers. Bon appetit!!

Let’s start with Lily:

I have 4 nephews and one niece. When I make Lily’s page it is so fun because I get to use girl colors. Not that boy colors aren’t fun, it’s just that making things girly is even more fun! Lily is already two and she is so adorable. She has the most beautiful eyes, they will make the boys melt one day!

Noah came to be part of our family when he was 6 months old. He is one of the gang and we love him so much. What a little treasure :) This is one of my favorite pages I have made in a while. Of course, that isn’t saying much since I haven’t scrapped much lately :)

Happy Birthday Noah and Lily, I love you both so much!!

Check out other scrapbooking posts here.

Here are some photos from this past week, taken on vacation.

Our day on Saturday started early with leaving at 5:30 AM. Here I am waiting at the airport, all ready to go. I was traveling light this time with just a carry on. That is a new record for me! Especially since we will be gone for 11 days!

Yeesh! We have had a lot of rain! First it started with a couple of dats of snow (which is unusual) to crazy amounts of rain and everything is flooding. More on that later.

I am staying with my in laws while I am here and this was taken at their house. There is a creek that you drive over to get to their house and the water was creeping up so high. Usually this water is about 3 feet lower! It never did spill over though. In the 30 years they have lived here that has only happened once!

I have been continuing with my workouts while I’ve been here but without my favorite training buddy (Jason) which is sad. I miss him :) we normally do P90X but I didn’t take any of it with me (remember, packing light!). So, I got the Nike training app and I have been using that. It’s awesome, I love it! And it’s perfect for on the go and even better, it’s free!

My little 2 year old niece. Isn’t she adorable? Look at those eyelashes! I’m so jealous! The cutest thing is she holds her pencil like an adult. I couldn’t help but snap a photo :)

The game of the week has definitely been Sorry. The boys want to play it all the time. But I actually think its a fun game so I don’t mind! Plus I love being with them!

And that is a quick recap of some of the stuff that has been going on here. I have had so much fun already and there is still more fun to come!

Just like the living room, I put all of the Christmas stuff away and decided not to put the same stuff out that had been there before. Nothing too drastic, just a new vignette. In these rooms, all the furniture is still in the same places.

Does it look the same to you? Look closer…

I added some different frames to the wall. The bottom frame has an old post card from Oregon that I found in an antique shop here in Tennessee. The post card is a drawing of a place close to where I lived when I was born.

And for the dining room…

A peek from the living room.

I changed the vignette on the console. I like it. Even though it is a small change, it was time. It’s nice to have something new to look at now and then.

Now I need to be thinking about some new artwork. Doesn’t that sound like fun?!

And that is all for today. I’m going to go enjoy being with my family some more because vacations go by so fast!

I always tend to change things around New Years. The Christmas stuff comes down and it’s time for something different. This year is isn’t as drastic of a change as last year but it’s still fun. Ready to check it out? Here goes!

The main things that I changed is the addition of the rug, the cabinet, and another chair.

I don’t normally give sources but I figured now would be a good time just in case anyone cares. The problem is, most of them were thrifted so it’s not easy to duplicate the look.

My cat is crazy :) The pillows were all made by me using various fabrics at different times. I talked about the multi-colored pillow here some of the others are mentioned here. The couch was a thrifted find, one of my best ones yet!!

At Christmastime, I moved my plants around and they ended up grouped together on the coffee table and I liked it so they stayed that way. They are all from Ikea, the pots and the plants. The tray was a thrifted find that I covered in fabric. The vase was a gift from my Mom and the branches are from a tree at my house. The coffee table was built by my wonderful husband. He really is the best!

The elephant was a thrifted find that I sprainted white. It was formerly in the family room but I decided he needed to hang out in the living room for a while :) The lamp was also thrifted, I talked about it here. The floor pillows were the cushions to some chairs that my Mom had and she didn’t want them so I brought them home with me :) The frame is from Target and I have had it for forever.

The gallery wall has been a work in progress for quite some time and I have been collecting the frames from various places and sprainting them white so they all would match. The chair is another thrifted find and I made the slipcover. You can read about it here. The ottoman? Thrifted. My Mom actually found it for $5 and after a lot of begging, she gave it to me :) The lamp is from a wholesale outlet and I got it for $6, lampshade included! The metal bucket is from Lowe’s. I made both of the pillows, you can read about the zig zag pillow here.

The cabinet used to be in the family room and you can read about its makeover here. Both chairs are thrifted finds. The one on the right was in Jason’s office/library and I borrowed it for the living room :) The artwork was a thrifted find. Most people say it looks like Michael Jackson. I tend to agree. The ruffle pillow was made by myself, you can check out the tutorial here. The crocheted white blanket on the back of the chair was a high school graduation gift from my Grandma way back in the day.

The curtains are from Ikea and the rods are from West Elm. The rug is from World Market from quite a few years back. I used to have it in storage but I whipped it out to see if it would work for a while. Ideally, I would like to have a black and white rug in this space. And hardwood floors painted white. Is that too much to ask?!

The lamp is from Walmart and the shade is from Pottery Barn. Both I have had for a while. The paint color was mixed by me. You can read about it here.

See, wasn’t that fun?! If you aren’t tired of reading about the living room yet, check out this progression post where I catalog the changes this room has gone through since we’ve lived here.

I was very excited to see my brother :) Isn’t he cute?! I am eight years older than him and even though there is a large age gap between us, we love to be together. He brings out the kid in me!

Brett and his girlfriend, Jill. This was the first time I got to meet Jill (besides talking on Skype which doesn’t really count) and I loved her immediately. They are so great together and I love watching them interact.

Because we were in vacation mode, there was Starbucks aplenty! One day when Jason couldn’t come with us we went to Starbucks and I took this photo and sent it to him telling him we missed him. I’m thinkin’ he was missing us at that point too. If not us, then at least he was missing the coffee!

My poor cat was a little bit neglected since I spent most of the week at my parent’s house and one morning before I left she really wanted attention and was hiding from me under the rug so I would come chase her. Silly kitty!

I took a bunch of outfit photos this week, this being the first one. I think this was on Saturday.

My brother is a really talented guitar player and worship leader. We always talk him into leading worship for our church while he is visiting and this is a photo of him during practice. This time we got a double bonus because Jill is a wonderful singer and she sang with him. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the two of them together but I did get a video :)

This past Sunday I was helping out in the nursery at church and one of the little tots climbed into a toy box and started looking at a book. It was so cute I had to snap a picture!

Sunday’s outfit, taken at church.

We brought the donuts home from church for Brett. He really likes donuts, can you tell?!

Monday’s outfit. Comfy and casual!

Many times we were all just sitting around on our various devices, iphones or laptops. How’s that for family time?

Another outfit. I like the colors in this one.

More color! Stripes and red, you can’t go wrong :)

Out to lunch at a sandwich shop. Brett and Jill are so adorable!

We went to several thrift stores and antique shops together since we all enjoy that kind of thing. Yesterday at an antique shop I saw this stack of movies and had to do a double take. Quite a while ago, Jason and I, along with my parents, watched My Left Foot together. I think it was one of those that was recommended through Netflix based on other movies we have watched. No offense to those of you who may like this movie but we all hated it. I’m not even sure why we watched the whole thing because none of us liked it at all. We all thought it would get better and it never did. So now, it has become the joke with the four of us. Whenever we are talking about watching a movie one of us always mentions this one. It has come up in conversation a few times this past week. And then I saw it at the antiques shop. It was just too perfect :) And for those of you wondering, no I did not buy it.

We also love playing games. We have so much fun laughing and teasing each other throughout the duration of the game. Last night we played until 1:00 AM! And it was fun!

My last outfit shot, from last night. You can’t go wrong with a sweater and boots. Unless it’s summer time :)

So that’s my busy yet fun week. How was yours? My adventure is just beginning though because tomorrow I am leaving for Oregon! I can’t wait to see the rest of my family and extend this vacation a little longer!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

You may recall that previously, there was just a little sink in there. Since it’s a small space, I understand why there was just a small sink. But I needed more room. I wanted a sink that I could actually use for more than just washing my hands. One that was deep enough for cleaning out paint trays and buckets and the cat’s litter box. Currently, all of that stuff has to be done in the kitchen sink which in my opinion is not ideal and I have to clean the sink out with bleach just to make sure it is disinfected afterward. How wonderful to have a sink that is meant for dirty jobs!!

I mentioned back in June that I found a sink on the side of the road for free. Oh happy day! I actually found it a couple of years ago and have been storing it in the garage ever since, just waiting for the day that it would end up in the laundry room. Well that day has finally come, it has a new home!

Isn’t it great?! And this thing is a beast. A heavy beast! (You can also see where I stopped painting in this photo!)

We got a new drain and faucet for it. It was quite the process finding the right drain. You can read a little bit about it here.

I wanted a faucet that was taller to make sure I could fit buckets underneath it. Plus, I didn’t want a little dinky faucet because I thought it would look funny with this large sink. But, it already had pre-drilled holes and so I had to find one that would fit. My best bet was a faucet for a bar sink and it worked perfectly! Isn’t the little stopper so cute?!

And lastly, the base. Also back in June I mentioned that we found a table saw attached to this base on the side of the road, again, for free. The table saw didn’t work but we kept the base and I spray painted it matte black and we attached the sink to it. It worked out really great and I love how it looks together! I can’t believe I found two independent things on the side of the road and matched them up to work so well. I was telling my Dad about this and he said, “I feel a blog post coming on.” He was right :)

We still have yet to connect the pipes because we ran out of time before my brother got here but soon it will be a working sink! Now, it just looks pretty :) The ironic thing is that the whole time we have been doing this project we were wishing we had a large sink to clean up all of our messes in. Oh well! We will have one for next time!

Last time I left you with the before shots and that was it. There weren’t any shots to show you what was to come (except for a few sneak peeks here and there). First of all, I will show you the inspiration:

This was the bathroom that did it for me. I love the simplicity and the black and white color scheme. I already knew that I wanted it to be black and white. I also knew that we would be covering the nasty walls and make it look like wainscoting. But this photo made me itch to paint the floors black. I mean, really bad :) It wasn’t too hard to talk Jason into it! Here is our process so far…

I don’t have any photos because it was so dirty, but first Jason had to do all of the drywalling. It’s a no-fun dusty job. I’m so thankful he took care of that part! The rest of our house had white foot prints throughout but it was so worth it! Then Jason moved onto putting up the paneling and trim. The paneling came already primed which is why it’s blue.

Haha! I caught him in the act of cutting some molding on our driveway. It’s our make-shift shop. We were thankful for the decent weather we had last week even though it was cold at times.

The laundry room, paneling and some of the trim hung.

Then he added the floor molding and the corner pieces. We had lots of holes to putty as well :)

Fixing the door trim that we had taken off at some point. You can see in this photo that for a while there I thought about painting the wall behind the sink gold, and I even tried it a bit. But in the end, I decided to stick with the black and white and I painted over it. I’m really glad I chose the white.

After giving the room a good scrub, I primed the walls and ceiling…

We also painted the floors black just like I wanted. I really love them! Then, we covered them with rugs so we could continue working in there.

On Tuesday, my Dad came and helped us out for a few hours. We are so glad he did! The toilet sits really close to the wall. So close that there really wasn’t room to even add the paneling behind the tank. So my Dad, being the master craftsman that he is, made the cuts to the paneling so it looks like it goes behind the tank but it really doesn’t. Plus, he whipped it out in no time flat. Jason and I both are so happy he came to help with that part! Thanks Dad!

My job is mostly just painting. I got all of the upper walls and ceilings painted and started working on the paneling. First I concentrated on the sink wall and washer/dryer wall because that was where Jason needed to work next but the walls had to be painted first. As of today I still have some other painting left but those two spots are completely done :)

We started working on the crown molding but didn’t get it finished before we had to move the washer and dryer back in place. We desperately needed to do some laundry and we had a deadline to get as much finished as we could because my brother came into town and we wanted to be able to spend the whole next week with him and not with the laundry room! So, we will take a little break on our work and pick up where we left off later.

For now, that is pretty much where it stands although there are a few more things finished which I will show you later. For now, we are just enjoying the time with my brother and then at the end of this week I will be going to Oregon with my Mom for a little vacation to see the rest of the family. When I get back, we will hopefully be able to wrap up the rest of this project! On one hand, I really wished we could have finished it before Brett got here. On the other hand, it’s nice to have a break because we were putting a lot of hours into it. When I get back from vacation, I will be really ready to pick up that paint brush and finish up!

This poor humpty dumpty is getting put back together again. And I’m thankful for that!