decorating/improvements

An Easy Laundry Room Makeover

For many years, I had a “blah” laundry room.  The walls were off-white, everything was everywhere, and it was a room that I was just never thrilled with. In fact, here it was: To see the simple (and inexpensive) steps we took to take our laundry room from blah to cheery, check out the rest [...]

Refinishing a Piano: Was It Worth It?

As I was listening to Noah practice “Fur Elise” today, I thought about revisiting my post from 2009 when we shared how we refinished a free piano we managed to obtain. Well, hang on.  That’s not entirely true.  The very first thing I thought about was the 1986 McDonald’s commercial where a girl plays the [...]

7 Quick Takes: October 14, 2011 (Vol. 100)

~ 1 ~ Really?  This is volume 100? That’s like having done seven quick takes every week for two years, although I know that I’ve missed some weeks, so I have obviously done it for more than two years. Crazy! Here’s to two more years of seven quick takes! ~ 2 ~   At least [...]

Finding Extra Space in Your Home

While “small” house is a relative term, we often feel like we are bursting at the seams of the room that we have in our house. It would not be truthful if I didn’t share that we all not-so-secretly wish that we could live in a bigger house.  However, for now, our house is what [...]

7 Quick Takes: August 5, 2011 (Vol. 91)

~ 1 ~ Do you know why I’m so crazy about my husband?  Well, of course, there’s not just one reason.  But, tonight was a great example of what a great guy Eric is.  He knew I was stressed out that my craft room has (yet again) become a disaster area, especially when we were [...]

House Staging on a Budget

I’m excited to share that I am now a regular contributing writer at the fabulous blog The Happy Housewife!  Today, my first post “House Staging on a Budget” has been posted. In a difficult house market, it is vital to try to do things that make your house stand out in a crowd when you [...]

Tips for Storing Your Craft Supplies

On Monday, I shared how we made a plan to makeover my craft room (although the plan is one that you can implement in any room). Then, on Tuesday, I talked about the actual craft room remodeling project (with lots of pictures). Today, I’m going to share some ideas for storing your craft supplies. I’ll [...]

A Small Craft Room Makeover with an Even Smaller Budget

Yesterday, I posted about going from deciding to straighten up my craft room for our Spring Spruce Up to making a plan for an actual room makeover.  I shared with you the planning process that we took, and then also shared what it looked like when we took everything out of the craft room.  (In [...]

Make a List of Big Projects You Want to Do Around the House

I don’t know if you’re like us, but we have a tendency to think of all the ways we would spend money whenever we don’t have any extra. It seems like those are the times when we look around and say, “Hey — I wish we could do this or that.”  Conversely, whenever we would [...]

Our Homeschool Area

On this week’s Not Back to School Blog Hop, the theme is your homeschooling classroom or area. We are beginning our third year of homeschooling, and I have to admit that we have done just about everything as far as having homeschooling areas in our house. We began homeschooling at our kitchen table.  We moved [...]