My new kitchen!

my kitchen before

my kitchen after

My NEW Kitchen!! Everyone thinks that I took a picture from a magazine, pasted it here, and called it my kitchen, I didn't, I even took this photo myself! Lol!
Jack and I worked sooo hard on this, (his blood, muscles, and engineer's brain, my

love for matching colors, organizing, and designing a beautiful space) Cannot believe it is finished, and it is mine. It was soooo much work, many hours of planning, deciding, and changing our minds at the last minute, many nights of little sleep, paint fumes, drywall dust, and living like we were camping, for 5 straight months, (which is difficult with 4 kids, n gets old very fast) but, compared to the before, this was totally worth it. I spent hours scouring craigslist for great deals, which is how we got our Hickory cabinets, still new in thier boxes, for a fraction of thier original cost! Designer cabinets at a price lower than the cheapest ones on the shelves of the home improvement stores! SCORE!! We got great deals on everything from the granite kitchen sink, to the dining set. The entire project start to finish would take up its own entire blog...so, I will just keep it short n sweet here. Moral of this story: you can achieve the designer kitchen of your dreams if you take time to research, be patient, plan well, and do not rush anything, just because you want it done!! It was worth it. :)

Easy-Peasy Fall Bouquets

When I want to add a touch of fall to any room in my house, I fill a container (think: crock, mason jar, metal pail, tin ice cream maker bucket, basket, whatever) with anything that looks beautiful to me that is growing outside in our fields and pastures. Here are some ideas: crabapple branches, any leaves/branches, grapevines, queen annes lace flowers, cornstalks, cattails, goldenrod, dried grasses, wheat. Whatever is appealing to you, mix n match, place in a container, add a fall ribbon or twine, and scatter leaves or gourds around the base. There you have it, a fall bouquet that looks great and adds a focal point to a room or table top, and the best part: it's free!! Go gather and make one for your own table!! ;)

2010's Fall Decor

These are pics of my fall decorating from 2010, I LOVE Fall decor!!! So for picture 1, I gathered cornstalks, goldenrod, dried queen anne's lace, cattails, branches of maple leaves, and some red and orange berries, and arranged them in a small old wooden barrel that I have had for years, Result: a gorgeous floral display, Cost: NADA! I grew a bunch of pumpkins and gourds in my garden that year so I picked all that I had (there were a ton) and put them in a wire egg basket, crocks, whatever would hold them and look nice really. Then I added an antique wood lantern, and a fall ribbon in a brown gingham to the bouquet. This cost nothing, and looked like it cost something, plus I enjoyed it! My kids joined me in this also, so we had an all-around fun time.
For the second picture, this is my coffee table that sets in my living room, I bought it at a yard sale for $5, it was a nasty pink/beige color, (yes it was ugly enough to make me gag) there were 3 doors across the front that did not even shut, so I took those off, painted it a chocolate brown, and:... very Pottery Barn style table! The 3 ceramic pots I bought on clearance at a home improvement store for $4 each, (silly dance)! I stuffed newspaper in the bottoms, for filler material, then filled them with my gourds, I strung a grapevine garland around the pots to fill empty space on the bottom of the table. On the top, I cut a piece of tan color gunny-sack type material (I know there is an official name for it but I cant think of it!) cost: $1 or less, I added some ceramic Jack o' lanterns, gourds and colorful fall leaves. So my total cost for this was about...$25!! That includes the table, paint, pots, and cloth. Pretty good I'd say....
The last picture was the other part of my front porch decor. I had an old plant stand that looked like a spiral staircase, I put a pumpkin on each round step, filled the top basket with gourds, added a bushel basket that I had turned a smaller basket upside down inside it to add filler and to work as a platform for the large pumpkin inside the basket, I strung a live grapevine around the pumpkin to fill in dead space, tucked in some gourds and more maple leaf branches around it, added a bench behind the plant stand and at a slight angle and set baskets of apples and pears (that I picked from old trees around our home) on and around it. I also hung another antique wood lantern from the stand, and filled in the empty spaces with more pumpkins and gourds and crocks!! Cost: ZERO!!
See what you can do with what you have? Its easy, its cheap, and this looks great! I received so many compliments last year on my Fall Decor! Now you go see what you can do to decorate your home for Fall!! Have fun! ;)

Jessica's Front Porch

This is what my sisters front porch now looks like, the "before" was practical, but just not very welcoming, other than her "welcome" mat at the front door. Jess was going to list this dresser for free on craigslist, but I talked her into using it on her covered porch instead. She said she'd try it. Well when she left to run errands....I did it for her. All of this was sitting on her porch in differant places, so I just placed the old window at the back of the dreser, grouped 3 pots of flowers on one end, and a 4th at the other end, I told her to add an old lantern and she placed it next to the 4th pot of flowers, a butterfly net leaning on the window adds a bit of fun and whimsy, and the wreath above fills an empty space, and seems to draw your eye up. The drawers can be used for outdoor toys, bug spray, sun lotion, pretty much anything that should be on the porch, but that just adds clutter. She is very happy with the outcome, and since she already owned all of this, it cost her nothing, yet it looks great! This took like 30 minutes to accomplish. So now...go re-arrange n re-think your own front porch! :) If your space looks pleasing to you, you are more likeky to keep it this way.

I love to decorate....

 Whether it be collecting wildflowers and drying them between book pages to then make into a border around my bedroom walls when I was 14, or dragging an old table, covered in grease and an inch of dust, and who knows what else, down the ladder of a dusty barn loft, (I still dont know how I did it without falling or dropping the table) to then clean, oil, and use as a plant stand on my front porch, to using shower curtain hooks for hanging up my lingerie in my closet, to using painted berry boxes for organization on a small bookshelf for my sisters schoolroom! I love to change, re-arrange, and make mediocre decor look extravagant in a simple way, while spending next to nothing while doing it.