My Personal Thankful Challenge

It is officially 2 weeks until Thanksgiving.  My house is filled with activity preparing for the big family event that will take place on Turkey Day.  We are planning for about 20 (give or take a few) and really looking forward to it.  Our life has been chaotic the past three years, which has left us pretty up in the air on holiday gatherings.  When we moved into our Forest House, we decided that we wanted to have Thanksgiving at our house.  There was room for everyone and it seemed like a good central location to host the event.

Sadly, it was a short lived tradition due to a river of smelly water that took away that house and then subsequent upheavals that have made our life a little head scratching…

For the next 2 weeks, I would like to spend some time each day reflecting on things that I am thankful for.  When we spend time in gratitude, it changes us.  Our focus changes from the negative and mundane to a more positive outlook.  We see things that we didn’t see before in a new light.  It gives us clarity and perspective, which are beautiful things.

Because of Thanksgiving and thinking about the preparations in progress, it seems fitting to be thankful for our house.  After 7 moves since 2008, it is nice to be settled (almost!).  We are making this house a home and hoping for many years of family and friend gatherings within its walls.  A place where laughter will be had, tears will likely be shed, growth will be made, and life will be lived.

So today, I am thankful for home.  After moving so many times, I have learned that a house is just a house until you make it your home.  The memories, the people, and the life in the house is the key to achieving this feeling.  Every house that we have lived in has been full of memories, good and bad, but I am thankful for all of them.  We have learned a lot of life lessons along the way and I am sure we will learn many more in the years to come.

 

Doubling the Dining Room

The dining space in our house was more of a nook.  It fit a 4 seat dining table, but that was about it.  With Thanksgiving coming up, we decided we needed more space.  On the other side of the dining room wall was a mud room, which seemed like a waste of space when it could be used for something more.  These pictures are from when we bought the house.  I really love the built in hutch, but for the sake of a larger room, it needed to be removed.  By the way, how do you like the salmon colored walls?

The first step was to knock the wall down.

Then came the realization that the process was not going to be as simple as it seemed.  Beside tearing out plaster and knocking down stud walls, there was going to be flooring and walls to patch, lights to change out, trim to replace,  a gas line to move, electrical to take out, and walls to paint.  Of course, Ryan realized all that, but I was a little clueless!

Quite the process, but it looks so much bigger and a whole lot more open!  Want to see the next steps of the process?  You might just have to wait a little while.  How do you like that for suspense?  Stay tuned for the next update very soon!

Summer in Review: Part 1

This summer has flown by.  I can’t seem to remember what we have been doing for the last months because it has just been one big blur.  Guess that is what happens when you move across the state yet again.  As I was looking back on pictures on my phone I realized that I have not done an update on our crazy lives lately.  I am going to have to do this in segments because there has been a lot going on!  So here is part 1 of many!

The summer started with an across the state move back to the homeland of Minot.  While we really enjoyed the Fargo-Moorhead area, we realized that Minot is home and with the booming economy of the area, it made sense to come back to where the architecture work is for Ryan.

We said goodbye to our Moorhead home of 1 year….

And hello to a new (old) house in Minot!

This picture was taken before summer clearly since there was still snow on the ground!!

In the middle of the move, we spent several weeks at Ryan’s parent’s house in the country, which was a nice respite from the craziness of packing and moving.  There was rock skipping in the ponds, walks on gravel roads, drives through the countryside, and even a late year snow complete with snowman making.

Because of timing of this move, Luke had a few months of school left and we decided to enroll him in an online school for the final 2 months of the school year.  There were many days of school at Barnes and Noble Cafe!  No complaints on that one!

Moving into a new house brought with it the joys of unpacking boxes and decorating (yet again!).  We still have a lot to do and many projects in the works, but have gotten a few things done.

This was our first night in the new house and Luke’s first night in his new bed

Every room of the new house is painted some shade of tan or brown with a hint of reddish pink undertones.  Not my favorite, but since I really hate painting (have done a few too many rooms!), I am going slow with the painting projects.  The living room still needs to be painted, but I decided to put up some decor in the meantime to make it feel more home-y.

When June rolls around, my dad comes for a visit and so I set to work getting the spare room ready for him to stay.  Over the past 5 years, he has stayed in a new room in a new house every year.  Because the flood and the multiple moves since, our spare bedroom furniture has seen a lot of new homes!

I hadn’t hung the pictures on the wall above the bed when I took this picture, but they are on the wall now.

The yard at the new house is really a complete blank slate.  It wasn’t kept up very well and needs some love.  I do not have much of a green thumb (I am trying!), but Ryan has a patience and love of plants and shrubs that I will never have.  I took this picture of him and call it, “Ryan dreaming in flowers”!  He was not that impressed, but it is the truth.  He is in heaven when he can pick out new plants and shrubs for our yard.

Anyway, that is part 1 of our Summer 2014.  Stay tuned tomorrow for more pictures of our summer.  And then probably more to come the following day 🙂  Guess I better stay a little more up to date with the updates!

Basement Remodel (with Pics) Finally!

As promised, here are the basement family room pictures.  We did a ton of work to this space to get it looking as it does today.  I am painted out, but do still have a few spots that need to be completed.  Mostly just in the stairway, but with time, that will get finished too!

For your viewing pleasure, here are the before pictures:

The space is much brighter and much cleaner now and I now feel like I can spend some time in there without fear of a spider attacking me!  Okay, so maybe the spider wouldn’t attack me, but there sure were a lot of them down there.

Everything in the room is new including flooring, ceiling tile, paint, trim, and other woodwork.  I have not put anything on the windows yet, but that will need to be in the works soon.  Just not sure what I want on them since I still want lots of light to come in.

Okay, I guess I will do the big reveal now!!!!

This space is sort of a mish mash of different furniture, but isn’t that what a basement is supposed to be?  I basically just used pieces from our old house to fill the space and make it useful!  I love using items that I already have…that is the thriftiest decorating tip of all!!