Home Decor diY

Happy Friday! I'm ready for the weekend! Hope you have a fun one planned. :) While on Pinterest this week I found a new tool they've added that I thought was pretty cool. I think it's been around for at least a few weeks now but as always I'm late to the party. It's brilliant so I had to share. When you open a photo in Pinterest you'll see a little square in the upper right hand corner: Click on that and a ton of other photos that are similar to the one you you're looking at will pop up on the right:   You can expand the cropping so that it "reads" the whole photo:  This gives you even more (and I think better) comparative photos. This is awesome!! Be sure to use the scrolling tool on the right to see all of the photos they suggest.  What's even better is there are descriptive words and phrases across the top -- click on those for more specific examples that match those phrases. It will still use your inspiration photo to find those.  I do find

Alright my friends -- this is my favorite post of the year so be warned…there are a ton of photos. Twelve years ago tomorrow we closed on our home and I know I say it every year, but I cannot believe I've had the privilege of living in a home I love this much for so long. We moved a lot when I was young and times got pretty rough. It is truly a dream come true to have this house and to be settled for so long.  Before and after photos are my favorite ever so I just love this kind of post. It makes me giddy. I did the same thing last year  (check that post out for different views and to see how these spaces have changed since!) -- I love to see how our house changes over the years. Every year I "finish" a room and slow but sure our house has become exactly what we want and love.  Let's start the tour, shall we? Our living room has always stumped me because of super high ceilings. I used to decorate up and quickly decided it didn't work:  Don't you love the pink

So a couple weeks ago a reader on Instagram commented that I don't have any "close the door" rooms.  It made me laugh out loud -- I know those rooms too well. We've had them in the past but over the last few years they have dwindled. It's taken a long time to get to that point (we'll be in the house 12 years this week!) but there is still ONE room.  We don't speak of this room. Only one man dares to enter and that's my husband. OK, I go in to grab clothes because that's where our laundry chute is. But that's it! It's always been a very scary place, especially for me because it was a MESS.  This pit of despair is my husband's office in the basement. He can function in disorganized spaces (he's a creative type -- he plays, writes and teaches music) but the longer I'm on this Earth the less I can handle it. We were just talking the other day how we're both "right brained" but I need much more order than he does.  My

Hey there all! Hope you have had a great week and have an even better weekend planned! I'm back today to share a popular post from years ago with a little updated info.  This is a perfect example of buying vs. doing it yourself. I LOVE to DIY but there are definitely times I just want to buy an item. Believe me, I say do what you want (Cartman!) -- if it makes you happy to do it yourself, go for it. If you have the money and have no desire to DIY, buy the sucker.  I will say doing it yourself is usually cheaper. This is a good example. I was at Home Depot this week picking up flooring for the basement (more on that soon) and came across this fun new section:  I had to laugh because they are selling pallets now! I actually think this is quite brilliant. None of them are full sized pallets, just half, but still, it's a smart move on their part. It just made me laugh because you can get them for free some places. (Please check with a business before taking pallets though -- some