Home Decor diY

Well hello all! School has been in session around here for a couple weeks now and I am sad to see this summer go. I think it was our best yet. We traveled a ton -- to Iowa for my husband's work, North Carolina for the Duke basketball camp: This was a fantastic camp, by the way. Our favorite so far.  Up to northern Indiana to visit Notre Dame for the first time:  I traveled to Atlanta for the fifth Haven Conference and we took another trip up to north to the Indiana Dunes (just beautiful):  I swear my child has other outfits. ;)  We visited the zoo, the children's museum, two amusement parks, our state fair, explored downtown Indy and hosted many friends over the course of the summer. I can't remember one that I've looked back on so fondly. This is the saddest I've ever been to see a summer go -- and you know how much I LOVE fall! :)  Because our summer has drawn to a close I figured it's a good time to share some of my favorite projects and posts from the past m

Oh MY. I've been nailing, filling, caulking and painting for what feels like weeks. It's only been three days but I am worn OUT. :)  I've been focused on the "hallway" part of our loft for the past week or so. This is the open space at the top of the stairs and I want to make the most of it. Here's how it looked back in June before I started replacing the door trim:  This space isn't big but took a lot of work! Gah. I'm SO HAPPY this part is done.  Here is the pretty DIY farmhouse door trim installed (just not looking so pretty yet):  I've added this trim to almost all of the doors in the house and it makes a BIG difference. They look so much more custom!  I showed you how I add the look of shiplap for less on this wall:  But I still had a lot to finish up. Most were smaller walls but it just takes a ton of time. As I've mentioned, this is not a hard project, it's just very time consuming. Painting three coats on everything takes eons, fo

OK, can I just tell you how excited I am for fall? I am SO sad to see this summer end because we had such a great one -- but I will not miss the heat. Our temps are supposed to be in the 70's and low 80's for the next two weeks (and rainy, I love it!) and I couldn't be happier. I know many of you haven't started school just yet but once it does here I'm READY for apples and crisp air and big sweaters.  Even though I miss our boy during the day I do love getting back on a schedule and having some "me" time again. One of my favorite things to do that I rarely get to do all summer is walk through HomeGoods or TJ Maxx. I can do it in the summer but don't often because there's usually a precious nine-year-old begging to know when we can leave. :)  So at some point during the first couple weeks of school I'll take my first "fall" trip to HG and it's like I'm discovering a whole new wondrous place. (They'll start bringing in fall

Well hello and happy Friday!  I'm back with an "after" of the project I mentioned earlier this week . If you missed that post you can see my tips on picking out the perfect paint color and how I worked with Sherwin-Williams to find a fun new color for our exterior doors:  (The winner of the giveaway is announced at the end of this post!) That spot was looking a little sad, right? I'm so thrilled with it now! It's beautiful!  I used a new paint for this project called SnapDry and it was AWESOME:  This paint is perfect for painting doors because it dries SO fast. You don't have to worry about taking the doors off the hinges or keeping them propped open to dry. There are things to consider when painting with this paint though and I'll cover those in a second.  Before you do paint any door you'll want to do two things -- first, make sure it's not painted in oil-based paint. I tell you how to determine that in this post -- it's a very simple check