Prepare yourselves to see some epically awesome pictures of our home. When I first began thinking about starting a blog about my life at home, I worried about taking pictures around the house. Then I decided to give myself some grace and not compare my home to all of the beautiful home decor blogs that I like to drool over. My husband and I have been married just over a year now and we are still settling in. Both of us being mid-30s homeowners, we had a *cough* few things to combine. Here I sit, less than a week after our first anniversary, in an office still piled high with things that I need to organize, purge, or move to the barn where we have been building extra storage. Don’t mind me while I smell my pretty candle as I work and pretend there isn’t a mountain of stuff on the bed next to me… and tune out the sound of my cat licking a plastic bag.

My cozy writing corner. That lotion peeking out smells like fruit loops. Get yourself some.

We’ve had quite a year of sorting through our things, trying to figure out what to keep. {Keep my dishes, or yours? Use the old couch, or get a new one?} We’ve also been doing some thinking about how much to do to our house. We live in a 1969 house with no basement and a weird layout. We have 1,400 square feet and a central hallway that takes up a lot of that space. Before I moved in, we had some major flooding in our crawl space from an irrigation ditch that was flowing too high. This caused some resettling in our house and when we had it inspected, we found out that at some point we’ll need to do some foundation work. So the question for us has been, do we level this house and build a new one on the property? {We have 3.5 acres and a great location just outside of town.} Or do we fix the foundation and make the changes we want to the house, possibly including an addition?

We came to the conclusion that we aren’t ready to build yet. We’ll eventually need more space as we start a family but for now we are tackling some other financial goals first. We decided to do minor improvements to enjoy the home we’re in at this phase of our life. Most of the projects you’ll see me share will be DIY & budget conscious!

Luckily we both enjoy home improvement and doing projects around the house. Here are a handful of the things we did in 2016:

• We had a barn built and began putting up industrial shelving for extra storage. We are almost done with this!!
• My husband built and installed a barn door to cover our “cantry” that he built before we were married. We needed some more kitchen storage so he hollowed out a wall next to the fridge to make a  shallow pantry big enough for canned goods. {thus the nickname, cantry}
• Husband also built extra shelves into our hall bath closet. Huge closet, few divider shelves. We still have some more to go on this but one side was much needed for my beauty product stash.
• I’m starting to see a trend here… I swear I help! My sweet husband built me some amazing raised beds to start a vegetable garden in. We will add to these over the years!
• We put in a couple storage shelves over the chest freezer in our other storage/bedroom for holding all of the small appliances that don’t fit in the kitchen.
• My husband and father in law put a new full-window door into our dark dining room. It is so much brighter now!
• Hubby also made a rack to organize hangers in the laundry room! Previously I had a jumbled mess on the countertop and now they are neatly organized on the wall.

Our barn! I’ll show you the storage when it’s all finished!

This is the awesome “cantry” and barn door that my husband installed!

Much needed extra shelves in the hall bath linen closet.

Pretty new raised garden beds. Ready for planting!

Nothing glamorous here. Just needed storage for overflow appliances.

Our dining room before. This is with the light ON. Excuse the recycling piles.

Our dining room after. So much brighter!

I love having these hangar racks within reach of where I hang up wet clothes!

Here is our wish list of projects that we want to do in the future!

• Living Room: replace gold window, sand & paint door, install baseboards
• Dining Room: sand, paint white (like shiplap), paint new door
• Hall Bath: new vanity, replace tub & tile, shelves in closet
• Master Bath: new shower insert & tile
• Laundry Room: custom cabinets, paint
• Kitchen: concrete counters, tile backsplash, paint cabinets
• Outside: organize garage & sheds, finish shelves in barn, shade garden, flower beds, more raised beds for veggie garden, recycle storage from palette shipping containers

There is good retro, and there is bad retro. You decide.

You can’t tell from the inside photo of the front door just how awesome that side window really is. That white splotch is from a failed attempt to cover the gold with mercury glass paint.

As we add new things or cross them off I’ll update the list. This is just a peek into our home and what we’re doing around here!