Finally a real mantel

As far back as I can remember I’ve looked forward to decorating my own house and the centerpiece in most homes is the fireplace mantel. We were so excited to finally be purchasing a home of our own, but I have to admit - the so-called mantel around our fireplace was a big let down to me. Just a facade on the wall with no mantel shelf to adorn with decorations. Not to mention the stark ugliness of it - why someone would glue random extrastrips of wood across the front of it I have no idea...? And I was not the greatest fan of the stain - especially when paired with the fleshy colored walls and the added brassy accents on the fireplace itself. Ew, ew, ew. A blight to my artistic vision! lol

We just lived with it as we tackled other more pressing needs and fixes a little at a time. Finally, this spring as Mike was getting rid of all the fleshy toned paint, we decided to do something about it. We wanted a wood accent wall, and we were definitely not going to build around and preserve that monstrosity! It was time for the ugly flat fake mantel to go!

I neglected to take before photos - so I scrounged through old photos to give you the idea of what the mantel looked like before:

Love this adorable model

And this one also documents that one time my child helped with the vacuuming... :)

Such a sad attempt at decoration, LOL!

Another one -- Trying to cover up a bit of the ugliness without spending a lot of money.

Tear down time!

In process..

No more brass! 

(Someday we may splurge for more realistic looking logs - like 2 different ones instead of 2 identical...but for now I am satisfied with the improvement)

Our first attempt at a stone surround with a curious little helper - we ended up going with something much simpler..

Almost there - better already...

And...

Voila!

The finished mantel!

- Finally a shelf to put things on! ...Still figuring out how to decorate it - I'm not used to collecting decorative things because we've never had a space to display them! Mike and I are artists, but we feel a little bit interior-decorator-challenged. Part of it is - we never want to spend a lot of money... We are way excited about how this project turned out though, and I'm so excited to have an actual mantel for our stockings this year!!

After doing the living room wood accent wall we loved it so much we wanted to do another one on the opposite side of our main living space in the dining area to kind of tie them together. Only for the other wall we decided to use a white stain to keep the room from being too dark and to not clash so much with our kitchen wood which carries over into the same area and is more honey toned so doesn't really go with the gray.

I love how it turned out. Here's a picture from Lily's birthday this summer.

It's crazy how making a few changes in your surroundings can effect how you feel. I love our little home so much more and feel so much more peace in it - even though it's still a little cramped for our family. So grateful for my hardworking husband and his perseverance on this project which I hope (despite his protestations) he will repeat in our next home, should we ever move from this one :)

Just Us

I never would have pegged Mike or I as a gnome people, but he planted this guy
he'd bought to take a photo of in our yard the first day we got the key, and I love it :)

Well, this post has been a long time coming. We've been in our house over a month now! It's just us! And it's great to feel that everyone in the home totally supports and loves me! Such a great feeling!!! So, so can not even do it justice with words so insert dramatic pause here ........ We can do our thing, our way, without worrying about bothering anybody! ...So even though it's not our dream house, and we've had a lot of sadness about the decision to leave beautiful sunny San Diego... I'm really glad to be here right now feeling a little bit more like the me I was meant to be with each passing day. Finally growing up :D

We're in!

It's good, and scary, and life changing for sure! Scary because now we have a mortgage payment. Scary because now it is just us responsible for listening out to the bumps in the night. And this house makes a lot of noise we can't attribute to other people being here! Our fridge makes so many knocking sounds at times I've thought about taking videos of it to post --it's just so ridiculously noisy! ...It's been a transition - with definite periods of sleep deprivation. In some ways we miss bunking in with family... But over all it's really, really great that it's just us! I have danced wildly and freely in the front room with my 3 year old without fear of looking ridiculous to anyone in the house because it's just us!!! Our little family being out on our own has been a much too long time in coming so it's going to take us a while to get used to it!

It was like Christmas getting all the toys out of storage - they did not want to go to sleep the first night!

There are definitely more things to do when you move into a house of your own than when you are renting a space! More things to change and repair, and for us this time, more space to spread out in! We have always been pretty quick unpackers and were doing pretty well getting things organized in the house the first few days so I didn't really think it would take as long as it has to really get settled. But we had quite a few projects to do, and children to take care of and school starting, and all the moving and cleaning was pretty exhausting on our poor bodies!

Lily wanted to help give her Dad a back massage.

Stripping paint off and refinishing a table we were gifted took us a few weeks, but it turned out very nice...and after eating at a small folding table with our kids trying to take over the only 2 big folding chairs and tipping over in them all the time - it was super nice to finally be eating at a regular table again!

So glad to trade in this sweet set up for this one!

I didn't really expect to do much in the way of decorating for some time. Not wanting to spend any more money, and as artists we've usually had too many things to hang on the walls, but now having a whole house we have quite a few big blank spaces we still need to fill. I've been looking forward to finally printing some of our family photos to hang up. We never had any space for them before! I don't have a big budget, but I found some frames at Ross for great prices and made a family photo wall in our dining area for just under $100 prints included. I've kind of gotten in the habit of not buying anything to decorate because we just didn't have the money to spend or the space to store it, so now it feels weird to spend money on decorating! But whenever I look at our photos it makes me happy - so I think it's worth it :) You have to admit it - just doesn't feel as homey staring at a blank wall.

Earlier this month we had our first general conference in our own home. I made our traditional homemade cinnamon rolls and we decorated for Halloween. I'm enjoying having our little homemade decorations fill in the gaps and make it feel fuller in here.

Pumpkins by Sierra & Mommy

 Ghost by Lily

Lily helping me get out the Halloween lights we made before we had kids
with face paint leftover from her school carnival the night before

My littlest cutie hanging decorations in the window

I feel so blessed...so even though life is not perfect, and I could make a list of things that are lacking about our home and yard -- the goods outweigh the bads and I'm counting my blessings! Will try to post more updates soon!