Love the Home You Have

Let's be real today. Raise your hand if you often find yourself comparing your home to those of your friends, favorite bloggers, or the ones you see in magazines or on Pinterest. Do you look around your toy-strewn, goldfish crumb encrusted family room and say to yourself, "That's it. I'm done. My dream home is never going to happen, so I just give up."? It's okay to admit it...because I'm raising my hand too! I want to share with you about Love the Home You Have, a new book by Melissa Michaels of The Inspired Room, and how it inspired me. I hope it will inspire you too!

I rarely give a book its own review here on the blog, and I should note that this is not a sponsored post. Melissa didn't ask me to promote her book. She gifted me with a copy, and the second I finished up a book club read and put kid #3 down for a nap, I tore into the book.

First reaction?

Wow, she gets me!

I wanted to share about it with you because today is the official release day for Love the Home You Have, and if you struggle with finding contentment with your home, you need this book!

There are tooooons of housie books out there. Most of them are filled with jaw-dropping, glowing photos of homes so perfect that it makes your heart ache. Some have tutorials for DIY projects that cost money you might not have. They're fun to pore over during naptime, but they can also lead to frustration. 

So what do you do when you live in a home that doesn't quite live up to your expectations, and you lack the resources to transform it into one of those show homes you drool over in the housie books?

You see, according to Melissa, it's really a matter of the heart!

When I was finished reading Love the Home You Have, the book was so filled with highlighted advice, tips, and encouragement, that I should have just doused the whole thing in yellow marker. 

Melissa doesn't just fill the book with witty sayings, pictures, and Bible verses. (There are some lovely, whimsical illustrations that you can download as printables here-under "Downloads") She offers practical, real-life suggestions to help you see your home with new eyes. Once you understand that "creating a beautiful home is not about presenting a perfect image to the world," you can work to create an authentic home...right where you are!

Melissa shares tips on:

• Hospitality
• Clearing clutter
• Finding a cleaning routine that works for you
• Decorating 
• Taking the leap from "dreamer to doer"

One of the things I really appreciated was that Melissa includes questions at the end of the chapter to make you dig a little deeper. And there's a special 31 Day "Love Your Home" Challenge at the end of the book. I'm planning on starting tomorrow!

Love the Home You Have takes the reader full circle...a thoughtful, authentic, gentle reminder that whether you live in a magazine feature home or a 1970s fixer upper (like me), a true dream home doesn't exist without contentment. 

I'll leave you with some food for thought today...the first quote Melissa included in the book:

"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have." -Frederick Keonig

Watch the book trailer below:

Love The Home You Have from The Inspired Room on Vimeo.

Get the book on Amazon here. They also have a kindle version, but I prefer paperback or hardback for books that I want to take lots of notes on. I'm waiting with baited breath for the next book in her series!!

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Vintage Stainless Steel High Chair Makeover

If you follow me on social media, you may remember a Salvation Army steal I posted about seeing on Instagram and Facebook page several months back. I passed up on a $25 vintage stainless steel high chair because at the time I didn't know if I'd be able to take it apart to add new covers, and I didn't have the time with the holidays approaching. My mother-in-law surprised me by buying it for me, and today I want to reveal Harris' new-old Vintage High Chair Makeover.

With the holidays past and long stretches of seemingly endless snow days in sight, I started plotting how I could give the high chair a new life. We have a plastic Fisher Price booster high chair that sits on one of our kitchen chairs, but I loved the stainless piece because it had character! And with seven cousins, having an extra baby seat is super helpful.

Aside from a little rust, it was in great shape. The cover was (at one time) white, and had a cool moroccan tile pattern. Over the years, it had yellowed and had a few tears, so I knew it was time for a replacement. Vinyl fabric was going to be a necessity...easy to wipe clean and pretty durable. The problem was that I wasn't finding many patterns or colors in vinyl fabric that were on trend. I also looked in all the local shops for a vinyl tablecloth, and the only only ones I could find were country grape festooned a la an episode of the Golden Girls in 1986.

Until I remembered that I had a cute-ish outdoor vinyl table cloth sitting in my kitchen sideboard. Like, for free.

So my friend Mandy came over, and we managed to unscrew the seats, remove them, use the gross grody old fabric for a template on the back of my new-ish tablecloth, and cut to fit.

Then we folded the fabric over the existing foam cushions and screwed them back onto the high chair.

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

Vintage Stainless Steel High Chair. {mic drop}

Of course, the legs need some scrubbing to make 'em shiny again. But I will probably leave the chair base as-is. I want to keep the original character instead painting it. Like most folks, I go crazy for freshening things up with spray paint, but I really liked the vintage look to this guy.

So, to recap...high chair cost me $0 since my mother-in-law surprised me with it. The covering cost me $0 because I used a tablecloth I already had.

Not bad for a free makeover, huh?

My little guy has been pretty happy with it!

Do you have any vintage pieces in your home?

If you enjoyed this post or found it helpful, I hope you'll click your "Pin It" button to add this post to Pinterest, or a +1 for Google+. And I always appreciate kind comments, Facebook shares, and Tweets!

10 Inspiring "How to Decorate" Blog Posts and Series

I'm taking a little blogging break today to get parts of my house under control. It's been too many days of chaos with a baby dragging on my leg because he has a bad cold...doesn't make for getting stuff done around the homestead. So, today I thought it would be fun to share some great DIY and Decorating links with you. These are some of my favorite blog posts and series on How to Decorate!

Creating a Meaningful Home Series (Year One) via Jenna Burger

Decorating 101 via The Inspired Room

Decorating 101 via View Along the Way

How to Start Decorating via Home Stories A to Z

10 Ways to Organize DVDs {Organizing Tips and Tricks}

It's still January, so it's still "organizing season" in my mind. One thing I've noticed recently is that our DVD collection is a little out of control. My kids seem to own a copy of just about every kids' movie ever made. I hope to pare down some of the discs we don't watch or need...and reorganize the ones we keep. For today, here are some Organizing Tips on Ways to Organize DVDs.

As always, please be sure to Pin from the original source.

DVDs in Sleeves via Ask Anna

DiscSox  from The Container Store

Popsicle Stick Filing System via Turnstyle Vogue

Pancakes and Pajamas Theme Birthday Party

I was scrolling through some of the photos from Natalie's December birthday yesterday and realized that I never shared last year's party with you all! So, forgive the major delay, but today I'm showing off some pics from her 8th birthday party. The theme was Pancakes and Pajamas and we hosted it in our home last December. This is how we threw a budget-friendly party at home for our eight year old:

Including my own girls, this party maxed out at seven little girls. We live in a smaller, 1970s colonial, so allowing Natalie to invite every child from her class just wasn't going to work.

She invited five friends, and they each wore their favorite cozy pajamas! They had the most fun playing in our dress up trunk and putting on fashion shows.

(Invite from Party Invites and More --highly recommend!) 

Party Decorations and Food:
I bought some standard party decor from our local Hobby Lobby so that I could reuse them for future parties. Easy peasy!

The cake was from the grocery store, and I didn't serve ice cream because of all the sugar from breakfast. Drinks were water, orange juice, or milk. We used my mother-in-law's mini mason jars for cups with cute purple and white chevron paper straws. Also served were fresh fruit, vanilla yogurt, and granola. Sides were dished out from a vintage tea cart I got from my Nannie's house a few years ago. We also had whipped cream, flavored pancake syrups, chocolate syrup, classic maple syrup...and frozen pancakes from the store.

Hear me out...I had a baby just a few days earlier. There was no way I was going to whip up dozens of pancakes for this party. I wisely purchased some frozen pancakes in bulk. My mother-in -law cooked them in her oven and brought them to the party for me, wrapped up on a platter. The girls never knew the difference!

Favors:
Favors were the most adorable pajama cookies from a local baker. She was even kind enough to deliver them to my door when I told her I had a c-section and couldn't drive. If you're local, message or email me, and I can give you her information. Each girl also got to choose a nail polish to take home.

Party Activities:
We opted to do a small craft as the girls arrived instead of games. I purchased inexpensive white pillowcases from WalMart and the girls used Elmers Paint Pens to decorate their pillowcases however they wanted. That kept them busy for some time...it was wonderful! After Natalie opened her gifts, the girls had fun with her spa set and painted each other's nails until it was time to go home.

Side note: I was inspired by similarly themed parties from Tatertots and Jello and Hi Sugarplum. Thank goodness I did some early shopping and prepping, because I ended up giving birth to baby #3 via c-section just a few days before the party. And, to complicate matters, the whole fam rushed the baby to the E.R. in the wee hours the morning of the party (which kicked off the whole dairy-free-milk-protein-sensitivity drama).

We returned home just in time for me to pump, feed the baby, haphazardly apply some make-up, and complete the party food prep! So while the girls loved the party and had a blast, it was clearly not a fantabulous, Pinterest-worthy, jaw-dropping, styled party. But that's not why I threw it; so I'm okay with that!

For other party ideas I've shared:

• Barbie Party
• LaLaLoopsy Ballet Party at the Studio
• Hello Kitty Party
• American Girl Party at the American Girl Bistro
• Tinkerbell Ballet Birthday Party
• Cinderella Birthday Party
• Little Mermaid Birthday Party
• Sesame Street Birthday Party
• Budget Princess Party

What's the most fun party theme you've ever planned?

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My {Humble} Home Goals for 2015

So 2015 is officially in full swing now. I sometimes like to give myself a couple of days at the start of the year to kind of ease into things and contemplate my goals for the year. Now that the older two kids are back to school, I had a chance to sit down and make some Home Goals for 2015. I thought I'd write them up on the blog today. Please feel free to share yours in the comments section!

Important Note: These photos show some of the worst of my house. I didn't do any touching up or sprucing. This is real life...I'm excited to show you what I have done, but for now, this is what needs to be fixed!

Family Room

• Pillows
• Accent Walls

Pleased to tell you that Operation Family Room (a long, ongoing project for budgetary reasons and previous lack of motivation) is actually in full swing! I completed the gallery wall over the couch and need to blog about it. I have two more walls that need some sprucing and would like to make some pillows to accent the big blue chair. Some day, I'd like to slipcover or replace that chair, budget permitting.

Dining Room

• Paint!

I finished up two furniture makeovers in the dining room...also need to share those on the blog. My goal for the dining room in 2015 is to get the walls painted! The red was pretty and Southern and classic years ago, but I prefer neutral walls and colorful accents these days. The walls are going gray to match the kitchen.

Addition (New Room/Playroom)

• Upcycle drapes
• Wall decor
• Purge, donate, reorganize toys
• Complete labeling and sprucing up craft supply area

Even though the we added onto the house six years ago, we still call this area "The New Room" for lack of a better moniker. The room houses most of the kids' toys, books, and all of my craft supplies. After some toy "redistribution" and reorganization, I'd like to add some decorative accents to the space. I have a few ideas. The window panels need a bit of work, and I have a little sprucing to do with the craft area before I can show off the room.

Kitchen

• Paint bench
• Purge cabinets

Again, a space I haven't revealed on the blog! With some help from my mother-in-law and mom, the kitchen was painted before Harris was born last year. I also added a gallery wall and some other decor. It's definitely a low budget, mini-makeover, but it made a huge difference...even though we can't afford new flooring, new cabinetry, or a new backsplash. We work with what we have!

The only things I really need to do in the kitchen this year are paint my bench and purge some cabinets!

Living Room

• Wall decor
• Bring some color!

This room screams "blah." Leather furniture, dark wood, khaki walls, khaki drapes...soooooooo neutral. Thankfully, we have some white trim in there, but I need some color! This is T's domain, so I don't want to go too nuts, but the room needs some artwork. I'd love to eventually get a chair or two with some upholstery to add some more color, but we'll start small.

Master Bedroom

• New headboard (upholstered?)
• Wall decor
• Accents
• Purge and reorganize

Overhaul. Serious overhaul. We upgraded our bed to a king-size at the end of the year, so we don't have a headboard any more. I really want an upholstered headboard, but I don't want to pay $$$. T swears he can DIY one for me, but he is the king of procrastination, so we'll see if that gets done. We need new bedding, new window treatments, and maaaaaajor decluttering and reorganizing. Artwork, decor accents are needed as well. I hate that room---it is bare and ugly. It needs to be cozy and inviting! I don't know if we'll have the budget for all that, but I can try.

Kids' Rooms

• Toy purging and reorganizing
• Wall decor in girls' room

Harris' nursery is pretty much complete and seriously adorable. I need to show it off here on the blog! It has come a long, long way from girlie nursery to hoarder's paradise to little boy's space.

The girls' room is a disaster zone. Despite my best efforts to contain and organize things, we need to do some decluttering and reorganizing. They need some new artwork on the walls too.

So...most of my list involves touching up with things like decorative elements. I'm going to try to do a room at a time, with the exception of decluttering and donating items we/the kids no longer need or use.

Do you have any home goals for 2015? What's your plan?


If you enjoyed this post or found it helpful, I hope you'll click your "Pin It" button to add this post to Pinterest, or a +1 for Google+. And I always appreciate kind comments, Facebook shares, and Tweets!