fresh and new

We have been sprucing-up around here!

I LOVE IT.

Everything feels so fresh and new and OURS.

Jason's family blessed us tremendously by helping him furnish the house when he bought it.

We are extremely grateful for that!!!!

Over the 10 years that we've lived here, we've been slowly adding our own personalities.

We're in love with our new bathroom!

This towel came all the way from France to hang from the empty towel rack you see in the picture above.

After painting the bathroom, we had a ton of paint left so I decided to paint the kitchen too!

It's amazing how the same color looks so different in each room.

The blues in the kitchen make the paint appear to be blue 

but I assure you it is the same gray from the bathroom!

See that basket? It's over 70 years old!

My Grandpa Heavilin gave it to me and said that his Aunt Elsie brought it to his family

for Christmas during the depression. It was filled with apples

and that was their one Christmas gift that year and they cherished it.

the project that took three weeks of our lives

First we had to put new shingles on the shed...

Then came all the prep. Power-washing, scraping, clearing wasp nests from the shutters, beginning the very tedious and time-consuming task of transforming the shutters from rust-red to white.

Told you it was time-consuming...

Then came the blue. The glorious, beautiful blue!! At this point it all seemed "worth it".

Now it's like we have a BRAND NEW house!! We love it so much and had fun doing this huge project together.

I never realized our shed is so cute! :)

What I Did With Your Christmas Card

I have always hated throwing away Christmas cards...all those great pictures of beautiful families! So this year I decided to try something new and make a collage with all of them. I'm pleased with how it turned out!

Pinspiration...

I have been bitten by the Pinterest bug. I realize I'm a late comer to this party...I'm ok with that! :) I just signed up yesterday and I. am. hooked.

This Christmas season, I have been pining for a new wreath for our front door. But I just put it aside, there are other things more important than wreaths! HOWEVER...Pinterest gave me inspiration to make my own! I love it! And so does my family!