The Sweetest Little Puppies!

I have some fun news for you all today! A few weeks ago, my little Lemon Bean became a mommy!


She had two little sweet baby girls, who I've nicknamed Apricot and Blackberry :) But mostly I call them both fatty, haha! (Even though Blackberry is WAY bigger than Apricot. She's outgrown her like crazy!) They're little schnoodles, with a bit more emphasis on the poodle than schnauzer, since Lemon is half and half, but their daddy is a purebred toy poodle!

Then last week I was lucky enough to get a visit from my friend Toni. She flew in from Idaho to see me and while she was here we had a little fun!

She's an amazing photographer with a lot of experience photographing newborns and babies (go check out her blog to see!), so we decided to have a little puppy photoshoot! Prepare for picture (and cuteness!) overload...













They turned out so adorable, it's almost a little ridiculous. I just want to squeeze their little chubby faces so hard when I look at these!

She also helped me get some much needed decorating done in my house. Toni's a real go-getter, so she's great motivation for me haha. Now my house is cozy and all decked out for Christmas, and I'll be sharing that later this week :)

How's your Christmas prep going? Are the halls decked and carols playing in the background like it is here, or have you been putting it off? Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Most Wonderful Time

Hey guys! I can't believe it's already almost halfway through November...

It's time to start thinking about gift lists, shopping, holiday meals, and Christmas cards!

I'm afraid I don't have anything new this year, but I'm still pretty in love with the collections I designed last year, and I was a little late getting them out so I think they're still good ;)

I may re-work a couple into art prints, because I feel like they would make adorable Christmas decor, so I probably better get cracking on that. I'm running low on time! Haha!

These individual cards here are still my favorites, but I offer all ten Christmas cards as singles, and as two sets as well. Check them all out in my Etsy shop, or by clicking the shop tab above!






And as an incentive to all of you early birds out there, I'm offering free shipping on any purchase over $10, until November 23! Just use the code XMAS16.

Ugh, I'm so excited for this time of year, it's ridiculous! It's getting me all kinds of motivated, which is good because I have a lot of stuff on my to do list in the next few months. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to some Christmas music and dream of decorations....

Thanks for stopping by! :)

New Project on the Horizon

I'm so glad I was able to finally wrap up our house reveal last week for you all. I wish it hadn't taken me three months to do so, but better late than never I guess!

One big reason I had for doing so, is that I have some pretty exciting news to share......

We're buying another house! 

It's not a done deal yet for sure, but we're in the process of purchasing another fixer upper right now, and to say I'm stoked is an understatement ;) I guess once home renovation gets in your blood, you just can't get it out!

With the market being so different here in Southern Oregon than in Idaho, our money isn't going nearly as far. For about the same price as our old house, we're losing a bedroom and a bathroom, or about 400 square feet of space, plus a garage. But this new place is charming and old, and on a bigger lot with a creek running through it. So what we're losing in space, I feel like we're gaining in other ways.

One thing we plan to do differently with this house is our remodel timeline. Stress from living in a renovation was a major con last time around, so we've decided we are going to try to get some of the big things like new flooring and painting done before we move in. Between the buying process, the fact that the house has a current renter that will be moving out, and the reno before hand, we aren't expecting to be in until after the new year. But I'm still so happy to get another major project like this!

I've discovered after owning two homes and renting in two homes, that I way prefer owning. And while this place probably isn't our forever home, I really want us to make it our own. I've been gathering lots of inspiration already (some of which is the same from our last house) so I thought I'd share some of that with you today!
As you can see, I'm so in love with lots of bright white, and black and warm wooden accents (aren't we all these days? Haha!). The kitchen, bathroom, and front porch will, hopefully, all be getting some updates, so that's what I've focused on in this mood board.

Eventually I'll post some photos of the actual house, but that probably won't be until after we close on  it. I will be sure to keep you guys updated! I want to share more of the actual remodel process as we go along on this house, so we'll see how it goes.

I'd like to know, are you a fan of the white/black/wood look, or is there some other trends that you like better? Have you ever done a remodel? I'd love to hear :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Our Home Remodel: The Great Room


It's finally time to wrap up our house reveal! 

Today I'm sharing the 'great room,' or the kitchen/dining/living room area of our old home. Looking back on all of these pictures makes me a little sad, because we put so much work into the house and I loved how it turned out. 

Then we didn't get to stick around and enjoy it!

But I am glad that someone got to, and I'm just looking forward to our next project.

These rooms weren't the worst in the house, but being a foreclosure, there was a bit of vandalization. There had been a gas fireplace that was taken out and a couple of holes punched into the island. The light fixtures had been stolen, and the carpet had a fair amount of animal pee going on. Overall, everything was very dirty and needed some updating.

One good thing was that some pretty nice laminate flooring had been installed at some point before we bought the house, so that saved us a pretty big chunk of money. That ended up being the only flooring in the whole house that we didn't have to replace.

Here are some progress shots to give you an idea of what we were working with.















Phew! Picture overload!

Some things we did in these rooms were replace the fireplace (we found a really good deal on a used one on Craigslist!), put new tile around it and re-stain the mantle. We updated the paint in the entire room, and put in new light fixtures. I especially loved my dining room light, which I bought from Target. Turns out they sell some very cute and reasonably priced light fixtures online!

In the kitchen, I peeled off the outdated and cracked laminate, and I used Ardex feather finish on the plywood forms. If you haven't heard of this, I recommend looking it up! It's a concrete product that you can use as a skim coat to cover and update your counters. It's so affordable, and it gives the look of a solid surface with just a fraction of the cost. I think I spent around $200 on my materials (Ardex, concrete dye, and sealant), and then I used less than half of it.

I didn't get to stay long enough to attest to the durability of it, but I liked it while I had it and I've read some good reviews. If you'd like to look into it more, I suggest reading some of the tutorials I followed here, here, and here. There's tons of information out there about it, but if you'd like more info let me know! While it won't be a step by step, I could do a post going more in depth if anyone would like :)

Let's see, I think that replacing the front door with something to let in more light, and doing a subway tile backsplash in the kitchen were the rest of the major things we changed. Here's how the finished rooms looked!










The only regret I have with this house is that I wasn't able to completely decorate it the way I wanted to. I had all of these grand plans of finishing the remodel, styling and staging it, and then enjoying it for a little while during the showing/selling process. 

As it turned out, I was putting on the finishing touches while my whole family/tribe/squad came and helped me pack and finish the day before we moved!! To say that it was a little crazy is an understatement haha. 

And that pretty much wraps it all up! I hope you enjoyed our house reveal. It feels so good to look at all of the befores and remember how much work went into it. I learned a lot of things during the whole process, including that I'm more capable than I thought that I was! And as much as I don't always love all the work of it, remodeling is something that I think I genuinely enjoy. And now I know what I would do differently to make things go a little smoother.

Thanks for following along, and as always, thanks for stopping by! Have a great rest of your day :)
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Our Home Remodel: The Bathrooms

I know it's been a long time coming, but I thought I would go ahead and continue with our house reveals, since it's been months and I've just left you all hanging ;) haha! I gotta say, sometimes I'm really in the mood to share and blog and write, and other times not so much. When life gets busy, blogging goes out the window. But I'm trying so hard to create a schedule and routine that allows (and forces) me into keeping up with some of my projects and creative endeavors, so I thought I'd just jump back where I left off. 

Plus, I have new things in the works that I'll share soon, and I don't want to just skip the rest of the Caldwell house tour. This post has been sitting in my drafts for months, and I'm ready to get it out there! And hopefully I'll be rolling out the rest soon :)

*       *        *        *        *

So, today I thought I would share the bathrooms reveal with you all.

I've been sharing the final results of our house remodel, and I've previously shared our exterior and bedroom. If you haven't had the chance yet, go check them out :)

Now these ones are a little less dramatic, because I forgot to get good befores..... I really dropped the ball there! They weren't awful, but they weren't great either.

Mostly it was cosmetic stuff, but they were dirty (so dirty!), outdated, and we found a nasty surprise under the linoleum in the master bath. There was a leak around the base of the toilet for who know how long, and the subfloor was toast! Dane had to do some patch work, but thankfully that was one of the few issues like that we ran into.

Other than that it was just outdated colors, linoleum, and some minor moisture damage from condensation around the windows.

We painted, replaced the flooring with something more current, bought a new vanity for the master, and in the interest of saving money, we bought a new counter top and left the base cabinet in the main bath. I also had to throw in a little bit of subway tile, I just couldn't help myself ;)

Here's how the main bath turned out.




And here is the master.


I was so happy with the results of these rooms. I was especially happy to have learned some new skills! I'm the one who replaced the counter and re-installed the sink and faucet in the main bathroom. And even when I ran into a snag with the counter not fitting properly, I was able to figure it out and make it work.

You can just call me Jill. Jill-of-all-trades haha!

A couple of years ago I would have just passed the buck on to Dane, but it's amazing what you can do when you have no choice but to get in there and get things done!

Well, I hope you enjoyed these rooms, and I'll be back soon with the living areas to wrap it up. Thanks for following along and stopping by!

Our Home Remodel: The Master Bedroom


Hey guys!

Last week I shared the exterior of our house remodel, and now it's on to the interior. I thought I'd start with our master bedroom :) 

I would say the majority of our work to this house was on the inside. It was a foreclosure, and it came with a lot of the issues that you might expect from one.

Holes in the walls, broken/missing doors, stinky carpet, missing light fixtures. The previous owners even took the appliances, water heater and the gas fireplace insert! But, overall there weren't any problems too horrible, and structurally things were great. It's a newer home (only 19 years old) and it was the perfect house for us :)

As far as the bedrooms went, there wasn't anything too awful, besides nasty carpet. We believed there had been pets in the house, but there was also an open pet door situation (that I think was done on purpose) and more animals came in during the 9+ months of vacancy. The carpets were toast!

After ripping up the carpet, I had to go in with Kilz primer and cover the subfloor, because the smell was just so bad. In fact, in our master closet, we made the mistake of leaving the crawl space entry board (which was covered in carpet) for a couple months and it was one of the worst spots. EW!

Everything else was mostly cosmetic. We had to replace some framing and drywall/texture around the master window because it was on the side of the house without a cover, and it receives a ton of sun, wind, and rain. The caulk around the outside trim had worn away, so there had been some minor water damage.

Good thing Dane knows a thing or two about construction! ;)

We also replaced the light fixtures in all the bedrooms (one was broken, one was half gone, and one was missing completely!) painted, and put in new carpet.

Here are the before shots of the master bedroom. 







The first photo above was from the house listing, and the rest I took right as we were about to start painting. Which didn't happen for a couple months after we moved in. We lived on that sub floor and with those walls for way too long!

Now, I should point out that I don't think the colors on the wall were horrible. I actually like those colors, but not as wall colors, and I didn't like how they painted the trim the same color.

This room was probably one of the better ones in the house, except for the nasty carpet, and overall filth, but that was the same for every room.

This is one room I didn't take a lot of progress shots of, but here's what it looked like after new paint and carpet!



Such an improvement! The day we got carpet in, and got to be off of that subfloor was pure bliss!

This was the only one of the bedrooms that I ever felt like I got decorated, even though it wasn't 100% finished. I never hung anything on the walls, but I put up my curtains and staged it a little for some of our listing photos.

Here is what it looked like the day before packing!








One of my favorite features of this room was my shoe closet! This house was custom built originally, and they had a lot of upgrades that I don't think were common in our subdivision. Some people said it was supposed to be a linen closet, but we had one of those already in our hallway, and the measurements were perfect for shoes. My realtor confirmed it when she came and did a walk through of the house, so I figured it was one another upgrade done during construction.

And let me tell you, it's an upgrade I recommend if you ever get the chance! My shoes have never been organized, but in this thing they were haha. If I ever get the option again, shoe closet here I come!

Well, that's it for the master bedroom! My plan is to finish showing the rest of the bedrooms this week, and next week will be on to the living areas, so stay tuned.

Hope you have a great rest of your Monday! Thanks for stopping by!

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