Neat Stuff

Today I just wanted to jump on here and write a little bit about some of our house progress, and how I've been feeling lately.

It's been eight and a half months since we bought our house and moved into the 5th wheel, and man does it seem like it's been forever! I have gone through different stages throughout the process, where sometimes it feels like things couldn't crawl any slower, and I'm going crazy wanting to be done, and other times where I'm good and excited about the process.

I haven't been able to pin point exactly what does it to make me move from one side to the other, but I've been back and forth a few times now haha. Right now I'm back in my, "I'm going stir crazy and I can't be in this trailer another day," moods.

This time I feel like it's the looming holidays that brought it about. Decorating for fall and Christmas are some of my favorite things to do, and originally I was really hoping we would be in the house by Christmas. Well, remodels rarely go according to plan (and I knew that) so we're looking at being in maybe in February? I'm hoping!

So I sit here in my camper and get discontent because all I want is to be in my house already. I miss having a full kitchen with more than a foot of counter space. I miss having a dishwasher. Heck, I miss having my dishes! I packed most of them away, and only kept the bare essentials, because when we moved we weren't expecting it to take this long. I actually miss being able to really cook and I'm so looking forward to having a full kitchen again.

I miss having a real bathroom, and space to spread out. And a front yard that isn't half trash pile/half construction mess. It seems like we're in that stage where everything is close enough that we can see it coming together and still so far away from being done.

But, I have to remind myself that I wanted this (so badly!) and it will all be worth it. One year of not getting to decorate much for the holidays, the pink camper carpet that I can't keep clean to save my life, and all of the hard work will pay off and it will barely be a blip in the radar years from now.

And I know we're super fortunate to get to do this. I'm sure there are tons of people out there who would love to have this opportunity! Plus, being discontent isn't going to make things go any faster, so I'm going to try to suck it up and be happy in this stage, even though it's hard.

And writing this has helped. Sometimes just getting it out is a relief, and if you have any tips or tricks for being content, send them my way! Maybe I just need to get focused and work harder on the house so we'll be in it that much sooner. Plus, that's less time I'm sitting in my trailer, right? ;)

As far as house progress goes, we have actually been getting quite a bit done lately! We are currently waiting on our roof to be installed, and we're starting to get back to inside projects. Dane worked on and mostly finished our front entry (at least for now) and his dad helped us out a ton by raising the ceilings in the old part of the house!



My priming and painting kind of hit a stand still because I got the flu, and now that I'm better the rains are starting! But this weekend looks like we will get a break, so I'm hoping to keep working on it then. And this week Dane has started working on electrical and we should be installing windows soon too!

So even though it's going to be a winter in a 5th wheel, things are trucking along and I'm really so excited about the way it's coming together :)

Thanks for stopping by and listening to my boo-boos! Now I'm off to work on something productive. Happy Wednesday!

Happy first day of fall!

It's been perfectly fall-ish here this week, with some rain and cool weather, and today it's sunny and cool and a Friday, so win-win-win if you ask me :)

I'm hoping some good progress can be made this weekend on the house. Dane will be working on our front entry and my job for the weekend will be stripping the interior doors for the house. They are vintage five-panel doors from the early 1900s and luckily they only seem to have one layer of paint on them! But in the interest of having a better finished product, I'm going to strip them down and re-paint them.

I'm looking forward to enjoying some more outside time this weekend and soaking in the perfect weather. And maybe finalizing my exterior paint color as well! Now, onto that neat stuff I came across this week.

NEAT STUFF

NEAT STUFF

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Well, it's been a few Fridays, but I'm back again with some neat stuff!

I also kept intending to share a house update with you all the last couple of weeks, but life's been busy! If you follow me on instagram you've probably been seeing my updates there, but the house looks so different from the last time I shared anything here on the blog.

Next week for sure I will have an update post for you all, and maybe a video too ;)

Neat Stuff

1. I'm so ready for fall, it's not even funny. I've been wearing this perfect nail polish from the photo above, and it might be my favorite ever!
2. Here's a super pretty screen saver/September calendar from Place of My Taste that is perfect for fall. It's available for your desktop or phone!
3. This crazy huge fire is only about 30 miles away from us in the neighboring county. It's taken out some homes already, and it's creating a massive amount of smoke for southern Oregon and northern California. Just another reason for fall to come soon, for the rain!
4. Simply Grove shared this beautiful bedroom refresh on her blog and I just love how it turned out. So pretty!
5. Lastly, what a great way to mix summer and fall than with a no-churn apple pie ice cream recipe? Check it out over on Boxwood Ave :)

And that's all the neat stuff for this week. Have a safe and happy labor day weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

Neat Stuff

1. To start, that photo above was inspired by this article. I really struggle with being in the here and now and not focusing on the future all the time, so it was a nice reminder to focus on the grass I have now. I've been practicing my brush lettering a lot and literally writing anything that catches my attention, and I was particularly happy with how that turned out.
2. Chris Loves Julia had a great post the other day about tips on maintaining and cleaning your cookware. A lot of it I knew, but some things I didn't, so maybe some of you will find it helpful also!
3. I just bought this new Whitelines sketchbook (I bought the gridded notebook) and so far I'm loving it. The idea is that you get the grids and lines you need to keep everything straight, but when you digitize, the white lines fade away into the background vs black lines that would take time to get rid of. I've used it for a couple of things and it works great! I can't wait to fill it up :)
4. I also just bought a bunch of multi-colored foam beads for putting into homemade slime. You know, the stuff that all those kids are obsessed with, and you probably made for a science project when you were in middle school. I intended to make it with my nieces, but I had to make some practice batches first to make sure I knew what I was doing....Here's a slime recipe I used. 
5. I can't stop pinning beautiful pictures of mountains and forests lately! And Pinterest won't stop recommending them to me, haha! They're so beautiful, I couldn't pick just one, so check out my board here. 

So that's it for the neat stuff this week! It's been a busy one, but this weekend we're headed out of town to the beach with my family for my dad's birthday. I'm kind of glad the Oregon coast tends to be a little cooler, because I get to bust out some sweaters and escape the triple digit weather that's hitting our area next week!

I hope you guys have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

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Happy Fri-yay!

I realized this week that I haven't kept you all updated on our house buying process as of late! I promise I didn't mean to be so rude, haha.

It hasn't been that long since we've decided we were ready to go all in and buy a house again, and we thought that it was going to be a simple process since we had already found a house to buy.

Well, as these things tend to go, we aren't buying that house after all. There were some unforeseen complications that would have required us to wait a while longer than we originally thought, and in that time we ended up changing our mind.

We've been living in a very small space since we moved to Oregon, (675 sq ft!) and it was going well enough that we thought we could look at places to buy that were on the small side. The fact that housing is so expensive over here was also a factor in that choice too, haha!

But, as the weather got colder and we were stuck inside more and more, it started to feel a little more claustrophobic. Then, my family all got to come over from Idaho for Christmas, and I have a big family! Including my parents, there are 10 of us altogether, and trying to have them all over while they were in town was no easy feat.

After that we decided that while living in less than 1,000 sq ft could work for us most of the time, my family comes over several times a year and it's really important to me for them to get to come to my house and stay. I only see them 5-6 times a year and I want to be able to accommodate them when they're here.

I also miss being able to host company at our house. We have friends with nice big spaces and we go to their houses pretty often, but I love having people over and it only took one time to realize that it wasn't an easy fit in our small house!

We don't have kids and I thought I could get away without kid friendly space in our home, but it turns out that when all of your friends have kids and toddlers, you kinda need some where for them to play when they come over...

For all of these reasons combined, we decided to back out of our house purchase and start looking for something bigger. So far it's been a lot of big fat disappointment (stinking expensive housing market), but we're officially on the hunt!

We know it's going to require giving up on some of our wish list items, but that's life. You rarely get everything you want! So we're going to be busy looking for that just right place, and it will most likely still be a fixer.

I'll be sure to share when we've finally found the one, and hopefully I can learn a bit of patience during this process, because I can already tell I'm going to need it!

That's all for my update for now. I hope you all have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by :)

Happy Tuesday, and happy new year! It's a gorgeous snowy day here in southern Oregon, which is a rare treat for us. It's been coming down like crazy the last couple of days and I'm almost giddy over it! I love snow so much, but we're lucky if we get one snow storm a year. This winter I got my wish and it's a dreamy white wonderland out there today! I'm trying to soak it all in before it melts off in a couple days.

Today I thought it was time for a first post of the year, and I wanted to share my sort of resolution.

I decided this year to choose a word I wanted to focus more on, instead of a typical new year's "resolution." I don't usually make them because I they're hard to stick to, and every year I seem to have the same goals!

I always have some holiday (or year long) weight I want to lose, organizing to do, and goals to reach, but I have those year round. I always enjoy that jump start the new year brings for those things, and I do get a good dose of motivation to better myself, but I never really consider these things resolutions.

This year though I've been seeing others choose words of the year they want to focus on and I liked that idea because it can apply to so many different aspects of my life!

As you can probably tell, my word is moderation. I recently read Liz Marie's blog post about her work, balance, and while I really love that word too, it brought the word moderation to my mind.

If there's one major thing I'd say my life is missing, it's that. I'm a person of extremes and Dane teases me for it pretty often! I'm either eating completely healthy, or treating my body like a human garbage can. I either follow a strict workout program, or I'm a couch potato for months. I let chores go to the point of driving me (or Dane) crazy, and then I'll clean everything spotless! I've been this way my whole life, as long as I can remember, and I'm always wishing for that middle ground but never really trying that hard to reach it.

So this year I'm going to try to be a little more moderate. A little more veggies and water, but still some goodies here and there. Posting my lettering on instagram once a week or so instead of feeling like a loser for not posting every day. Trying to do something to get my heart rate up a few days a week, whether that's yoga, a walk, or a jog. One cookie instead of five (or ten!). Try to follow a cleaning schedule, but knowing if life gets busy and things slide for a day that's ok. Just not to get overwhelmed and let it slide for three days! And a bit less time mindlessly browsing the internet...

I think if I really put my mind to it, I can find a bit more moderation in my life and I think it will be a lot better for it!

I'm curious, do you set new year's resolutions or choose a word for the year? Or do you feel like I normally do, that your goals are constant year round, not just at the beginning of the year? Let me know! :)

As always, thanks for stopping by!

P.S.- I know it's late, but I made this video instead of a typical Christmas card this year, (I know, weird coming from a paper enthusiast, haha!) and I didn't get a chance to share it on the blog. So check it out if you'd like :)

Recently I've been seeing a lot of very cool wedding stationery featuring old vintage travel postcards.

They are just so pretty to me, and I love how rustic most of them look!

I find that I'm really attracted to things that are a mix of vintage, rustic, and feminine and that's where I've been trying to steer my brand for a while now. For anyone who is also in the entrepreneurial boat, you know my pain when it comes to branding!

Since these types of projects fit so perfectly with my brand, I'm going to try to put my own spin on them and see what I can come up with.

It's on my birthday list to create a wedding stationery line, and I still have a few months to go! I'm hoping to start work on some new products soon (even though life is very hectic right now!) and I want to try to include some of these postcards.

I ordered several of them off of eBay last week, and I've gotten most of them already. Some of them have been used, and it's neat to see what people wrote to their friends and family while they were on vacation. Others are in almost mint condition, which is very cool too.

I think I will try to find some way to display them as decoration in my office, because I enjoy looking at them that much!

What do you think? Are you a fan of the rustic/vintage/feminine vibe as well? Let me know!

Eating: The title of this post was both figurative and literal! I've been trying to eat better lately, and I've really been all over the board. This week I started a food journal, and I hope it helps. I'm trying to focus on veggies, and one of my favorite breakfast/lunch/dinner/anytime meals is eggs with Brussels sprouts and potatoes! I just wing it, but it's based on this recipe. If you're looking for a healthy winter, comfort food-y meal, I recommend this!
That's how my afternoons have been lately. What about you? Have you been up to anything exciting? Let me know! And thanks for stopping by.

This little cutie pie has been keeping me company on the couch this week, giving lots of snuggles and loves while I tinkered with my blog! (And folded laundry...)

As you can probably tell, this little ol' site of mine got yet another makeover!

For those of you who are bloggers, you know that the struggle is real! Especially if you try to go the diy route. It's caused me nothing but headaches over the last few years to try and create a site that looked professional and clean. There are boat loads of templates and layouts I could have purchased, but I was just too stubborn! I know a small amount of css and html and I told myself that I should be able to create a unique (if simple) site, instead of one that other people would be using too.

Well, I finally had enough and went with a pre-made template, and I'm pretty happy with how it looks!

There are a few little buggy things that I need to fix still, but aside from that I think it will stay as is for a while. Unless I can't fix the bugs...we'll see.

So, I'd love to know! What do you think of the new look? Do you think it suites the style of my business? Let me know in the comments below!

P.S.- I also have something exciting happening coming up for you all in the next few days, so be sure to keep on the look out for that!

So, I realized today that I haven't shared some exciting news that happened a few weeks ago...


Meet little Lemon, the newest little member of the family!

She's a miniature schnoodle, and as sweet as can be. I have been on the look out for a puppy for a while now, and she was a bit of an early Christmas present for me! When I went to look at her litter, I had a different puppy picked out, but when I saw her, my heart literally just melted!


She has been such a fun little addition to the family, and she pretty much steals the heart of everyone she meets!


I named her Lemon, after Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, but mostly I call her Little Lemon, Baby Lemon, Little Bean, or Little Lemon Bean. She seems to tolerate the ridiculous nick-names pretty well I think ;)

Another exciting thing around here lately is that the shop getting a huge boost! I registered my business name with the state, got a P.O. box, got accepted to sell at a very cool local Christmas market (more on that later) and I have a ton of new products that will be launching in the near future! :) :) :)

I will have Christmas cards, updated versions of some of my old favorite greeting cards, and some brand new products that I can't wait to share with you all! Christmas cards should be up by the end of the month, with the rest to follow soon!


Here's some of the other things my afternoons (and mornings, and evenings) have consisted of.

Reading- Lots of articles on puppy care tips and grooming tips! I don't think I've ever done so much research on an animal before!

Drinking- Coffee, coffee, coffee. But also, I've been doing better with drinking water :) I also had my first peppermint mocha of the season! I'm definitely more of a peppermint mocha kinda girl, than a psl one ;)

Listening- To the Ultimate Christmas Playlist on Spotify! It really helps get the juices flowing for Christmas card designs!

Loving- Cinnamon-Vanilla popcorn, my own recipe! Also, this China Glaze nail polish in Ravishing Darling that I bought at Sally Beauty Supply, and this perfect fall sweater from Maurices!