It's been awhile...

It's CRAZY how much has changed since my last update.  

Something about having a teenager and a toddler and moving across the country and building a new business got me off track.  I've given myself permission to take time for one of my favorite activities; working my house. It keeps me on track to post about it, so THANK YOU for helping me out :)

When we moved to Oregon, we really thought it would be 3 years or more before we could actually buy a house again.  I (foolishly, I know) was optimistic and thought I would enjoy renting.  I did not. We left everything and everyone that was familiar to us and although I am fully confident in God's providence and our calling to Eugene, and I should pause to say that we LOVE IT HERE, I really underestimated how much I needed MY space - MY home.  Incredibly, God used my "little hobby" of starting my Jamberry business in 2013 (on a whim, right before we moved out of our Waco house into a 5 month temporary home there) to provide for us in totally incredible ways, even allowing us to buy our home in Oregon 6 months after we moved here.

Our search was frustrating, time consuming, and disappointing.  I found our house on accident.  We were renting on a hill, really a tiny mountain.  Are there strict definitions for hills vs mountains? We LOVE living "up here" and especially enjoy the deer, turkeys, huge trees, etc, but couldn't find anything in our price range in the neighborhood.  We really wanted natural light, too, and that is hard to come buy when you live in the Oregon hills!  I stumbled on to this house and it didn't look like much from the outside, but the time of day I happened to drive by showed me a home filled with sunlight.

We knew this was "the one" when we stepped inside.  

The house was updated in some really great ways by the previous owners. They replaced HUGE windows, tore up carpeting and added bamboo floors, and took out walls between the kitchen and dining room.  While they did a lot of great things, there was (is) still plenty to do!  My top priorities were updating the kitchen and dining room.  Although we redid most of the kitchen right after we moved in, I wasn't ready to share because the kitchen floor was SO ugly!  We were super fortunate to replace the kitchen floor, with lots of help, about a month ago.  We also had a BIG problem in the dining room - as in a ten foot wide, floor to ceiling very dated oak built in that overwhelmed the
 space.  It was set on top of the carpeting so the bamboo floors jutted up against it.  The entire kitchen/dining/living space has recessed lighting which just made me sad :(  What a wasted opportunity to add fabulous design elements!

The last "quick fix" for me was the entryway.
Slate floors, beige walls, yuck,  It certainly didn't say "welcome to our home - you are going to have fun here!" Thanks to hand-me-down reclaimed wood, Target, and some great deals from my new favorite local shop,  Oak Street Vintage , Carl and Cora are amazing and really have an incredible eye, along with some old favorites from my Waco days - Junque in the Trunk and Laverty's Antiques, what was just the wall behind the front door is finally a place that brings people in.  I have to say, I was very inspired by a recent trip to Frank Lloyd Wright's Winter home and architecture school, Taliesin West in Phoenix, and how he created a sense of entrance into each space. It bumped this to the top of the list instead of letting it remain a cast off space. There is something really wonderful about walking in and liking what I see from the beginning.  I hope our guests feel the same way.






While I am not ready to share all of the before and afters yet, I do have some images to share. We tackled the front deck and curb appeal and though we still have a lot to do, we are feeling more and more like it reflects us and invites others.  We just added these awesome string lights, a super bargain at Costco, in time for our son's 16th birthday party!  Yeah, he was 12 last time I posted.  I know.  We tore out and rebuilt the front deck to make it all one level and quite a bit larger. When I say "we", I mean we paid someone to do this the right way. We would like to replace the furniture at some point, but even now it is a great place to hang out, day or night. 

Now for my FAVORITE room in the house - the dining room.  I painted the living and dining room teal but never loved it.  Tearing out the overwhelming built-in was just the catalyst I needed to repaint everything white.  Any photos of the dining room with the built in were shot to avoid it because I really hated it THAT much!  I did force myself to document the process, though, and it wasn't pretty!  We did a great job of getting it so wedged in that we were having flashbacks of Ross Gellar trying to move his new sofa. It was totally worth it, though!

Here it is.  My happy place.  

I eat here with my family, my son does his homework here, I work here during the day, 

and I now LOVE to spend time here!  I am so thrilled with how it turned out.  

Yes, I still have popcorn ceiling to scrape and a strip of nasty carpet to replace, but seriously, I am thrilled with how it looks and feels now.  I am still wrestling with the styling on either side of the antique dry sink I use as a china hutch, and I have a smaller light fixture on order from my new favorite Etsy seller, SazeracStitches, so it will be changing a bit more but I am in love.

Thanks for stopping by... I love to hear from you!  It takes a lot for me to share spaces when there is still work to do.  I hope I've inspired you to do the same and I would love to see what you are working on as well :)  XoXo  -Heather