When we first bought our house a little over two years ago, our landscaping was completely overgrown and pretty much the grossest thing we had ever seen.  Have yourself a little look...

And that picture is after we got new windows, a new front door, and a new roof...just imagine the horror before!  So then...over the next couple years we tore all the bushes and junk out...so for a long time it looked like this...

Brady and I were planning on doing the landscaping ourselves.  We researched the internet, creeped all over town on peoples yards, and checked out books from the library.  But we had no idea what to do when it came to our house!  It was so frustrating...until...I found out that one of my new crop insurance customers also does landscaping on the side.  When someone is a customer or mine, I am more than happy to do business with them.  So he came out and measured everything and asked all sorts of questions.  In a couple days we had a plan drawn out, and a few weeks after that there was a crew of 3 guys at our house getting work done! 

Of course having someone else do it was more expensive than if we would have done it ourselves, but we are so happy we did it and are so pleased with the final product.  Our house just looks happier now and has so much more curb appeal!

I think you should really see some before and afters...the before pictures were taken Monday morning, and the after pictures were taken Monday evening! 

I can't wait until everything blooms and starts to fill in.  Don Anderson and Garden Gate Landscapes did an awesome job and if anyone is wanting their services then you should call Don at (765) 325-2681.

The pictures hardly do it justice, everyone will just have to come over to see it in real life so you can really appreciate all the new outside wonderfulness!

I hope you like is as  much as we do (I am sure you don't, but that's okay...we better like it the most since we paid for it!)

Thanks for reading!

I mentioned our laundry room in an earlier post and I promised I would share, just put the finishing touches on it today and I hope you all like it. 

This is what our laundry room used to look like...

Gross...I know.

One night last week after too much sweet tea too late at night I could NOT fall asleep.  I was just hanging out it bed, trying to get Brady to wake to keep me company, but he was having none of that.  So obviously I take out my handy dandy, can't live without it iPhone and started creepin'.  As I looked browed Pinterest and looked at all the wonderful pins before I came to the shocking realization that I had a BUTT UGLY laundry room. 

So naturally the next day Brady and I tore out the disguisting cabinet and started to brainstorm what to do.  A hundred bucks, some mudding, painting, shelf hanging, and hobby lobbying later...we have this...

Isn't it so wonderul!?  The project was easy, cheap, and I personally think that it now looks a million times better!  And my favorite little detail (in case you didn't notice) is that the vase holding the flowers has clothes pins in it!  I mean, come on...I'm not trying to trick anyone by putting water in the vase with the silk flowers, so obviously if you aren't going to fill a vase with water then you might as well fill it with clothespins!

Sorry I kind of suck at taking pictures...I feel like the pictures don't really do justice to how amazing the transformation is in real life, so you will all just have to come over and see for yourselves!  Just remember how ugly it used to be =)

This Saturday was the perfect day.  We didn't do anything extraordinary or special, but it was just completely wonderful.  Brady and I woke up early because we were signed up for a 5k.  On Friday night we were both less than excited for the 5k the following morning because it was early, it was cold, and we were lazy.  I struggled to get out of bed, but having Brady bring me my favorite breakfast (english muffin with peanut butter, honey, and banana slices) immediately put a smile on my face and was a great start to the day.

I have been running 4 days a week for the last 4 months.  Brady has not run one mile since I have known him.  I thought I would have pity on my husband and leave my running legs at home and walk the 3.2 miles with Brady.  When we toed the start line he said to me "Let's just run for a little bit until we get tired".  3.2 miles later we had run the whole way and I went way faster than I would have if I were running solo.  Brady was a great coach and he really got me to push my limit and increase my pace.  We finished the race in 32 minutes and both got 2nd place in our age group!  A wonderful couple from our church organized the 1st annual "5k to the Cross" and all the proceeds went to Samaritan's Purse and their Operation Christmas Child ministry.  Brady and I both had a blast at the race. 

We then went home and hung some shelves in our laundry room, thus finishing our impromptu laundry room redo.  Okay, when I said "we" hung shelves, I actually meant Brady hung shelves and I barked orders from the nearby master bathroom shower where I was rinsing off all my post-race grime.  Brady is such a great handyman!  I would share more about the laundry room but I'll save it for an upcoming post.

Then we took a little ride down to the library to get a couple movies. If you read this post then you will know how much I love the library and will understand why this made me so happy.  But seriously...Blockbusters are virtually no more, RedBoxes have a super limited selection and usually only have new movies.  The library has tons of movies, new and old, and best part...it is FREE!  Oh mother hell! 

The afternoon was spent watching college football and taking glorious naps!  Then for dinner I made Monica's fiesta chicken, it was delicious.  After dinner we read and discussed "The Story" together.  I am so blessed to have a husband who reads to me from God's word and teaches me so much about what it means to be a follower of Christ.  Then we had bloody marys, with tomato juice that we canned ourselves from Brady's garden.  Brady made a fire in the fireplace (first one of the year!) and we ate popcorn and watched a movie together. 

It was such a wonderful day and I hope we can have another just like it really soon!

My wonderful Granny has a condo in sunny Florida.  She bought this condo completely furnished and hasn't changed a thing in the last 20 years.  Okay, maybe a couple things are different, but the condo pretty much oozes with tropical 70's glory, right down to the olive green sinks, the plastic couch, and the hideous window treatments.  Despite all that, there was always one thing at that condo that I loved (besides my Granny of course).  It was a custom print hanging in the kitchen that was titled "How to Cook a Husband".  Last year when Brady, Mom and I were visiting Granny she must have felt sick because she gave the picture to me...and she never gets rid of anything!  I carefully packed the print for the flight home and prayed the glass didn't get cracked en route.  So I have had it at home for almost a year now and I still haven't hung it on the wall.  Want to see why...

Because it is hideous!  Sorry Grandma.  I always loved what it said though.  I just don't understand what a lady holding an umbrella wearing a body suit made of Vera Bradley look alike fabric had to do with cooking?  Also what is with the guys candy striper costume?  Freaky, freaky, freaky.  This Pati lady who made the print in 1967 must have been high or something?

But guess what?  Never fear Etsy is here!  I sent an email to my favorite Etsy graphic designer, explained the situation, and she totally came through for me.  I told her that we have a country kitchen, yellow is the prominent color and there is a mild sunflower theme.  A couple days and $15 later I had this gorgeous file in my email.

Sorry I had to post it as a screen shot from my iPhone...the actualy file is way top big to upload to my Weebly.  Maybe if I ever get serious about this blogging thing then I will purchase the professional version of Weebly?  Anyways, just imagine a more crisp photo without the iPhone border...isn't it gorgeous?!

I just sent the file to Mpix to get it printed as a 16 by 20.  I paid $`15 for the custom artwork, $20 for a frame, and $23 for the printing.  Less than $60 for a piece of custom artwork for our kitchen that no one else will ever have...AWESOME!

I posted about our guest bathroom remodel a long time ago...you can read about that by clicking here.

Well we finshed it a few weeks ago and I just haven't gotten around to posting about it.  Brady did all the work himself and it look amazing!  Here are the pictures of our NEW BATHROOM!

We love our new bathroom and hope you do also!

We recently got a new clothes dryer.  It was very inexpensive, Brady installed it himself, it is super eco-friendly and wallet friendly as it costs virtually nothing to run.  The only con is that it leaves our clothes kind of crunchy...it's a CLOTHESLINE!

I just realized that I have done multiple laundry related posts...am I really weird?

We recently have done a couple little projects to upgrade our country kitchen.  Our kitchen was already a good size, complete a breakfast eating area, and the appliances were all fairly new.  There were a couple things about our kitchen that were really holding us back...but for around $100.00 we have really improved the look of our kitchen.  When we bought the house the kitchen had carpet...barf...so of course we tore that out right away.  The carpet went up the side of the cabinets so when we tore it off it just left a gross black board between the bottom of the cabinet to the floor.

So I went up to Lowes and bought some "cove base" then came home and stained it.  That was where my job ended and Brady's began.  He measured it, cut it, and tacked it up.  I'm sure no one else looks under our cabinets...but I do...and now I can look at them and smile!

Then it was the stove area that needed some TLC.  I don't have a "before" picture for this one (I got too excited and forgot to take one). But just try to envision this disgustingness...dirty stove pans (the ones that go under the burner on an electric stove), and a MUSTAND YELLOW range hood...ick, ick ICK...it looked like baby poop!  So I went out to Bed Bath and Beyond...coupons in hand, and bought new electric burner pans...trying to clean these things is impossible, and they are so cheap that it's not even worth it to try cleaning them.  I also picked up a can of white appliance spray paint from Lowes.  We took off the range hood, cleaned it up, and then I went to town with the paint!  Brady put everything back together and it looks amazing!  This was such a huge improvement and it cost less than $20.00!

The last thing we improved was the kitchen sink area.  We had a mustard yellow sink (to match the baby poop range hood of course) and a really old ugly faucet.  Doing dishes already sucks...and when you are doing them in an ugly sink it just makes the chore that much worse!

We had an extra white sink laying around...one of the great benefits of buying a house, barn, and an art studio...we found all sorts of treasures!  And I bought a Moen faucet and kitchen curtain from Lowes.  My handyman hubby installed the new sink and faucet and did all the plumbing by himself.  I hung the curtain and we love the final product! 

Even with our sexy new kitchen sink I still don't like doing dishes...oh well!

I remember when Brady and I were looking at our house as a potential home to purchase.  It was the perfect location right on the farm and it had three acres complete with a woods and a barn.  Brady was is hog heaven...I on the other hand couldn't get past the wallpaper, shag carpet, funeral home curtains, and old person smell.  We ended up buying it and we have done a ton of work, our house really is a home and I love it!  I have learned that the work is never done on an old farm house and a year later the remodeling continues! 

When we bought the house we were very pleased with the large guest bathroom.  It was complete with a large vanity, double sink, linen closet, and nice shower and bathtub.  It also was complete with celery green shag carpet (yes...in a bathroom!), an old person shower sprayer (you know, the one on a long hose so you can wash all your nooks and crannies...like under your saggy boobs or your wrinkly balls), a light fixture that hung from the ceiling by a long chain, and both sinks had that really modern metal ring around them (insert sarcasm here), oh and of course there was a nice white countertop with celery green swirls on it to match the carpet. 

We didn't have a ton of money to gut the bathroom and start over, and we really did like the layout...we just wanted to make it a little more modern and a little less hippie.  We painted the walls a high gloss chocolate brown, replaced the light fixture, installed tile flooring, and put up a new shower curtain and it looked so much better.  We still had the same vanity, sinks, and top...but all the other wonderfulness in the bathroom took away from those things and it wasn't a big deal to us at all.

In January I noticed some humps in the floor...great.  Turns out that there was a sneaky little leak behind one of the sinks and it was constantly dripping behind the wall, in turn getting soaked up by the sponge-like particle board.  We tore out the flooring and found out that the subfloor was sopping wet, we then tore that out, and tore out the vanity and found mold.  So of course that led to tearing out drywall and spraying bleach water on everything. 

We since have gotten the floor replaced and now we are going to install a new vanity.  Brady and I went to Lowe's last night and picked everything out.  It is a custom size vanity so everything had to be special ordered but it should be here in 2 weeks!  I can't wait! 

Where we saved a ton of money on this remodel though, is that we are going to use a custom Formica countertop with two drop in sinks.  If we would have gotten a custom order bathroom vanity top with the two sinks built in, it would have cost us between $570 and $827 depending on the material.  And there were only about 20 choices.  Using a kitchen countertop gave us hundreds of choices, and it was so much cheaper.  We upgraded the standard Formica by adding a high gloss finish and a custom edge on the front and it still only cost $143.49.  But of course we didn't pay that...hello do you know me?  I had a 10% off coupon for Lowe's so our bathroom countertop only cost $129.14 before tax!  We had to buy two sinks then since they weren't built into the countertop but those were fairly inexpensive and we still came out way ahead! 

Our bathroom upgrade will end up costing a grand total of just under $1000, but with payment from our homeowners insurance Brady and I will pay substantially less than that. 

This whole bathroom remodel could have been super stressful...and it was at times.  Especially when we found out we needed a "custom size", but everything has turned out wonderfully and I can't wait till everything arrives in a couple weeks and get it all installed! 

Here is everything we bought at Lowe's...all for 10% off BABY!

Thanks for reading!