carrot canning with great grandma.

We added canning carrots to our repertoire! Thanks to great grandma and grandpa we learned another vegetable to can and use throughout the year. We have eaten the carrots alone, in a roast and in soup. They are delicious and taste so fresh. I find canning so rewarding and look forward to adding more options throughout the years! Hopefully next year some of the veggies will come from our own garden at our home in town.

christmas decor.

I really enjoyed decorating our first home for CHRISTmas. I tried to keep in the same cool palette of our home. As you can see from previous posts, I prefer a cool blue/green palette with a lot of white and cream. I like things to look clean, bright and relaxing and welcoming. There are a few punches of traditional red for the kids. My favorite things are my wreaths, small tree collection in the entryway and our Christmas tree. The kids, husband and I have been enjoying the season so much this year and I am looking forward to all the holidays still have in store for us.

boys of fall.

I am so proud of my boys. My husband is a true outdoorsmen and loves using his hands. When I see RJ and Jackson working on a project together outside, hunting, being handy or using their imaginations on the living room floor I am so happy. I love that RJ does the things with Jackson that I do not do with him during the day. I think RJ is an incredible man and when I see our son working by his side and emulating his hard working ways I am filled with gratitude. Thank you RJ for being such a great influence on our son and teaching him to be a good man, like you are. I love you both so very much.

trick-or-treat success.

What a beautiful night. The weather was great. Our street looked beautiful and the neighbors were delightful.

half bath upgrade.

before:

after:

Downstairs in our house we have one half bath for guests and the way it looked when we bought this house was not our style. The brass fixtures, maroon, green and pink color scheme were just not us. As always we like to make as big of an impact as we can while spending as little as possible. We have a pink sink and toilet in this room and knew replacing those was not in the budget. I found a beautiful Simply Shabby Chic rug at Target that inspired my color scheme of pink, white, grey and greige. I sewed an oversized valance from the grey paisley fabric I used previously, found a home for my oversized pink jar I bought at the Midland antique festival, changed out the hardware on the storage and bought a new light fixture. The striped wallpaper was replaced with a greige wall color and the towel bar was replaced with a brushed nickel holder we received for our wedding. The room is very small, but is now more light, bright, clean and inviting than before. The only thing I would still like to add is some molding around the top (this room is one of the few in our house without and leaves it a bit unfinished looking).

new cookware.

My grandma surprised me early in the morning a few weeks ago. She rang my doorbell about 9 a.m. and told me to go open the back door. When I opened the door she had a large box of Paula Deen cookware there in a beautiful turquoise shade. I have really enjoyed the cookware and I love the look and luxury of having a nice new set in my clean, white kitchen. Many more good meals to come...yum! And grandma, you're the best!

free house number makeover.

before:

during:

after:

Our front steps have a house number and entry lights that are brass accents. As a general rule nicked up, brass fixtures are not my style and this house has already had quite a few fixture updates (with more to come). I figured it would cost about $150 to redo the lights and house number....then I had a better idea. I remade the house number with things I had around the house and I am so happy with the FREE makeover. I had my husband cut a piece of wood we had on hand, painted it greige, added a sharp black border to make it pop and painted the brass numbers black as well. After I finished everything I put the number back where it was originally on the front of the house and it was such a difference for $0. Now I have to tackle the light fixtures. I may try to paint those or I may have to spring for new fixtures...either way, I am proud of the way the numbers turned out so far.

historic home treasures.

The other night my husband's curiosity got the best of him and he insisted on climbing into our old cistern in the basement to find out just what was in there. We did find some pretty incredible items; an old gear, Detroit Free Presses from WWII, old love magazines, a medicine box from the original pharmacist who owned our home 100 years ago, and a skeleton key. It was pretty neat rummaging through everything and wondering how long some of the items have been down there or being a real detective and finding a date on something. Did you know Detroit Free Press cost 5 cents in the 1940s? Did you know there was a women's magazine printed in the 30s that women could submit love stories for judging and publication? It was a fun adventure for our family and a cool perk of living in such an old home.

to great grandma's house we go.

This past weekend my kids, my mother-in-law, my little sister-in-law and myself made the 2 1/2 hour drive to Northern parts of Michigan to visit my husband's grandma (did you get all that?). It was a great weekend full of shopping, retracing family roots in small town America, eating, visiting and sifting through buried treasures in great grandma's basement. What a treat! My husband stayed at home to hunt while the kids and I rode along and I am so happy we did.

Pictured are a few beautiful items that Great Grandma Roma sent us home with. I especially love the large dressing mirror, old Avon bottles, tea tablecloth and old purses. She even had a Fenton shoe to add to my collection ( I should blog just about that collection one day). It was wonderful! We had a great time and my favorite thing was hearing all the old stories that accompanied where we went, what we did and what we found downstairs. Thanks to my mother-in-law and her mother for sharing so much with me...what a great memory.

michigan fall-highlighted: atwood park.

I did not grow up in a small town. I did not grow up in the Midwest. I did not witness trees changing colors, cider & donuts or football games outside until college. I grew up in Goodyear, AZ and had an incredible upbringing. Now I find myself raising my own family in the small Michigan hometown my husband and many past generations of both of our families grew up in. Some things are a negative tradeoff (e.g. lack of shopping/eating choices and having my parents and sister so far away) but some things are an incredible positive tradeoff (e.g. this incredible thing they call "Fall" and experiencing small town America with my kids).

As I think is apparent from my blog, I try to find appreciation in all the little things in my life. This cute little park, Atwood Park, is just a block from my house and a great view from my front yard. Live music permeates the air on cool summer nights and the beauty of fall is highlighted among store fronts on State Street. The lighting and colors were perfect one night this week and my family and I strolled down for a photo shoot. These pictures are the result.

midland antique festival.

This last weekend was a local antique festival that my friend, Sarah and I have been looking forward to since the spring. The weekend was a great chance for me to share my new home with the friend I knew would appreciate it the most, hear about her new job and share in our love of all things old while downing many Diet Cokes...it was incredible!!

At the antique festival I found two vintage Pyrex I had been looking for to finish my mixing bowl set, old kitchen utensils in an awesome chipped mint finish, and a huge pink glass jar for our 1/2 bath redo. Sarah scored an old window, a purple jar, a metal cake stand and 8 lunch plates. We were very successful and of course left talking about returning next year. This is the great start to an annual tradition...bring on the antiques!