getting back to making our house a home.

July marks our 2 year house anniversary. We wanted to become home owners, not just for the investment but also because Rick is quite the handy man and I am quite the crafter. We were excited to take on a BIG project compiled of many other projects to make our house a home.

Well we had a kid instead. It has taken us 2 years to do anything large in the home improvement/DIY category.

We painted and worked on completed the nursery when we first moved in, because we had to... (one of the bedrooms was a very deep blue and it just had to go) because we had a baby on the way. So an almost 9 month preggo and my determined husband, painted every single room in the house. We even made a list of all the long term things we wanted to do pre-closing (none of which we have completed...shhh!)

In December, we finally took on painting the country brick in our den. As I searched through the blog, I realized I never blogged about it, nor had I taken a "before" picture.

You can see it in this picture, though.

And here is the brick in process.

And the final product. (The removal of that ugly lamp/lantern thing is still on our to-do list.)

I was so happy when we completed this. It brightened up the room SO MUCH. And it just made me feel so happy. I have not regretted painting this brick for a second.

So fast forward 1.5 years and we haven't really done anything else.

We had a failed attempt at a vegetable garden.

Mostly because we have no idea what we are doing (even with the Vegetable Gardening for Dummies book I checked out from the library.)

But with all that said, it is all good. We are raising our son and that is enough. We have been traveling and showing him the world there is out there, which is just as important as making a house a home.

So now here we are with our first real project in progress. We were definitely inspired by a posting over at Iheart Organizing, and since the last rearranging of furniture ended up with our living room looking like this...

We My Type A personality decided it was time to copy cat the best playroom organizing we ever did see!

Rick being the ambitious and frugal man he is, decided instead of spending the $180 on the shelves from Ikea, he would steal the dimensions, and build his own custom shelves that would fit perfectly in our space (which he did for about $100).

Plus our shelves have this cute trim Rick added. Which also goes along the lip of where the cushion will be sit.

We still have to make the cushions and find the perfect baskets but we are well on our way to a dual room - turning a formal living room into a hidden playroom. The idea being that we want to be able to hide Cooper's toys on the rare occasion of needing the formal living room space. Thank God for pinterest, because we already have a ton of ideas to use pieces for dual purpose. I am really excited about this project and hope our ADD can focus on this room before moving onto the next.

So here is our Hiding the Playroom To-Do list:

• Paint shelving unit
• Find fabric/foam and upholster the cushions.
• Purchase baskets and go through all of Cooper's toys to get attic the items he doesn't play with.
• Updated wall art - including a space to creatively display Coop's artwork but still fit into our formal living room style
• Create a welcoming entry space (this is the room with our front door)
• Hide Fletch's crate
• Create a dual purpose transportation coffee-table that can be flipped to hide the lanes and tracks.
• Decide what to do with our coat closet and do it! - Currently this is extremely underused and more like an attic space where stuff just sits. We have discussed ripping it out and adding a coat rack to create more space, which would aid in creating a welcoming entry space.

This leaves every single room in the house, some of which need more attention than others. But if we begin with the end in mind and keep our goals SMART, we should be able to accomplish them in no time!

So here is to getting back on track to make our house a home!