Fun Outdoor Gardening Finds
Now that spring is here, many of us will be looking for excuses to be outside and gardening gives us so many excuses. Too many, really. It’s the overachiever of reasons for us to be outside. Between the weeds and the thirsty plants, it could be your full-time job. But wait. You probably already have one of those. Same. I found some fun outdoor gardening finds recently and between Mother’s Day, Easter, birthdays, etc. These are great ideas to treat yourself or someone else. Check them out! Brass Rabbit Spigot Handle | Etsy I’m into bunnies lately, so this brass rabbit spigot handle caught my eye, but it comes in…
Faux Chocolate Bunny – With Wood Rabbit and Gold Leaf
You can’t eat it, but the Faux Chocolate Bunny I made for Easter decor is pretty cute. Plus, you can decorate with it year after year. That real chocolate bunny you bought won’t even last a day. Let’s hop right to the how-to. Here’s what you need to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny: wood bunny (set of 2 in this pack) dark brown stain or paint gold leaf gilding adhesive or Mod Podge small paintbrush Polyurethane or Mod Podge for sealing How to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny: Step 1: Stain or paint your wood bunny. I used a honey-colored stain, but dark brown paint would work too. Here’s how…
Happy List: #384
Hi! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. It’s so good to have you here. This week on the blog I shared my dreams to add a hidden door in our house. I had to write that blog post in order to manifest it. Think it will work? I also announced how we plan to use the remaining, unfinished part of our Carriage House. The good news is that we started work on this space this week. WOOHOO! You can follow along with that on Instagram stories and I’ll post occasional blog updates too. In case this is your first time here, I purposefully keep the Happy List focused on the…
Stone Carriage House Gym Expansion Part 1
Last year, we made over one room in our stone Carriage House and turned it into a home gym. It took us at least six weeks of continual work to make that happen, partly because it’s a long, laborious process and partly because there are only two of us. The DIY experience is one constant reminder that you are limited by the amount of time in a day and the number of hands you possess. You’d think evolution would have fixed one of those problems by now. The Carriage House is a separate building on our property and it is divided into three parts. The entire top floor is a…
The Case for a Hidden Bookcase Door
Hear me out. Our house *needs* a hidden bookcase door. Do you know what I’m referring to? A wall that looks like it has a gorgeous bookcase, but you pull a secret lever and the bookcase opens to reveal a hidden room behind it. How cool is that? No question about it. We DEFINITELY need a hidden bookcase door. I just have to convince Handy Husband that it wouldn’t be a colossal pain in the patootie to build one. Just the normal amount of pain. For instance, we don’t need to have a curved arch over the hidden bookcase door. I could compromise and let that idea go. See how…
Happy List: #383
Hello! Welcome all of you lovers of Spring! It’s is so good to see you here. We made it through winter and I don’t know about you, but I am definitely looking forward to the warmer and more colorful days of spring. This week on the blog I dusted off a post from the archive and shared my experiences visiting hardware stores in Ireland. I also shared the fun and maybe temporary addition to our sunporch. It has spring vibes, for sure, and I made it with my own two hands. I do enjoy making things! A special shout out and thank you to Diane from In My Own Style…
Paper Flower Garland
Who’s ready for a party? This girl is because I have the happiest paper flower garland hanging up ready for a celebration. What are we celebrating? Longer daylight hours. Daffodils popping out of the ground. The new season of Reacher. A really good night’s sleep. Anything and everything is a cause for celebration these days. Those are the rules. Take your joy where you can get it, folks. Speaking of things that bring me joy, I have proclaimed loudly and often that I am not a garland person and, yet, I seem to come up with excuses for making garlands and hanging them up in my house. Need evidence? I…
From The Archive: A Hardware Store In Ireland
Editor’s Note: This blog post about what hardware stores in Ireland are like was previously published under our “Living In Ireland” series. We moved to Ireland for a work opportunity and lived there, south of Dublin, for two years between 2016 and 2018. I thought this would be a fun post to revisit on St. Patrick’s Day. I hope you enjoy it! A warning for all of you organized types – the pictures in this post may be disturbing. Now, for the rest of you, let’s head to the hardware store! My little village in Ireland has a small hardware store. It shares space with the post office. I’ll let…
Happy List: #382
Hi! Happy early St. Patrick’s Day. I’m thrilled to see you here. This week on the blog I shared how I decorated our dining room fireplace for spring with paper flowers. Stay tuned for another related project on that front! I also shared the reveal, or TADA as I like to call it, of the peg rail in our bedroom. I’m really enjoying the visual interest it adds to the space. The Happy List is one of the ways I try to focus my media consumption on the things that inspire me instead of the things that raise my blood pressure. We all need balance. I also love, love, LOVE…
Bedroom Peg Rail – One Entire Wall of Storage
By adding a peg rail to one entire wall of our bedroom, we gained 15 feet of storage and organization space and an unlimited amount of glee over this addition. Is there a Guinness Book of World Records category for the world’s longest peg rail? If so, I’d like to submit our bedroom peg rail as an entry. You’ll have to use your imagination a little because it was hard for me to get a decent photograph of one gigantic wall broken up by a door. That’s why I’m showing the two sides of the peg rail in different photos in this blog post. The hardship, I know. Thank you…
