This is the story of wandering around Crate and Barrel looking for storage ideas for my dining room. In this story I see a ladder shelf with a standing desk and think, wow, that would be perfect for my dining room to store my serving dishes. In this story I also look at the shelf, see the price tag of $500 and think...I can build that. Why I thought I could build it, I have no idea. I have zero experience save for the outdoor couches I made last summer, and that was really just nailing 2 x 4's together. This though, this would require fancy things like pocket holes and angled cuts. Who looks at furniture and thinks, "oh I can build that" having NEVER ACTUALLY BUILT FURNITURE. Well, me apparently. So, this is the story of how I did it.
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Ah, knotty pine cabinets. The choice for summer cottages, log cabins....and everyone on my street in 1954. Let me start by saying that I love knotty pine, and I TOTALLY understand the people out there that think its sacrileges to paint over such cabinets, that knotty pine cabinets should be restored to their original glory. I'm a history teacher, I get it, I'm all about preserving the past...but not when the past is where I spend an inordinate amount of time each day. So if you are someone who can't stomach painted knotty pine, run away now!
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I don't want to spend a lot of time on this section but I did want to put some things in writing in hopes of forcing myself to follow through. I wanted to write a few goals down for this blog and also home projects that I hope to complete. I'm not making resolutions, but rather goals as goals can be ongoing. 
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Blog Goals

• Relaunch with my new name and site design
• Blog consistently 
• Work on photography
• Create a community 

As I sat down to plan this post, I kept coming back to the word "community." I think that is my biggest goal for this blog in 2018. I would love to see this blog become a community of like minded people. What do I mean by "like minded"? I love the idea of creating a comfortable and lovely home. Having spend the decade following college moving every year or two, "home" was never really a concrete idea. Now that I have a physical house, I want to make it a home. I don't however want to spend tons of money to do it. When I see a post in a magazine, or when I browse Pottery Barn and stores of that ilk I see things and think "I can make that." Usually I have no idea how to make it... just that i can. So I do, I find a way to "fake it" and it gives me the same intrinsic pleasure. I don't think things have to cost a lot to bring us joy. As I've delved into the DIY/blogger world, I have found a space where women don't write, "honey-do" lists, or go out and spend their husband's paycheck on new decor; they get out their power tools and make it happen for themselves (and they do it while running their own business)! I find the space empowering and hope to connect with more DIYers and bloggers.
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As far as the physical blog goes, I'm hoping to do a site redesign soon to make it a little easier to navigate and show off my personal style a little more. Most importantly though, I'm relaunching with a new name. I know that's risky to re-brand but I don't feel this name reflects me at this point in time. It served well for my first attempt to start a blog but it doesn't work for me anymore. I assume I may loose  a few visitors because of the change, but I'm not interested in just the "number" of visitors, I really want to connect with others that have similar interests. I'm hoping the new name will allow me to build a brand that I love and am passionate about. 
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I'd like to connect more with social media. The blog community is on Instagram and I'm hoping to connect with them and expand to Facebook as well. I love the idea of filming some video tutorials and honestly just chatting with people about cooking, DIY, and home decor. 
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Home Projects:

• Create a master closet out of the spare bedroom
• Create ladder shelves for the dining room
• Bathroom Vanity re-do
• Finish decorating Master Bedroom
• She-shed- move office to she-shed
• Camper remodel (We will be purchasing a used camper soon for our "summer home" by the beach. I'm excited to make it my own)!

 Last summer I built my own patio furniture and I surprised even myself. I am so excited to tackle some other projects in my house. I've been looking for a closet system for a while but haven't found anything in my price range that was decent quality. I recently found plans to build my own, so that will be happening soon. I had a similar experience when looking for shelves for my dining room. I was hoping to set up a saw on my deck to work on these projects but the 15 inches of snow mother nature dropped on me doesn't seem to be allowing for that. I think I may try to set up a makeshift workshop in my dining room.

I am super excited at the potential of revamping an old camper. While the campground won't allow us to change too much about the outside of the camper, I'm hoping to make it my little beach cottage as the campground we will be going to is right across the street from the ocean. Can you put cedar shingles on a camper? Just kidding...sort of....

Finally the she-shed. I'm sure bf would argue that I've taken over my whole house so I probably don't need more space, but I'm envisioning an office space where I can work and make my mess from my DIY projects. This will also give us our guest bedroom back. Depending on the camper situation this may be more of a fall project.

I can't wait for the snow to melt so that I can start to tackle some of this stuff.

Cooking Projects:

• Continue to cook through Ina's recipe while expanding to her recommended cookbooks
• Take a "knife-skills" class or other cooking class
• Learn some basics of food photography

I have come really far this past year cooking, and I hope to continue learning. I really want to learn how to cook seafood. I'm not a big seafood fan, but bf is... and I mean I live in New England so I really should figure it out. 
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As you can see there's a lot going on there, not to mention I'm very busy at my day job. This little passion project though has really brought me a lot of joy, and I'm excited to see where it can go. 

I'm hoping to hear from more of you this year. What are some of your goals for 2018?

Having lived in the city for several years, the idea of seeing into your neighbors home never really bothered me. In fact, I loved knowing that behind the hundreds of windows in a building were hundreds of individual stores happening all at once. I guess it's a little voyeuristic but I enjoyed seeing people going about their lives. Now that I'm in the suburbs though, seeing in people's windows seems a bit....creepy. 
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Is there anything better than fresh baked bread? No. The answer is no. There's something so comforting and nurturing about it. Some people have to hide sweets from themselves, they over do it on chocolate. I have to hide bread from myself. My last meal? A really, really good piece of bread with some french butter. Pure heaven. Okay, so you get the idea...I like bread! 
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I have always wanted to make bread, but never learned how to do so properly. My attempts before resulted in hard, semi-cooked, inedible loafs that bf pretended he didn't hate, yet only took one bite out of. This weekend, I set out to change that!
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If you look closely at the back of a lot of my blog photos you can see my marble counter tops...except that you can't...because they are fake...as in I painted them myself fake. Let me explain. When bf and I bought our house from his grandfather, we were thrilled that it had a lot of family history. His grandfather was the original owner of the house, which was built in 1954. While I love that the house had a history, I didn't like that the decor was stuck in history. Think orange and avacado kitchen, bright yellow bathroom, and five layers of wallpaper.
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