In about 6 weeks (maybe sooner) this sight will no longer thrill me. But for now, this Winter Wonderland looks inviting, yet pristine. * Enjoy *
p.s. will be selecting the winner for the Free Box of Note Cards tomorrow evening (i.e. still time to leave comments on any and all blog posts, each for an automatic entry).
There's one really big upside about living in five different brand new homes over the past eighteen
years. They'd all had great kitchens. Usually with some solid surface counters, hardwood flooring . . . and pantries. NICE pantries. But there was something I'd learned from living in so many places, and cooking in so many kitchens. Surprisingly, I do not prefer walk-in pantries.
In our last house, we specifically designed the kitchen with a wall of very shallow 12" cabinets, and several narrow, roll out drawers where the cabinets required a depth of 24". You don't lose food this way, and there's very little 'pull these items out to get at that' going on.
So here we are, in my first house bought as a resale. A house I love. A yard I love. A neighborhood I love. But a kitchen, that while awesome in layout, will be seeing a lot of updates in the next few years. First stop: The Pantry. As you can see from the above photo, the stationary shelves made this 24" deep pantry almost a waste of space. I kid you not when I say we lived out of a lot of grocery sacks scattered around the perimeter of the dining area, at least until the new roll-out shelves were installed.
(click photo to enlarge)
And I knew exactly who to call - I'd worked with many master craftsmen in my previous life as a Selections Coordinator at a custom home builder. Marty Erlien (reachable at (612) 644-9007 if you're in the Minneapolis area) came out, measured, talked about spacing requirements, and his assistant returned a few weeks later to retrofit the cabinet and install some custom made shelving. As you can see - it's a perfect solution. Amazing what these guys (and some full extension glides) can do to make a space SO much more functional. It's now finally fully utilized and a pleasure to use every time we open the pantry doors. I'm loving it!
If you like this, just wait until you see what they did for the new tub in our remodeled bathroom!
p.s. don't forget about the free Box of 12 Note Cards giveaway, just leave a comment to automatically be entered. Just a few more days until a winner is drawn at random.
Jim and I are using the same furniture we had in our last house, but have managed to infuse this home with different backdrop colors and accents. Getting away from deep burgundy and sage greens walls, we now have buttery yellows to brighten our days. And with the purchase of our new dining area rug, we have many more colors to use in our future decorating - for chair covers, additional pillows, and other fun accents.
This rug is one of my favorite things. It never fails to make me smile. I think that's what decorating should be all about. The two pillows help pull the palette together. And the coffee mug? When our french exchange students were out for a visit, we did "paint your own pottery" and I couldn't resist doing up a mug in the same vein to add even more smiles to my day.
Just a few of my favorite things.
p.s. all comments this week receive an entry in the Giveaway!
At long last I am finally getting around to taking some decent photos of the new-ish place. (I mean really, it's been six months. After three months of renovation and another three months of organizing, can it still be called new?)
More importantly, I'm finally finding the time to post here on a more regular basis. While we still have a garage full of stuff to put away - the inside spaces are really starting to come together. Cannot wait to decorate for the Holidays.
This is my absolute favorite room. Love our new house, and especially the Living Room with oversized windows and southern and eastern exposures. SO happy here ♥
notice: Jinx the Cat, on the back of the left sofa (she's a bit camera shy . . . hiding behind the pillow)
Overlooking the Living Room from the upstairs landing. This is the sight that greets me every morning. *sigh*
Friends and family members questioned why we would want to down-size from our last place, but somehow even after shaving 500 square feet off our previous home's living area, this place lives just as large, and more importantly - it fits us.
More photos soon.
Congrats to Janice! And thanks to all of you for entering the latest BeeDazzles contest! I love giving stuff away - especially these magnets. They're so fun and functional (and did I mention STRONG?) you'll be wanting to get rid of all your existing magnets and visit the shop for more! Each small magnet holds up over 8 sheets of paper, but won't cover up artwork or important information. Who couldn't use a set of these? They make great gifts, too.
So while the packaging was a long time in coming, it was worth the wait. Now that it's settled I can get back to new artwork SOON. So be on the lookout in the days ahead :)
On a personal note, working with all these flower and insect images has me really looking forward to Spring. And Jim and I are in the process of planning several trips - always exciting.
Hope you have a great day, and thanks again for all your comments and checking in here to see what's up at "Bee's Buzzings". Things have been fairly wonky at times trying to juggle too many issues (yeah, having four kids will do that!) but I promise there will be even more giveaways in the days ahead.
I'm always amazed at how quickly time goes by. It seems every time I turn around another 3 weeks has passed since my last blog post!! Will try and do better about keeping up. I mean, it's certainly not for a lack of things to share. Since the last post we've had two more birthdays (Katie's 20th and Kristi's 16th) and we also made a big decision about our house.
Jim and I were both pretty excited about the idea of downsizing and fast-forwarding our plans for an eventual lake place. So we priced our home somewhat realistically to start (about 10% off 2007 values) . . . or so we thought. Well, the price brought in a handful of showings - so it must have been 'fair' at the very least. But things weren't moving as quickly as we'd have liked so we did the updates mentioned earlier (hardwood and appliances), and as further incentive we dropped the price $30,000 in hopes of enticing a quick sale . . . and were unpleasantly surprised to have the showings drop off along with our price.
So after a few weeks of practically no showings we finally decided to drop the price another $23,000 - which put us within about $10,000 of our bottom that we were willing to take. Of course this would bring some buyers in, right? Wrong. Nada. Seriously not one phone call. So rather than continue to kick ourselves, we finally looked deeper into the market and realized that the statistics spoke for themselves. Of the 22 homes in our school district in a $200,000 range around our home's value that had come off the market in the previous month, only 2 had sold. Two additional homes were 'pending' and the other 18 had expired or canceled the listings. And of those sold and/or pending, I'm willing to bet most if not all were bank owned, and selling at a 30% discount. Bottom line, having the house on the market proved to be an exercise in futility.
The good news? There's really nothing about this house I don't like - it's just a little too big for our lives at this point. But it's now also clean, repair-free, updated and de-cluttered. Which makes it much easier to keep clean. So, there IS a silver lining in every cloud! And now that everything here is in order, I can once again turn my attention back to my studio and some new art - after all the holidays are approaching quickly, too!
Quite frankly, if the recent weather here is an indicator of what this winter is going to be like, I'm feeling VERY thankful we're not moving . . . check out this porch scene out from a week or so ago . . . brrrrrrrrr!
So be on the look out for new art, and (finally!) some contest winners in the weeks ahead. Maybe even some spontaneous winners . . . peek back often and you may be one of them :)
I spied these wonderful birds at my Aunt's house last February, and have been enamored with them ever since. Don't you just love them?? And though I've forgotten all the details of their origin (I believe she said they were made by a relative of my uncle's close to a century ago) needless to say their charm will bring smiles to faces for many, many years to come. It's one of the reasons I love being a 'handmade' artist so much. And I'm hoping to some day soon bring more 3-D art to life in my own studio.
As you know, It's been another busy year. But being an eternal optimist, I continue to believe that things will 'settle down' soon so that I might finally achieve a balance with work, home, kids and life that yields less stress, but more accomplishments. These birds will continue to be my inspiration as I work towards that goal.
Sometimes keeping it simple and getting back to the basics ensures the longevity of an object, or in this case - a way of life.
Thanks for the wonderful comments of late, and hope things are peaceful and looking brighter where you are, too. :)
Isn't this amazing?? It's a very frosty morning here in Minneapolis - quite majestic looking in fact. And despite the fact that this type of weather also makes driving difficult, something I experienced first hand since we left the house at 6:20 a.m. this morning (to take my youngest and a classmate to their chamber orchestra session), I think these weather conditions provide the prettiest pictures ever of the trees in our yard.
And can you see the little bunny tracks?? Our little visitor is just adorable. He hops by my studio window several times a day - something that never fails to make me smile.
p.s. of course I might not find him quite as cute once he starts eating my flowers this spring :)
Does anyone else get as stressed as I do when things don't go as planned? I swear . . . every time I say that I'm going to 'get "X" done' by a certain date, it never fails that things come up. Many things. And usually in a row.
And no one thing seems to be valid enough in itself to warrant an excusable delay. So I stress. I told our accountant that I'd have my books to her by Friday (this, after delays in June, July and August). Then it was Monday, and now I'm looking at Thursday at the earliest. And that's Danielle's birthday, so it might get pushed back again . . . *sigh*
On a lighter note, I wanted to share two fun areas in our home. This is a corner entrance to our kitchen that I've always loved. While I attempt to keep a 'grown up' look to most of the house, I enjoy having little gifts from friends and family displayed here (the bottom two roosters are from one of my favorite Etsy shops, RedCrowArts) , and of course some goofy photo-booth shots of Jim and me that never fail to make me smile. They were taken on Danielle's birthday three years ago, shortly after Jim and I got married. But even more dear to my heart is the doorway trim to the right of the corner shelf. We've been tracking the kids growth (as well as many of the neighborhood kids) and it is so fun to see the progress.
This last shot is of some little sconce-type things I got a few years ago at one of those Home Parties. Can't remember exactly which company it was (Southern Living, perhaps?) but these sat in a drawer for a couple of years, unused. You see, they had wire hangers coming off all four corners which never quite lined up properly and 
made the entire piece looking like some awkward metal spider. So in a light-bulb moment, I used a wire cutter and snipped them all off, and voila! instant charm in our powder room without overwhelming the small space.
My photography skills have never been the best, so I'd also recently invested in a really nice (but used) Canon SLR camera. The Rebel XT, for those of you 'in the know'. Which unfortunately showed up with the spanish version of the owners manual. Gahhhh, one more thing to add to my To Do List. I'm hoping to find time soon to figure out how to use it. So don't be surprised if I suddenly start taking beautiful, award-winning photos for your viewing pleasure! (side note: fat chance!)
Well, off to get a few things done before bedtime, including using the random number generator to pick the long overdue Free Pendant winner!!
be back in a bit :)
