February month in review

Hey hey all! Yahoo for Friday! Hope you have a great weekend planned!

I’m back with another month in review and I gotta say, I kind of dig writing these at the end of the month. It makes me feel uber productive. And here’s the thing, I do accomplish a lot in a month, house-wise – but remember that’s kinda my gig. ;)

But the pile of papers two feet high in my office hasn’t been touched all month, so yeah…

I kicked off the month with simple change in the family room that made a HUGE difference. You can find out more about that here and then the avalanche of a few more changes here:

I truly cannot believe the difference changing out a mirror made. Amazing.

I reworked a spot in our master bedroom too, using what I had from around the house:

I sit in that spot every morning and LOVE my little “nook.” The Bub has one, why shouldn’t Momma? :)

My dream of an organized basement became a reality when we had the (amazingly fantastic) cubbies built:

We’ve had fun getting things organized and sorted out. OK, I’ve had fun organizing and sorting, the kiddo is just glad to have a spot for toys. It’s made such a difference down there, I cannot even. tell. you.

I swear we’re never moving…I love our basement and I love our house!!

Speaking of the basement…a major purge began earlier this month thanks to some visitors we had last fall. I finally got up the energy to tackle the mess left behind by the mice who invaded our house:

Not those cute paper mice by the way. I spared you a picture of the real little dudes.

The organizing and purging bug hits me every new year, and then just as I start losing my will, February and the hope for spring hits, and then I get it all over again.

I have SO many spots to tackle, but I shared how a simple, quick purge can make such a difference here:

You guys always share great tips and tricks in the comments, take a look at that post for some great ones!

I was thrilled to work with Home Depot this month to promote their Do-It-Herself workshops! They are held every month, but I helped out with the Pinterest-inspired one for February:

I think I’m going to tackle this project in our basement bathroom! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I am still pinching myself because Target called and asked if I wanted to blog about their stuff and I was like HECK YEAH. So I shared a few changes I made to the foyer with their Threshold items:

The flowers smell AMAZING by the way. GoodNESS, I am ready for spring.

I’ve become a bit of an obsessed plant-lady over the past few months and I told you about a few of my favorites here:

Those cutie little air plants are SO easy to care for and they are growing so fast! I may need bigger bowls soon. ;)

Many of you asked about the kitchen window treatments and I added a link to that project in the comments of the air plant post for you!

Finally, I finished up the month sharing a few caulking tools and tips:

That little blue wedge makes the job SO much easier!

There you go, a few of the February projects wrapped up in a nice little post! Remember if you’d like to keep up with projects as they happen around here you can follow me on Instagram, and I always love talking with you all on Facebook too. :)

Hope you have a lovely, safe, warm weekend! Don’t forget the March Before and After linky will go up Monday morning!

Laundry room to mud room (Oh yeah)

Hello there! Hope you had a wonderful weekend! We had a great one – I got some DIY time in, some quality kiddo time and even a date with the hubs! And it wasn’t 101 degrees – bonus! :)

I’m sharing a before and after today that’s been a loooong time coming. I’m giddy about it. Grinning like mad. Elaine Benes dance happy. It’s not anything Pinterest worthy, but let me tell you…it’s BIG. (To me.)

This weekend was momentous – the former laundry/mud room is now just a MUD ROOM.

Can I get an AMEN??

I took this picture minutes before the waster and dryer were moved out:

It looked like that all. the. time. Every time thought to myself, “Self, are you sure you want to move the washer and dryer downstairs?” I would walk back into this room.

Yep, yep I do.

I tried. Tried to make it work, tried to keep it organized. It was not within my realm of…well…anything. I couldn’t do it.

This room has a long road ahead of it, and all I’ve done so far is move everything that was on the left over to the right (where the washer and dryer were), and it’s made all the difference in the world:

You can now see when I painted this room I didn’t bother to move the W/D – I just painted around them. ;) No one could tell. Till now.

I also didn’t move them to install the beadboard, so that’s coming soon. For now I moved the shelf up about a foot and took the hooks that were on the long wall on the left and hung them underneath:

My goal was to make this room functional before the Bub starts school in a few weeks. (Kindergarten. Sniff. No, I don’t want to talk about it.)

I feel a meeeeellion times more organized already. I feel like we can breath when we walk in and out of our house:

Doesn’t it look AMAZING????? OK, I know it’s kind of a mess still, but I have rose-colored-mud-room glasses on and I think it’s stinkin’ beautiful. ;) I am so thrilled to have such a large, open space as a mud room. (It feels HUGE to me now.)

I have big plans for this room, of course. Beadboard, paint, new trim (casing, baseboards and crown), maybe new lighting, a bench, coat storage and cabinets and storage up to the ceiling in that cubby area.

Oh, and I can take that vinyl down cause it’s not a laundry room anymore:

Booyah.

Best day ever!! All weekend we noticed the little things – like we can walk out of the house as a family instead of lining up single file. It’s fantastic. :)

I’ve been trying to decide on a wall color for months and I think I found it this weekend. Right now I’m just really excited to put baseboards back in here. See, the little things – it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Do you have a dedicated mud room? Do you love it? If you don’t have one, have you figured out a way to make your main entry more organized? Do tell!

 

**You can see how I changed out the ugly metal utility doors here and how I installed the peel and stick tile here. And if you’d like to see how this room looked after it’s first redo, check out this post from way back when. ;)