Have you missed our fixer upper updates? I know, it has been forever since I have done any blog post on our fixer upper. Things have been continuing to get checked off the original list and I have been putting additional things on my future list.

It is safe to say our summer has been busy and back to normal. I am a full time Uber driver for my kids and their friends, I have taken on some new furry projects, my daily outdoor chores are in full swing around here, summer camps and activities are back on while trying to fit in as much lake time as we can. I love every minute of it and wouldn’t change a thing!

So, what have we completed since my last update.

Landscaping: It is probably safe to say I have touched every bit of the original landscaping and either destroyed it or moved it. I should start off by saying I love planting and landscaping. I’m usually out there everyday doing something and it doesn’t bother me. I even cut our grass. So when it came time to start on landscaping, I was ready to get my hands dirty.

I first hired a landscaping crew to do some of the heavy duty things. I had them move all of the landscaping rocks to different areas around the property, they dug up and got rid of many years of weeds and started us off with new mulch for the entire property. Once that was completed, I came in and planted all sorts of pretty things. I planted new trees, shrubs, bushes and lots of flowers. I probably planted 100 different things over the past two summers. Take a look!

Another eye sore was taken down this past month. The old fence that surrounded the tennis courts has definitely seen better days and I always hated it. There were many areas which trees have fallen on top of the fence and became bent and ugly. We reached out to our local scrapper and had him take down the entire fence and take it away. Now, what to do with this area?!? We will wait awhile on this one.

Before with the fence:

After without the fence:

Outdoor Painting: We always had on our original list to get all of the exterior doors painted, the original garage door and surrounding exterior walls and painted the outdoor iron spiral staircase. As you can see below, we painted all the door black except for one. Jason’s office door is red.

Jason’s Project: Jason has gathered quite the gun collection of the past 5 years and he was needing a larger safe to lock everything up. Well, the research started and the vault came to the fore front. He has big plans with this room. It is all him and we will see if he gets it done after lake season.

Furry Family Members: Frank now has 6 new sisters. 4 chickens and 2 barn kittens. I’ve always talked about getting some animals for our barn and we got a little push with this category over the past month.

The Chicas: My sister-in-law’s friend had a neighbor who was moving out of state and couldn’t bring their 4 chickens with them. This could have been the best way to start with chickens. The family raised the chickens from eggs to 3 months old then we took it from there. I definitely would say they did the hardest part and now I am just feeding, cleaning up poop and waiting for the eggs to start coming. The Chicas should be laying eggs within the month. They are so fun to watch. We normally keep them in their coop and run majority of the day and let them be free range late afternoon till dusk. They always stay together and always go back to their coop. It so crazy!

Barn Kittens: We received 2 barn kittens from our neighbors’ friend who’s stray cat had 4 kittens. They kept 2 and we took 2. So far they have been so sweet. We have them staying in the old horse stable in the back of our barn. It is the best set up for them.

Here is the next question I always get when people ask about our new animals… how do they get along with Frank? Well, Frank terrorizes the chickens and the kittens and Frank have only had one encounter. Both kittens hissed at him. Since each kitten is maybe 2lbs and Frank is 60lbs on a lite day, I’ll keep them separated a little longer. I guess I can answer that question with “we are still working on their friendships.” 😂

The Future List: There are always going to be things we are going to have to fix, add or change to our 70 year old fixer upper as time goes on. I’m sure all of you also have a list of things you would love to add/change. I just need to make sure I bring up my list to Jason when he is having a good day. 😘

It is so crazy to go back and look at the original photos from our fixer upper. I love that we kept some of the charm and layout but brought it up to date.

I guess now it is time for me to gather every blog post I wrote and make that coffee table book on our fixer upper that I’ve talked about. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take me a year to do it.

Love ya, Lisa

Living inside a forest area has many pluses and minuses to it. The positives:

1. Super peaceful and tranquil.

2. Enough space to do just about anything we want to. A grown mans playground (Jason’s words).

3. Not a lot of busy bodies staring in.

4. The seasonal scenery is just beautiful!

5. We love our nature friends.

6. Unincorporated is awesome. Lower taxes!!

I’m just listing a few but the list goes on and on. Now, some negatives:

1. My kids won’t take Frank out at night. Scaredy-cats are afraid of the dark.

2. Frank is scared of any noise that comes out of the forest and barks forever. Especially when the coyotes decide to party together.

3. The amount of deer poop is insane. We had 11 deer at once hanging out in our backyard and I’m sure they were pooping everywhere they stepped.

4. The mole/vole tracks are ridiculous!!!

The positives definitely outweigh the negatives. Thank god!

So here is my question to my readers… what have you done to stop the moles and voles from ruining your yards??

Here is what parts of our yard looks like. The ugly.

Jason and I have tried a handful of remedies but these stupid critters are definitely winning. We have tried spike traps that go in the ground. We have tried poison. We have tried smoke bombing them out (I think this one was more for Jason just to play with fireworks). We’ve tried placing spearmint gum in their tunnels. And lastly, we have put the noise/vibration devices in our yard. Nothing seems to be working and after our recent thaw, the mounds of dirt and tracks are insane!!! Our lawn looks like shit.

So now what… do we get a barn cat?!? 😬 Which I am not opposed to but how would a barn cat keeps the moles from making tunnels underground?

I get it we will never have a perfect suburban lawn but I also don’t want dirt mounds everywhere either.

Help us! For those of you that have conquered these pesky rodents what did you do??

Love ya, Lisa

Winters in Mokena are pretty standard for Illinois. December is pleasant. January starts to get cold with some snow. While February is fucking terrible!! Between the single digit temperatures and never ending snowfall, for being the shortest month in the year it always feels like the longest. Why did we move back to Illinois?!? 😂

Leading up to our first snow fall, Jason always talked about our driveway and clearing the snow off it. He thinks we need an ATV with a snow plow on the front. Where I think he is crazy and our snowblower would work just fine. Well let me tell you, with 3ft of snow that has fallen in a two week period and a long driveway our snowblower hasn’t been the easiest solution. Thank god for our neighbors. We have been so fortunate over the past 20 years to have amazing neighbors and our new ones have been wonderful as well. Here are two examples of how grateful we are for our newest neighbors.

While I am standing in my kitchen with my pajamas on and a tea in my hand, my thoughtful neighbors are making my honey do list quite short. Thank you!!! You have no idea how amazing this is.

I thought I would take some pretty winter photos of our property during this winter season. Here are a few.

Our morning view from our family room. It never gets old! Jason loves seeing the animal tracks in the snow while I love the thick snow sitting on the trees.

Frank is enjoying our backyard this winter. Here he is following one of his many trails up the steps in our backyard. He would stay out there all day long.

He is loving the snow and the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He has zero fear of getting deep in the snow and making new paths where ever he goes.

Jadon is also enjoying our backyard this winter. He has been trying some winter sports out there.

Cross country skiing wasn’t as much fun as building a ski hill with a mini jump.

I don’t know who had more fun on this school/work snow day. Jason or Jadon and his friends. No one realized or cared that it was only 10 degrees out.

What are Leah and Liana doing this winter at our fixer upper? Endless photo shoots with their teenage friends. They are going to kill me when they see I was taking photos of them taking photos of themselves. I guess we will find out if they are reading my blog or lying to me. 😂

The icicles have just started to get long with the temperatures getting slightly warmer and the snow melting from the roof.

Jason’s barn is pretty much snowed in. Not too much going on in there these days.

As for our wood pile, I don’t think any of it is getting used this winter season.

Frank’s favorite bridge going from our house to his play area (aka the tennis courts).

We are loving our fixer upper this winter! The fires are daily and the views keep getting prettier.

Love ya, Lisa

Last time I wrote about our garage was back in November and we were half way done with construction. Now it is the middle of January and I am happy to say that our fixer upper finally has a finished garage!!!! You have no idea how excited we are to be able to park our cars into our garage, especially in January in Mokena.

Let’s start with a before photo of the garage.

Oh wait… there isn’t a garage. 😂 When we bought our fixer upper there was not a normal suburban garage attached to the house. There was a 1/2 car garage on the back side of the house. I wouldn’t even call it a garage in today standards. Maybe in 1950 the garage wasn’t meant for a car. I have no idea! The only thing this garage did was allow the realtor to be able to check off a box on the MLS stating there is an attached garage with the house. Lucky for us, that did not stop us from buying the house.

When we started planning our remodeling budget, a three car garage was always in the plan. I had some design ideas in my head but an architect had to be called in for the big boy stuff. Way over my pay grade and Pinterest page!!

My garage ideas to the architect.

1. Three single oversized garage doors.

2. Extra space between the doors. We have always had oversized cars and are sick of hearing Jason yell at us about opening the car doors carefully. A couple extra feet it is!

3. I wanted the garage to resemble the front of the original house. Same roof lines, dormers, etc.

4. An extra attic would be nice. I would love to change the house attic to a “She Attic” one day 😉.

Onto Pinterest for research. Here are are few photos from my Pinterest Garage Ideas folder.

I am sure you have an idea of what our garage looks like. Onto our brand new finished garage.

I LOVE the black garage doors. It is a bold statement on a house and this house needed it. Don’t mind the Christmas lights still being up. We will get around to taking those down soon.

Here is a closer look at some of the finishes on our garage.

I love the black garage doors! They give the front a little design element with the carriage style doors. We decided on not doing windows along the top of the doors. With the garage doors being black, you wouldn’t even be able to see the windows. Plus, one less thing to clean.

I also decided on open glass light fixtures. Liana, my twin daughter, picked them out. Being out in the forest, we need as much light as we can get. It’s pretty dark out there. I love our wood chevron address sign. Here is a closer look at both.

Onto the breezeway/mudroom/Frank’s bedroom entrance.

We will be painting both doors black and want to add metal awnings above the doors. Both of those items will need to wait till spring. I love the pop of the original red brick on the chimney from the kitchen fireplace. It adds a little bit of color and fun to this area.

Our black iron “Zimmer” sign was a housewarming gift from my sister-in-law and brother. I placed it next to the garage entrance. You can also see it from inside in our kitchen.

Here is a view of the entire front of the house.

And a view of the house from the backyard.

We are slowly getting there. Spring can’t come fast enough to get the landscaping done and paint on all the doors.

I continue to do inside projects since it is winter. Here is my newest indoor project: My Jewelry Display

I obviously have a jewelry problem. I love nothing more than sticking on a pair of jeans, a simple white tank top and some fun jewelry. COVID has definitely put a damper on me wearing any of it. This has been added in my master closet. I’ve always been a fan of displaying my jewelry. If I didn’t have it hanging up, I would never wear it or ever remember what I have.

Love ya, Lisa

I just realized I have yet to write and show you photos of my absolute favorite room in our fixer upper… my kitchen!

Where to begin? Lets start with some before photos.

When Jason and I first walked through this space, I loved that it was one big open area (18’ x 33’) to work with and a fireplace! I saw the potential from the start but the biggest surprise came 2 months later during electrical demo. That is when this room became my favorite space in our fixer upper.

Let’s talk about kitchen design.

Years ago when I started thinking about mine and Jason’s next house, there were two things I wanted to get rid of from our previous houses. First, a dinning room. This has always been such a wasted space in our homes. We would use that space maybe 2 or 3 times a year and the rest of the time it was a storage space for all of our crap. Second, is a formal living room. I would much rather have a bigger family room then a living room that no one goes in. Luckily, that was exactly what I was able to design in our fixer upper.

I grabbed a piece of graph paper and started sketching placement of cabinets and appliances. This was extremely hard for me. Between a large window, three main walkways and a brick fireplace my mind was spinning. I reached out to two different cabinet company’s and gave them my sketches and my kitchen wish list. I also had them give me their ideas to add to my sketches. One company saw my vision and one did not. Obviously, I went with the company who understood what I was looking for.

Here was my wish list for the kitchen.

1. 3-Dimensional: I love when cabinets are all different sizes and lengths. Additionally, don’t give me little trim. The bigger the better when it comes to trim.

2. Place a farmhouse sink in front of the big window. I want Jason to be able to see our view while he does the dishes 😉.

3. A double oven is a must!

4. I have a serious baking problem. I wanted a designated baking area.

5. Keep the 1950 dutch door. I love it!

Not a huge list but everything had to be checked off.

I mentioned earlier that we ran into a big surprise in the kitchen when we were doing electric. Here was the surprise.

Look up… the fireplace brick goes all the way to the roof!!!! Portions of the attic was located above the kitchen. We knew the ceiling must come down and we had to vault it. The next picture is the original ceiling gone and the vaulted ceiling coming to life.

So pretty already and the beams and skylights aren’t even in yet!

Enough of the before and demo stuff. Here is my finished dream kitchen.

I took those photos a couple of months ago. Here is my kitchen decorated for Christmas.

We ended up white washing the lower brick and kept the brick on top in its original form. I love the texture and color of the upper brick.

I am obsessed with changing the decor on my mantle and I love the antique door trees – especially the green one! They are not from our house but I got them from a local retired man who loves to keep himself busy. The old windows are from our fixer upper. I’m so glad I saved all of them!

Here are some additional photos of my Christmas decor around the kitchen.

I recently got our new farmhouse table that my cousin made for me and of course I had to stick a tree farm on it for the holidays 😂. I love it!

Kitchen pictures overload yet???? I’ll stop now. Can you tell I’m in love with this space? I have no problem cooking and entertaining in it!

Love ya, Lisa

Phase 3 of our fixer upper garage build started off on a slow and rocky note but it is finally starting to look like an actual garage. Yeh!!!

Here is a photo of the original single car, I mean golf cart, garage.

It is tucked under the mudroom and kitchen on the side of the house. You would have to see it in person to have any idea of where it is located and know it is a garage. There is a driveway leading to it from the front but there is no way a car can get in it. We currently call the original garage “The Sally Port” and it holds our golf cart and some shelving units for some of the miscellaneous crap we don’t want to store in the barn. If you have been keeping up with my blog, you would notice that Jason loves to name things. Those of you in law enforcement or have been arrested will know what a sally port is and understand the name correlation.

Here is a photo of our fixer uppers new 3 car garage on a beautiful fall night a couple week ago.

I usually get the questions next why did you decide on that design? When we were planning the design and placement for the garage, we threw a couple of different ideas around to see what would look best but always came back to our original thought of the long extended look of the existing house.

Here was our fixer upper garage wish list to the architect.

1. We wanted 3 separate single garage doors. Why not? We’ve never had that look on a house we have owned. Let’s go for it!

2. Slightly larger garage doors. Plus, the space between each garage door extended as much as possible with the available land we have to work with. We own oversized cars and 2 soon to be drivers. We all need the extra room!

3. Additional attic and storage space built above. No need for a vaulted ceiling in your garage and you can never not have enough space for storage.

4. Easy driving access to the backyard.

Simple – let’s get building!

Here is the full front of the house look.

And now the back of the house.

Looking like a garage, right?!?

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be getting done the electric, a completed roof, the floor and apron poured and our driveway done. I keeping my fingers cross that our weather stays good. Winter is coming soon and I would really like to have a garage spot before it gets too cold and snowy.

Back inside our fixer upper, I decided to switch up some of my fall decorations.

Has anyone put up their Christmas decorations yet?? I am starting to get sick of my fall indoor decor and wanted to switch over to Christmas but I figured since I am hosting Thanksgiving for my immediate family, I just can’t have Christmas stuff every where. I decided to switch up some of my fall decorations. Why not put up one of my Christmas trees but decorated it for fall?

I gathered all of my pumpkins and fall decorations that I had laying around my house and started placing them in and around my tree. Now, my tree is already up and switching it to Christmas will be easy!

Love ya, Lisa

When it come to decorating our homes, fall and Christmas are my favorite seasons. As soon as a see a mum on sale at our local stores, I get super excited and start loading up the back end of my Jeep.

This being our first holiday season living in our fixer upper, I was even more excited to decorate. Taking a lot of my old stuff and being able to use them in a new location is fun and new. Don’t worry, my shopping problem is still a problem. I also bought a couple of new pieces along the way 😉.

Where should I start?

Faux Pumpkin Placement: I love getting random small pumpkins of different textures to put into my everyday decor. It is so simple and an inexpensive way to add seasonal decor.

Real Pumpkins: I like to throw real and faux together around the house but not your traditional orange pumpkins. I love different colored and textured ones.

Faux Flowers: I’m not a huge faux flower person but I do like a pop of color and the easy care around the house.

Here is a new piece I added to my fall decor this year.

I loved the uniqueness of the tire. I’ve never seen anything like it. I had to buy it – sorry Jason! I picked this up at the same antique store in Indiana where I got the other things. I hung it on one of our many old windows I have in our attic.

Another everyday decor piece I fall’ed up.

I plan on switching the decor on this piece year round. During Christmas, I’ll change the ribbon and add some pine cones in it. During Spring/Easter, I may add some antique decorated eggs. An everyday use could be candles or even books. Endless decor but I need to use my imagination.

Farmhouse Books: I finally researched I figured out how to make the farmhouse books you see for sale. SO EASY!!! I stuck my “Welcome to our Patch” books on top of a wood slice from our forest and placed a mini pumpkin on top. I already have one done for Christmas time.

Some more random decor around our fixer upper.

Outside Decor: Keeping it simple with mums. You can never go wrong with different color mums. I love them!

Here is my favorite fall photo of my girls. I was so excited when they found the photo while cleaning out one of storage areas. They were so little and cute! I placed the photo on our mantel in the family room.

I can’t wait to decorate for Christmas. I’ll do a post then too. I have a serious Christmas tree problem!

Phase 3 – Garage Update…

Slowly getting the massive hole in the front of our house to not be so dangerous. This past weekend they back filled the hole with gravel then the concrete floor hopefully by next week 🤞🏻. With some of the walls up we can kind of envision the size and shape of the garage next to the house.

Our photo status as of this weekend.

The question I get from everyone… when are they going to be done? My contractor is promising me by December 1st everything will be done. It better be!

Now, I need a driveway/paving company to call me back. So far, I am 0 for 3 on companies to come out to give me a quote and get on the books. Not a good average. The garage has taken so long to complete that I don’t think we will be able to complete the driveway till spring. Annoying!!!

Any paver company recommendations??? Let me know 😉.

Love ya, Lisa

It is that time of year again that I drag my family, my camera and my tripod outside for our annual family photos. When I say drag, I’m not exaggerating. My family hates this!

When the kids were younger, I would do what 90% of us moms do. I would spend time gathering clothes for everyone to wear. Then, I would call a local mom/photographer to set up a date to get photos done while keeping my fingers crossed that weather cooperates. Then when the day comes, I scream at my family before and during the photo session – so fun right. After all of this, I wonder why the hell do I put my family through this. Until three years ago, I decided to try something new.

We were heading to our lake house during thanksgiving break and I realized I never got photos done that year for our Christmas card. I went into everyone’s closet and gathered some clothes that looked holiday like, put them in a bag and on the last day I informed them about family photos.

I went around our Lakehouse and took photos of the kids in various places. That was easy! When it came time for the family photo they wondered how I was going to do it. I took out my brother-in-laws tripod, set my camera on it, set the 10 second timer and the running game started. The kids loved the idea! As soon as a the camera took the photo, we would all run to see the photo. Surprisingly on the first try, the photo turned out amazing!! It is still hanging up at our Lakehouse to this day.

This was our family photo from that day in 2017.

When all the photos were taken and printed, I knew Jason would never want to do our family photos any other way. They all turned out amazing!

Back to 2020. I knew I wanted to take our photos at our fixer upper again. This fall, I was finally able to set up some fall decor around the property and my mums were blooming and looking pretty. So why not, let’s do some photos.

Here are some locations around our property that I was thinking of backdrops…

I love using our barn as a backdrop. The red and white combo is perfect for a Holiday card, but we did that last year. Here are our family photos from 2019.

These are the non-barn locations in our backyard that I thought would also look nice.

I staged the bottom left photo in our front yard with some items I already had around the property. You can say it was our cheesy staged prop photo. Everything else are my everyday decor.

How did they turn out? Here are some of our family photos – unedited. We were super lucky with great natural lighting and no zits this evening 😂.

I loved how all three family photos turned out. I don’t know which one is my favorite. Maybe the middle one, since we have the most natural smiles in that one. I probably looked the most uncomfortable since I just got done running to my spot.

Here are some individual photos of the kids.

I’ll start with my oldest and most carefree child – Leah.

👆🏻The second photo is my absolute favorite photo of Leah from the night. It really shows her personality. She is always up for anything!

Next up is our middle and most serious daughter – Liana. I love Liana’s smile in the first photo.

Our youngest is our independent mama’s boy. Jadon, our homebody, has been having the most fun with our property.

How can I forget about Frank?!? The newest member to our family. He wasn’t the most cooperative family member during our photo session but when he was by himself – watch out camera. He was ready!

Not bad – right? Here were some other photos that made my favorite list.

My kids think I should open up the property to others families for their photos. I don’t think I am good enough with the camera to be their photographer or I just need to find a better editing program. We’ll see – I am always up for new things!

Who is ready for some photo bloopers? This is what happens (sometimes) when I am running into the photo…

One time, I never got in the photo – whoops!

Or, I fell off a hay bale! Obviously, I was coming in hot. Thank god Jadon caught me.

Or I don’t realize that the camera didn’t take the photo yet and got up. I guess you can say that I’m just here to put a smile on their faces and make them laugh 😘.

I was also thinking of changing things up this year with our holiday cards. What about a Thanksgiving card???? We have had so many things to be thankful for during 2020. Why not!

Love ya, Lisa

Last time I wrote about our covered patio was back on June 25. It is now Sept 21th and we can finally enjoy our deck and backyard just in time for fall.

The “Dad Deck,” which is the name Jason has given our deck space, has taken more time to construct then we originally thought. This part of the project was started back in June, then stopped. At that point, they started working on the Hardie Board touches on the back of the house and then the attention was brought back to the deck. Just in time for my twin daughters and the friend’s 14th birthday gathering with 15 of their close school girlfriends. I guess we needed to put a finish date in our contractors head to get it done. 😉

Leah and Liana’s birthday party celebration…

I’m sure you are all wanting some photos of the house. I totally get it – I’m a visual person too 😉. Here is what the back of our fixer upper looked like on closing day back in September of 2019.

Here is a closer look of the concrete outside finish and a ton of cords hanging all over the back of the house. We didn’t even know what some of the cords were for.

It was a mess but we still saw a ton of potential. At first, we were going to patch and paint the back of the house concrete exterior. This is where we were trying to save some money but after we received the quote for painting, we decided to bite the bullet and just complete the Hardie Board look on the back of the entire house right away. So happy we did it because it looks great!

Here are some additional photos during the back of house construction.

The first step was to fur out all the concrete walls and apply Tyvek to help with the moisture between the concrete and the Hardie Board. This took some time. We also changed the deck size slightly bigger during the process. This also added some time onto the build. (For those of you that have been following since the start of our fixer upper, know I’m not scared to change my design layout throughout the process.)

Additional photos…

Here is the completed look in September 2020.

We decided to do a combo of horizontal and vertical Hardie Board. We didn’t do the traditional board and batten look because we thought it was going to look busy. Very happy with how it turned out.

A close up of the finished deck.

We went with the Trex product in a two tones grey and white combo. The railings we kept simple so we didn’t have an obstructed view. Also, some cedar finishes to tie in the front porch of the house.

Currently, the Dad Deck is mine and Jason’s favorite room in our fixer upper. We’ve been spending all day and night out there relaxing, watching tv and spending time with friends and family. We love it!

Do you know who else’s favorite room is the Dad Deck… Frank’s! I’ve been leaving the door open during the day from his room (which is the mudroom) to the deck and he spends all day going back and forth. Frank loves watching the workers and nature. He is so stinking cute!

Love ya, Lisa

The next time anyone comes to our fixer upper, you will now know how to get to the front door! This week we had our landscaper fix our walkway entrance to the front door. This did put a huge smile on my face 😀.

Before photos…

Don’t you look at this photo and ask yourself where the hell is the front door? That is exactly what I thought. So, I changed the front door location – why not.

Here is a closer look at the entrance. I hated it!!! It was a stinky vestibule and every time I opened the door I thought an animal was going to jump out at me. Look closely at the pavers in front of the entrance… you will see how we reused them.

The process…

The finished paved entrance.

Much better! Now that the pavers are done, we can complete the finishing touches on the covered porch area. Exciting!!

We did use the original pavers from our fixer upper but had the landscaper place them in a more “natural” placement. The left side of the walkway will have grass come right up to the pavers and the right side will have bushes, plants and mulch come up to it. Those will get done once the driveway and garage are built.

This made me happy…

Being able to plant flowers in my pots and place a welcome mat down – yeh 👏🏻!! Sad isn’t it – lol! It is the little things that put a smile on my face. I got the welcome mat from Kirkland’s for $10 and the blue rug is from Home Goods for $15. I love a great deal! I also ordered my window boxes this weekend and I can’t wait for those to show up. Now, I (or the painters) need to paint our front door black. That will be even more exciting.

A little crappy news happened at our fixer upper.

Our wonderful county did not like our garage dig – ugh! Back to the drawing board.

This better be done before winter 🤞🏻.

Do you want to see another room in our house? Here is our family room. I’m not completely done decorating it yet but it is a great start. I feel that some of the corners are missing things but we are getting there.

I love pillows (and Jason hates them) and of course Frank had to get in the photo.

Our fireplace had the biggest transformation. here are the before and during demo photos of the area.

The original fireplace looked unbalanced to me. There was too much stuff happening on the one side and nothing on the other. So, we tore down the bookshelves and doorway and opened it all up. Jason and I like balanced and symmetry.

This was my drawing for the fireplace that I gave to our trim carpenters. Don’t laugh – obviously I’m not a professional nor were my measurements the best. It was a starting point for them to have an idea of what I wanted.

And now the finished piece.

Much better – I love it and the wood burning fireplace does work!

Some of the finishing touches around the room.

So much better and brighter than the dark wood paneling from wall to wall.

Love ya, Lisa