Dear friends, My blog has moved!
Please visit me over at my new site!


I hope to see you there!

~Jenni



Sunday, September 30, 2012

Sneak peek {Wide plank floors}



Hello dear friends! I hope you are well, and that you had the loveliest of weekends!

Now I made a promise, one to show you a bit of those wide plank floors I put down in the girls' room this summer!

This was a huge project, but hands down completely and thoroughly worth it! I want to put these floors down in the whole house now!

I saw this idea at Frugal Farmhouse Design a while back while doing a search on painted plywood floors.





Like her, we also used a penny as a spacer between boards.
 




Some of my boards ended up more or less than a penny space due to the boards not being perfectly straight. But somehow they ended up looking okay...

 



They clean up easily, and I love how the white makes the room so much brighter than it was!



 
I have the baseboard molding in now, but you can probably see that their walk in closet isn't quite finished! I also have the corner wall trim left and all of their furniture to paint! It is embarrassing how long this room has taken!

I've set the room aside for the next couple of weeks so I can really focus on the henhouse before the weather changes and it is too cold to paint! We should have our sweet chicks in their new home soon! I will be back soon with update photos of our progress, in case you'd like to see the little house! :)

Well, that is all for me for now! Thanks so much for stopping by for a visit!

Much love,

Jenni

Thursday, September 13, 2012

A little gift and a big project



So when I went out to feed the chickens yesterday morning I found a little gift...


 


Emphasis on little...Isn't it so cute?






I knew that a chicken's first eggs can be very small. And look at the difference between it and my store bought eggs! It made me smile. :)


But I am not sure which of our chickens laid the egg; this is still a mystery, although I have my suspicions! ;) 

But one thing I do know: we'd better keep on working on that henhouse, especially since I received two more eggs today! 

And what of that henhouse?





 
It is coming along, s-l-o-w-l-y but surely...

We still have some work left to do though...the inside walls {which will be plywood} and the vinyl floor {so much easier to clean I have heard!} and, of course, the windows and door...

 




We didn't realize quite how huge the front door would look and wish we would have done this a little differently and cut the door height down even more. But we are going to trim out a "triangle" of the top of the front of the house and put on scalloped shingles for visual interest...


David finished the nesting boxes yesterday, all but the siding and the vinyl on the bottom of the inside...here is it with the roof completed:
 






And the nesting box as seen from the inside of the coop:
 




The pitched roof will make clean-up easy, I think. I wanted to be able to stand up inside the coop!






Thanks to my parents coming out again this Saturday, we just might be able to finish it up this weekend! {Not including the painting of course, which is a whole other kettle of fish! And then, of course, David and I are onto the chicken run... 

And oh! Remember that other project I was doing this summer? The girls beach cottage bedroom? Well, it is almost done! What a lot of work this room was, but it is worth it to see it all coming together! 

{I will be back next time with a sneak peek of the white wood plank floors we installed in their room!}

I hope you have a beautiful Friday! :)

Much love,

Jenni

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Hello, hydrangeas, and a little honesty...

                
Hello all! How have you been and did you enjoyed your summer? I hope it has been a wonderful one for you! :)

Confession:

I haven't posted for almost two months and my visiting has been on the slim to none side...I feel like the worst blogging friend on the planet! It wasn't at all intentional, or I would have done a "taking a break" post...Have you ever noticed that the longer you go without blogging, well, the longer you go without blogging?





With two enormous home projects in the works, it has been a little on the crazy side around here! 

My husband and I now know for certain that we can only handle one big project at a time! It doesn't matter if one is mainly his at this point {the chicken coop that has turned into more of a house} and if one is mostly mine {the wood plank flooring in the girls' room}!

I so hope you can forgive me the lack of visits and the absence of posts! I have missed visiting you all and seeing how you are doing. I realized I am the most happy when I am able to visit and write...





Now there is a bright and shiny silver lining to this summer, though: it has given me pause, time for reflection on what I am doing and where I am going.
 I know, I know. Time for reflection during a busy time seem like they wouldn't go together, but strangely, they did!

 And this is what I came up with:

 What I am doing: everything except for taking a little time to refresh each day.

Where I am going: in circles???




I am a mother of three children {two of them teenagers} and a wife to a wonderful husband. It was and is my biggest dream come true, the thing I most wanted, and I am holding onto it with both hands. 

I have realized, though, that when I was younger dreaming this big dream of having a family, I forgot that I would have other {smaller} dreams and a deep desire to create!

I feel like I need to do something about this dreaming and creating!

And what to do with those persistent dreams and plans tucked away safely for maybe someday

Maybe someday is now....what am I waiting for?





To answer my own question, I am afraid of doing any project or endeavor that would be hard on my family, because they are my first priority besides God. I don't to make a mistake and get myself in over my head.

Secondly, I have guilt. Loads and loads of it. And it is terribly hard for me to take time for myself without it joining me! ;) 

Does anyone relate to this?

I think I am {slowly} figuring things out...

So I have decided to start. To start truly working on these dreams instead of just thinking maybe someday or another day...A couple of these I shared a while back, regarding the changes I wanted to make with this blog, including a new name! 





I will be back next time to share these ideas with you, which I have to admit scares me a little! You don't scare me, don't get me wrong! It's the putting myself out there that makes me feel like it's my first day in eighth grade at a new school all over again, and let me tell you, that was frightening! ;) So I'm thinking compared to that, this should be a piece of cake, right?

Thank you, dear friends, for listening to me spill my heart, and have a lovely Thursday! :)

See you again soon...{really!}

Much love,

Jenni