Back in the cold bleakness of January, Nate and I were trying to decide what to do about our carpet. We have always seriously disliked it. It's seafoam green, and therefore it clashes with all our other decor, and manages to show every drop of anything that ever happens to land on it. Also it matches our kitchen tile, which has white grout that has never been white as long as we've known it. It's just yucky. So we went back and forth about whether to have it professionally cleaned or buy a carpet cleaner and do it ourselves. But we'd for sure have to get the grout cleaned too because it's just so nasty . . . All the conversations led to expensive and/or labor intensive ideas and the real story was that no matter what we decided to do, it would look dirty again within a week.  So one day we decided that it was time to just price out how much it would cost to have it all replaced. Definitely a pie-in-the sky dream, but heck, it was January and we had nothing going on,...

Unfortunately, we didn't take before pictures. But here's the after!

This year we have a goal to tackle one pretty major house project per month. Nate's editing a book on the side to help with the cash flow to reach our goal. January's project was our game room. Nate's parents got a new tv for Christmas and were looking for a home for their old one. We offered to take it off their hands, and decided that the game room was the perfect home for it. We used that as our jumping-off point to design and organize it just the way we wanted. We worked our buns off. Most of the post-kids-in-bed time we had in January was spent in the game room. We are very excited about the results! Here's the before and after! Before: As you can see from the photo and video, there wasn't much to love about it. Here's Nate to take you on a tour of the new and improved game room.  Here's the list of what we did: - Organized games and closets. - Cleaned all the surfaces. - Painted the ceiling white. - Painted ...

Lots of people have been asking for pictures of our new house, so here they are! These are the ones that were on the listing when we bought it. It'll be fun to look back in a few years and (hopefully) see how we've changed things here and there to make it our own. Things we love: Privacy! We're on a culdesac and our yard is quite wooded. We're not sad to have left all the traffic noises behind. The yard. We have 1/3 of an acre, and it's a nice mix of wild and tame. We're currently working our buns off to put in a garden. More room. Plenty more space to breathe and live than our old house. Also room for company. A garage!!! No need to say more on that one. A fenced yard. A guest room and bathroom with a little privacy! So come visit! A master bathroom. Lots of windows. I thought I'd never find another house like our old one as far as number of windows, but we have lots of natural light. Proximity to the mountains. Things we don't love quite a...