Updates around the Home

Like every January since 2015 I've participated in the January Cure with Apartment Therapy.  They email you daily tasks to help deep clean your home after the holidays and to give you some ideas for cleaning habits to incorporate the year through.  I absolutely love it.

Our home has gone through quite a bit of changes over the past 12 years, so I thought it would be fun to go down a memory lane of sorts.  From lots of excess to decluttering and honing in my personal style.  Changes in wall colors, removal of carpets, and changing out the baseboards have been the biggest improvements so far.

2012

 2016

 2018

Last year, I was really getting the itch to change things around in our house.  So I flipped our great room around.  The dining area moved to where the living room was and the living room to where the dining area was.  We took down the chandelier and I sold it and we lived in a room of dark for a year 😂 well that's a little bit of an exaggeration, we had lamps but I never found a replacement light that I liked to go in the "living room"

To be honest, I told myself multiple times a day, every day that "I like this" and never fully convinced myself.  I didn't like where the TV was, you couldn't see the photos on the wall, and the living space seemed so small and cramped...and now as I'm going through photos I clearly wasn't too happy with it because I basically have zero photos of the set up for the whole of 2019 😂 

 We actually liked being able to see out the bay window from our table but it just never felt right

 and our Christmas Tree wound up in a very strange location

 This is literally the only photo I have of the whole space 🙈, the TV on our buffet blocking decor pieces and our "gallery"wall.  I didn't like the floating couch either (and it kept moving whenever anyone sat on it pushing it further and further away from the TV 😳)

When we bought The Grey Cottage, we moved a lot of our extra furniture over there and it allowed us to bring in one of the pieces from my mom's house that was hanging out in our garage since 2012.  I loved seeing it in the house and I needed to convince Thomas that wall mounting the TV was a good idea.

 

So, I took down the mirror and painted the walls white 🙌 got the furniture moved back to their proper place and it feels so much better!  I love that the mirror is gone and no longer competing with the fireplace and the TV.  I love that my mom's furniture pieces are still in their proper places and I love that the kids photos are now visible.  I still need to finish painting all the walls white, but I'm not in a rush since that includes pretty much the entire house: kitchen, hallway, entryway, and the dining room wall 😅.  But now it just feels like everything is in its right place.  Oh and 3 days after we moved everything...I found the perfect light!

Our new light!! It was a problem to install (like all the lighting in our house) but we are so happy to have light again!!

 We've already decorated for two holidays in this space and clearly I love it because I have the photos to show it!  Valentines Day was so much fun...and keeping in our minimalist journey I didn't use 1/3 of the decorations I have so I will plan to donate/sell those for next year.

 

 Just some simple Valentines Decor: some felt ball garland and a heart I made at my friends house was just about all we needed.  Our Aria Diffuser was going non-stop with the pink light and we used lots and lots of Joy, Ylang Ylang, and Northern Lights Black Spruce for all the good smells and loving vibes.

 

And now here we are all ready for my favorite holiday of the year St. Patrick's Day!! I live for all things green and really toned it down with my decor this year as well.  It was hard to not put everything out but I don't love all of it so I left that in the box.  We brought back out my mom's Philodendron that has been in our room all year...it was starting to look really sad and I think it just wants to be back out in more sunlight. I still can't believe that its over 30 years old and still hanging in there. I love that the Aria Diffuser has a green light option so that it can continue to be a piece of decor through every holiday!

Happy Decorating my friends!!

♥ Ashley