Celebrating One Year in our New House

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Maybe it was the joys of “tax day” but something rang a bell this week that we’ve now lived in this home for a year.  It seemed like forever last year as we were going through the final stages of moving, closing and actually getting back into our own home after an interim year of renting. I can’t express how nice it has been to be settled here even with a full plate of home-related projects.

We love our house and it’s been fun to personalize it. While it was in fantastic shape and essentially a blank slate when we bought it, we’ve put a bit of our spin on it over this last year. I sometimes feel like we still have so many projects and such a long to do list–I am sure that situation is universal–I decided to take a look back at all that we’ve actually accomplished. Sometimes it is important to look at that you’ve done rather than all your “To-Do’s”, don’t you think?

My first project in this house after unpacking {ok there may even be a little bit of that still going on, don’t visit my basement!} was my daughter’s room. It has white walls and neutral carpet but I needed to make it a fun space to suit her rather ‘vibrant’ personality!

 

View her room HERE and the Projects HERE.

From there I moved on to my office for the Fall One Room Challenge–there is much more on that HERE, HERE, and HERE. I recently added updates and a new desk in the space which you can see HERE.

 

 

Then I updated my Breakfast room with beautiful new window shades and later again with my favorite paint color.

 

 

Before it got too cold, we moved on to the outside and built a DIY Fire Pit in our backyard, that was an easy weekend DIY and we’ve already had many great times out there.

 

 

After that, with the holidays looming ahead, I updated my Dining Room, that post is HERE.

 

 

And also with the holidays and therefore guests coming, I quickly whipped our guest room into shape as part of the “year of change” with several other blogs.

 

Last Fall I also added a console and lighting to our Hallway, you can see more HERE and HERE.

 

Then we decorated for the Holidays, that was fun. It’s always a bit of an adventure reconfiguring your existing holiday decor into a new home. My holiday Home Tour is HERE.

 

 

In the new year I finally tackled our Family Room, the first thing I did was paint over the dark brick fireplace which really lightened things up, you can see how I did it HERE and HERE.

 

 

After months of stalling on decorating this space because I couldn’t settle on decor, I decided to change it out seasonally–eliminating the need to decide on only one color scheme 🙂 Here is the “winter” look, I am working on adding the spring/summer updates currently, there is more HERE.

 

 

Just after the holidays we also completed the transformation of a hallway closet into a mudroom. It’s added so much storage and functionality to our home, that was a huge improvement. The details and how-to’s on that project are HERE and HERE.

 

 

After that, we started (slowly…baby steps) our kitchen renovation with a design board and a new marble tile backsplash.

 

 

Last but not least on the projects list–we {I mean my Dad} built bookshelves from IKEA Billy Bookcases in our front Living Room turned “Library” the post on that is HERE.

 

 

I know, they are calling out for some decor…want a sneak peek? I’ll show the whole room next week, it makes me SO happy, here is a quick phone snap of my first styling attempt.

 

 

Someone once told me a new house doesn’t feel like home until you’ve lived all four seasons in it and there may be some truth to that. We’re pretty settled in though I still have a full To-Do list starting with the kitchen and moving on to the laundry room, master bedroom and bath and a basement all just waiting for attention so we’re far from done.

Looking back I am feeling like we accomplished quite a bit this last year. Truth be told we’ve hired out painting and some of the projects like the mudroom and of course my Dad gets full credit for building the bookshelves so I am by no means a crazy blogger who stays up all night long painting and has a totally finished house in the first few months, we’ve had quite a bit of help–full disclosure!

We’re heading into a full weekend of birthday parties and soccer games {and oh yeah, Lilly is coming to Target which is pretty fun since we love them both!} What do you have going on?

{Don’t forget to link up to the Pretty Preppy Party HERE and you can enter to win our HomeRight giveaway HERE!}

Thanks for stopping by!