Happy Blogiversary!

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of my blog!  One year ago today I started this blog with a reveal of our newly completed Master Bathroom project (click here to see)

and my painted Secretary desks (click here to see that first post!).

We had been in our new home for just 5 months and my mind was racing with ideas of things I could post about.  Thankfully the whirlwind slowed down and I don't have a "backlog" of ideas - now I just post as they come.  From the get go I decided I did not want blogging to feel like a "job."  I don't ever want to advertise on my blog or worry about getting posts out as often as I can for people.  I am trying to do my best to keep this blog fun for me with no stress involved!  I have always enjoyed sharing my decorating ideas and showing people my home and projects and this just gave me an easier way to do it.

At first all my visitors and comments were from local family and friends, but eventually I had readers showing up in Italy, Malaysia, and Canada.  Although I only had 2 followers (yes that's right :) I was getting an average of about 30 hits to my blog a day - and that amazed me.

THEN last October I came up with this idea - painting leather chairs with a stencil

And EVERYTHING CHANGED!

My blog up to that point had received a total of 5,000 hits.  As of today I have surpassed 100,000!  The main reason being, I submitted this project to different blogs that I like and many of them featured my chairs and sent me LOTS of traffic.  The first blog to feature them was "4 men 1 Lady" and I about had a heart attack when I received 5,000 hits in one day.  The next feature from "Emily A. Clark" brought 10,000 the next day.  As of Yesterday "Young House Love" featured them and sent me a record breaking 25,000 hits in one day (I can't imagine how they keep up with a blog that gets sooo much traffic!)  A big thanks to all the blogs that featured me and this project - so many kind comments and emails!  It has been crazy but fun!

So now my 2 followers has grown to 76 and my daily average is about 300 hits a day with visitors from all over the globe.  The top post visited is obviously the barstools with my "RH sofa table knock off" coming in at second.  Believe me when I say I know I am still "small time" but I kinda like it that way, and I never imagined one year ago when I started this blog that it would ever amount to even this much!

Thanks to all my Readers!!!!!  I am looking forward to another fun year of blogging!

Treasure Hunting

I have mentioned in a post before that my cousin Jess has a store in Orem, Utah called Alice Lane (click here to see that post).  They carry all kinds of BEAUTIFUL items of furniture.  Yesterday I checked out her blog and they were having an inventory sale.  I fell in love with this little item (6 of these little items I guess).  The sold tag is happily for me and they should arrive later today!  Click here to go to the Alice Lane blog and see the other great items in the inventory sale.  My current dining table worked great in our old house but I had plans to replace it with a larger one once we moved, along with the chairs, so now I'm halfway there!

I need to put some more time and effort into shopping for tables but for now I am liking this one from Restoration Hardware - The size is what we are looking for, LARGE.

I ran up to "Down East Home" in Layton today and found some great little treasures there as well.  Pottery barn sells these pretty antique door mirrors (for $600 each).  Down East has some in their store right now and they are in perfect condition.  I snagged one and with a coupon and it was just $240! Yeah!!  There are still two left at the store if anyone is interested.

Finally if you follow my blog you know how much I love the Restoration Hardware sofa table that looks similar to this.  I ended up making a knock off (click here to see) because I loved it so much.  Well, Down East has a great knock off in their store right now for $450 - Restoration Hardware's is $1300 so if you don't want to pay that - or tackle making your own you could just go pick this one up.  The finish on it is a little darker than Restoration's but still very beautiful and a great knock off.  My terrible phone picture doesn't do it justice!

Field Trip - Jon and Kori's NEW house!

My brother Jon and his wife Kori moved into a new home last fall and I waited until now to post pictures since I knew the longer I waited, the better the house would get.  Kori has had some time to put her individual "touch" on the house and it is looking great.  First I have to show her stencil projects she just completed (I'm a little partial to these since they are my stencils that she borrowed and I love how they turned out!).  

The Laundry Room - Trellis stencil from cuttingedgestencils.com

Family Room - Casablanca Stencil (in the arched niche) from cuttingedgestencils.com

Love this collection of clocks in the built in shelves

The Kitchen 

I love this little niche and the blue dresser that fits perfectly in it!

The Living Room

The Master Bedroom

Master Bath - the darling light is from shades of light

The girls rooms are also darling (of course!)

 The Exterior

Robert McArthur was the builder of this home (love his style!).  Some of the beautiful furnishings are from our cousin Jess's store Alice Lane.  Other furnishings are just lucky finds from TJ Maxx and elsewhere (Kori has a nack for that!).  If you would like to see my post on their previous home click here.

New Years (Home) Resolutions

1.  Update the Front Door
after seeing this post (and dying) I decided I am definately going to look into it this year!

2. Paint the Master bathroom toilet area.  It's small I know - but I still spend time in there and can't stand the plain white walls.  Hoping it should be a fairly quick and easy project.  Something like this maybe?

3. Stencil some new white leather barstools (since I had to return the other ones to overstock).  I'm hoping these ones from Target will work?!

4. Finish the molding in the Dining Room and on the Kitchen soffit.
(Tired of looking at this unfinished look).

5. Finish all the unfinished areas downstairs (3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a workout room, Kitchenette, and storage room)!  I am really looking forward to this project getting done - I am not looking forward to the upcoming mess that is ahead!  I am collecting lots of inspiration photos on Pinterest for what I hope the rooms will look like - here are a couple teasers!

6.  While workers are here and creating a mess anyway I think we'll have them complete some work upstairs as well - like the fireplace and built-ins on our blank living room wall that the couch faces.

I'm hoping for something like this-

Like I said - BIG CHANGES are coming this year.  And actually I am hoping to get all this done by July since that is when we are "expecting" another big change!!!  Maybe I will even get to decorate a girls room this time- (yeah right!  :)