Home Renovation: Making a Space for Myself

I've been living with my husband for a year and a bit now and while I have helped re-organize, re-arrange and de-clutter the house we now share, there isn't a space that is wholly mine. Jeff has his own space (his work shed that I rarely venture into). We've been sharing the spare bedroom for the last year between his music things and my craft things. Recently though, we have opened our home to my father-in-law for a short-term stay as he resettles up here, and have decided that it was time to do something about all my stuff. Since the wedding, I feel like my crafting and sewing has gotten a little out of control (and my nannying and teaching materials have been thrown in there as well) and there really just wasn't much room left in our spare bedroom. What we did have was a perfectly decent sunroom that was basically our junk room for boxes and storage. I hate that space and have been planning on a renovation of it in the future. Specifically a craft room that I can lock up and away from children (when those show up). I talked Jeff into doing the changes to the sunroom now so I can have a space to myself and there would be more room in the spare bedroom. It might actually become a guest bedroom after all. So for the last couple of weeks we've been working on this room. Here's our journey so far...

 We painted the walls with two coats of something called "oyster grey." Well, it's not grey at all. It's a nice cream color. It's one of two colors that are the outside of our house- Free!

 That wall was pink...I just didn't take a before picture.

 All of my craft/school/sewing things are packed in boxes and baskets just waiting for me to shift them over.

 Green trim on the windows made a HUGE difference out here.

 I am proud to say that I figured out how to get the old plastic lightshade off and one of our wedding lanterns on. Without electrocuting myself. Oh yeah, and Jeff is installing the sewing bench for me that he made from our old laundry room door. He's a clever one.

Now here is some inspiration for the storage solutions for this narrow space:

 We're going to have low shelves built in (Jeff's handiwork again) so I can fit storage boxes on them for

 I like this idea, but we can't do baskets because of bugs and the cat. She likes the sunroom and I'm probably going to have to share the space with her.

I saw this picture a long time ago and loved it. Jeff isn't going to build this...hold on, now he's seeing this picture and the design might change. We'll see. But the table part I am going to cover and make it as a work table and large ironing board. I mostly only iron when I'm sewing anyway. I'll keep taking pictures and post things as we go along. We're getting some free carpet from a friend on Tuesday and I'm making curtains out of old curtains we have that are too long (it's drafty in there and winter is coming), Jeff will start making the shelves and get some manuka sticks to make curtain rods for the curtains. It's coming together now.

Too busy for my own good...

I don't know what happens sometimes, you guys. I get into a really good writing pattern, blogging a couple times a week and then bam. I drop off the face of the planet. I have our entire wedding to recap, a couple recipes that I have tried and have photos to blog with, a major project going on, and I can't seem to make time to do this. I need to set a schedule or something. I suppose part of the problem is that I tend to do blog posts later in the evening. Probably not the best idea.

So here's a quick recap of what's been going on at our house lately...

1- We've been paleo (excluding dairy) for 10 days now. I'm craving a chocolate chip cookie like it's nobody's business. Jeff is always hungry and I so wish I could cheat and make a rich pasta dinner with garlic bread just to fill his stomach.

2- I made beef jerky for the first time in my life. It was pretty good, and surprisingly easy.

3- I ordered this yesterday.

No more peeling, coring and slicing apples up by hand once I get this bad boy in the post. Seriously, a person I clean for was using this at their home the day I visited and I fell in love immediately. Jeff loves stewed apples, I love applesauce, what neither of us likes is peeling apples. It hurts my wrist to peel a bucket full of apples. Best part? I got it for half the price it is in stores.

4- We're getting a temporary housemate. My father-in-law is moving back up to this area and is going to be staying with us while he gets his feet under him. He's coming and bringing a big mastiff dog with him. Oh my.

5- Because we're getting a semi-permanent houseguest, we have moved up our plan to convert the sunroom into my craft room. This week we spent a couple evenings cleaning out the space (it was used for storage) and I spent an afternoon cleaning it before spending two hours today painting it cream. It was originally painted a dusty pink and cream color, but the pink had to go. Now we need to find carpeting, curtain rods and Jeff is going to make all the shelves and work tables for me. Can you see how busy we are?

6- We got two loads of firewood last weekend and Jeff finally finished splitting it all and stacking it outside. I think we might be ready for winter now. Which is good because we got our first cold snap of autumn. Next up is getting a chimney sweep in to clean our chimney before we start using it every single day.

Phew, that is a lot of stuff that we've been up to. I tend to ignore the fact that I'm taking a class through my healthcare job and I have homework due this week, I started working at the preschool as well again, so I'm juggling two jobs, our house and chores while still dreaming about our honeymoon trip to the USA in August.

So there's a lot on my plate right now and I'm struggling to find a way to balance it all out. Maybe I need a clone of myself for chores. I'm also thinking about getting away for a couple of nights with Jeff sometime this winter, just a little break away from the hard work here at home. Any cheap ideas?

A Crafty Wedding: Rainbow Recap

I suppose it's about time I started these wedding recaps. We've been married just over a month and finally back into a regular schedule. Once we got home from our honeymoon, my work schedule got really hectic, Jeff was working six days a week and I started working at the preschool as well again. So I'm juggling two jobs, my garden, general housework and still trying to pack away my wedding things. Umm, I'll get it done eventually right?

So I mentioned how our wedding reception venue changed about two weeks before the big day. One of the things we had to figure out then was how to direct our guests to the new reception venue. In keeping with our theme of bright colors, we decided to make some signs for the park. These came in handy and we have them now at our house. What I want to show here is how the spaces looked before the wedding and how all our details came together to create our rainbow crafty wedding.

A lot of people have commented after our wedding that they loved the personal touches and the simple layout of our tables. It felt like a big family dinner and not like a formal reception, which is what we wanted after all!

 I spent a couple days filling glass bottles with flowers and water. Prayed that they wouldn't all die before the wedding and loved how they looked on the tables. The wood rounds on the tables were a project Jeff had to do. He cut 100 rounds for the wedding reception.

 The sign was a last minute addition. This is going to hang on our gate outside eventually.

 Simple tablescapes meant that people could relax and enjoy a variety of flowers (courtesy Nana's garden, the farm, my garden and the neighbor's garden where no one lives).

 Our fingerprint tree was one of my favorite things we chose for our wedding. It now hangs on our wall and I love looking at it.

 In this photo you can see the paper lanterns that have been strung up. The night before the wedding Jeff and his father spent the few hours we were there to hang lanterns. We had enough lanterns to help with the ambiance of the space (plus they were pretty fun).

 In the church the only decorating we did were these bottles and a piece of lace from my mom's wedding.

When I think back and look at the pictures from our wedding, I am struck by all the color we managed to get into our decor. I know there's not much of a story here right now, but I'll get to that when I start to share our day. I do have a voice...I think. ;)

What I Wore Wednesday

I know it's a day late, but I forgot to do it last night. See I spent an hour reading and researching a food fad. So today it was a bit cooler and I thought that I should layer it up. What I am noticing here is the fact that my little boots and my skinny jeans make me look stumpy. This is the problem I have with skinny jeans and cooler weather. I love my little black boots (that have a crocheted cuff) and they are comfy, but it just doesn't work with my jeans tucked into them. I suppose I should just wear different boots or different jeans, but it kind of sucks that I can only wear these boots with tights and a cute dress. I'll do better next time, I think.

I was looking up information about eating paleo last night. Paleo dieting (although it's not much of a diet) is eating natural foods and cutting out grains, sugars, dairy and processed food. Eating a heavy carb-based diet like we do just basically means we aren't eating as much of the good stuff as we should be eating. I found a website that is about going paleo for 30 days (Whole 30) and did a lot of reading. I think a 30 day trial is a good way to cleanse our bodies and to reset our eating habits. So today I tried out a couple of paleo options for Jeff's breakfasts- made egg cups with veggies and ham slices for the freezer. What I think will be the difficult part is finding enough food for Jeff to make it through the work day. He eats breakfast here, has morning tea (breakfast bar), lunch is leftovers, afternoon tea (homemade cookies) and a snack when he gets home before dinner. Okay, now that I typed that all out, I just realized how much food this man eats during one day. Good grief. So we need to overhaul our diet. I don't think we'll be able to give up all the other foods forever (hello, cheese and bread) but I think we can get our diets under control and slowly introduce some of this back into what we eat. Plus I think it would be great to see how I do without all the foods that make me dash for the toilet (gluten, grains, dairy).

So for the next week I will be researching, compiling recipes and re-organizing our pantry in preparation for grocery shopping and a complete 180 degree turn-around in our kitchen. I've got my work cut out for me.

So have you ever done something drastic like this for your diet? Is there a better word to use than diet, because I'm not doing this to lose weight but to correct my relationship with food.

What I Wore Wednesday

I have to admit that I almost didn't do this today. I stayed home sick today and was in pajamas most of the day. But I felt better in the afternoon and decided to change into proper clothes. Well, as much as I was going to.

So I put on a skirt I made just before the wedding. It's made from a rectangle of jersey and is my dressy version of yoga pants. It's not much, but it's better than staying in my pjs all day. Next week should be better as this head cold is all but gone. I am considering pulling out my box of winter clothes though. It got chilly this evening and I went looking for some slippers, realized I have none, and then thought about my fuzzy socks. But those are packed away. So funny Korean socks it is to keep my feet a little bit warmer. I don't match today and I barely look presentable. But that's what I wore today.

One Final DIY

As the days drew nearer to our wedding, I finished up all sorts of projects. Gifts, signage, printing...it was all done. Except one sort of major thing.

Image via: One Wed

Oh yes, flowers. Do you remember way back when I thought I could grow all the flowers for the wedding myself? Ha. That was a big fat DIY fail. Really it was. There were just so many things to do in the last seven months since we got engaged and my gardening has been pretty hit or miss this year (mostly miss). Luckily, we had a backup plan.

A few days before the wedding, we took snippers, buckets and gardening gloves in the back of my car when we went up to Jeff's family's farm. Our idea was to gather wildflowers and greenery from the farm to use for the table decoration as well as the two bouquets I still had yet to make.

Fail number 2.

New Zealand has been in a pretty bad dry summer this year...really dry summer. The North Island has been declared a disaster area because of the drought and we here on the South Island are about a week out from being declared a drought area as well. Well, all this hot, dry weather hasn't been helpful for wildflowers either. Instead we were assaulted by giant bumblebees (which have been enjoying this hotter weather) as we tramped about looking for anything in bloom.

Luckily Jeff's grandma lives at the farm and she has a great garden. She let us cut a lot of flowers from her place and we managed to find some dog daisies along a trail. We did at least get the greenery we needed.

flowers from the market

lawson fir from the farm

The next day I went to the market in town and got $25 worth of flowers from a lady. I also cut a lot of flowers from the garden next door (no one lives there, so I feel like it was okay a little bit) and every bloom from my own garden. As it turns out, this hodgepodge approach to our wedding flowers worked.

Bouts for the dads, which they didn't end up wearing.

My bouquet

table decor

The last picture here is a little preview of what we did for our table decorations...We got a lot of compliments on it and the flowers survived being cut for anywhere from 1-4 days. Pretty good, I think.

Did you flower vision come together perfectly, or did you have to make it work no matter what?

12 Days Post-Wedding

I know I've been absent for awhile now, but let me just say that I'm back. And I'm a Mrs. now.

Image via: Stickman Couple

While I'm still not ready for recaps as I'm still waiting for pictures to get back to me, I do still have a couple other pre-wedding posts to take care of in the meantime.

I also have decided on a couple other series of posts to keep myself busy on here and will start them soon. Since we're saving for a trip back to the USA, we are trying to save money on anything we can. Food is one of those areas we can save on if I prepare more food at home. As the summer comes to an end, I am not saying no to any fruit or vegetables people offer or ones that I can get for cheap. Bottling and canning food for the winter is high on our priorities. I also am attempting to master making bread at home for sandwiches. I'll be chronicling my food attempts weekly to share with you readers.

Living a sustainable life is a growing concern for us and is something we are working towards at home. We have a lot of projects and plans for our house to make life better for us, so I'll be sharing those projects as well.

In the meantime, I'll tease you with this wedding picture of us just after the ceremony.

Personal picture

I'm really glad to be back on here and looking forward to getting back to a normal blogging schedule again. I've missed everyone the last few weeks!