Creating Home: Simple Improvements

So obviously y'all know that we have been working hard to get our little home all sweetly situated! We have put a LOT of work into painting, adding trim work, electrical wiring, raising the roof on the extra room off the house, turning the garage back into a garage, and that's before we fix the flooring, do any yard work, or put anything like furniture into the house. So while all of that has obviously had a major impact on our little fixer upper house there are also simple little things we've done that have completely altered the appearance of the home. I am taking a page out of the book from one of the blogs I follow (http://thefrugalhomemaker.com/) and decided to start sharing our little remodeling/redecorating adventure with you. I was originally going to do a series called creating home, however, I decided to rename that series and use the tagline to make it easier to find my décor and homemaking posts. On with post!! where was I oh yes...I am excited about sharing this with you, because seeing the before and after pictures really reminds me just how much work we have done. More importantly though I want to get into simple things that you can do on a tight budget that can vastly improve the functionality and appearance of your home! So while the major before and after pictures I will save till later, I want to share a few of our minor improvements with you now!

Fix the lighting

Okay long story short if you have crappy lighting your house is not gonna look to hot. Though it may seem that no one would really notice or care about what fan you put up or if you outside light fixtures are "pretty" people do! I know crazy right!!! I never thought it would make that big of an impact but it really does. It is one of the subtle things you can do that can completely alter the appearance of the home. Example....our original porch light verses our new porch light!

It is a simple thing but it made a BIG difference in the entrance of the home. Best part...it was only $10!!!

Of course that isn't the only lighting we changed out we did the fans and are working on doing the bathroom and hallway.

Paint

Oh painting is a wonderful thing. It can turn pretty much any room into a completely different environment. For us we picked grey. I have lived my whole life in a beige house so I was determined to under no circumstances have a beige house when I finally got one. I picked grey because frankly I still needed a semi-neutral color. IT LOOKS FABULOUS! originally I was going to have a general color for the main parts of the house and then do the bedroom different. buuut with it being a smaller space I thought that it would look to patchwork quilty if I did the bedroom and bathroom a different color. I instead decided to make an accent wall in the bedroom. Just a darker shade of grey. We also put that darker grey on the inside of the front and back door. It really tied the whole house together. Plus we did a fresh coat of white on the baseboards to freshen it up a little. (feel free to ignore the people in the room. It was the only picture I had that had that wall and door before we painted :p ) (I will be taking better pictures soon!)

Decorate

The way you decorate really determines the atmosphere of the home. Whether it feels cluttered, organized or sterile in some cases. Now I am NOT big into staying with the "trends" of the year. I like what I like and I won't decorate with something that is "in" if I don't like it. However, once in a while my likes link up with the trends of the year. I love it when this happens because I go all mainstream and say "I liked it before it was cool" lol. Anyway, I am a BIG picture taker. I take pictures of anything and everything. That also means I have a lot of picture frames and little sayings I like to hang places and oh my word I really don't have enough wall space for everything. If you have the same problem then try a rotation method. Pick the ones that flow together well and then change them out every few months. It keeps the place looking fresh and perky and your guests excited to see what you've done with the place. I am still in the decorating phase but here are a few pictures of what I've done so far.

Curtains can really be a key element in setting the mood of a room! The red gave a nice accent color as well as provides much needed insulation against the brutal Texas heat.

The bathroom

Okay seriously the bathroom can totally make a home. It is like the one room that could be just another boring bathroom or could completely be the best room in the house. I am currently working on ours. It is the one room in the house I have put on hold until later because it is perfectly functional as is and I want to wait till we have the money to do more with it. However, I have big plans for that room and I can't wait to share them with you!

Our biggest project.

So the little extra room off the house that has the utility room in it has easily been our biggest project. It had some water damage so a new roof was a must and are wonderful little framing guy was able to do about a half a dozen other things. I am not going to put up pictures for this just yet since we are talking about simple improvements however, I will be doing several before and after's of the house when it is completely finished and as we slowly get more stuff done! I am so excited about our little home!!!

I am so excited to share more details of our little home as we slowly pull it all together! Stay tuned for some more updates! Don't forget to subscribe for the newsletter and like our facebook page!!! You can also follow me on twitter and Instagram.

Working on a household project? Share it! leave a comment or email me at maryannapartlow@gmail.com! you just may be featured in my next Creating Home post!!

Purposeful Time Together

Happy Friday Lovelies!

Oh and what a beautiful Friday it is! Well at least down here in Texas. Today I decided to send out a short note of encouragement. I received an email this morning from basically my all time favorite blogger Lisa Jacobson over at Club31Women (http://club31women.com/), the purpose was also a little note of encouragement (something I'd encourage all of you to sign up for!) and I will be honest it really hit home for me. If you remember, my last post was on the point of being still and little yourself let God take over. But her little "Note from Lisa" today reminded me that we also need to be putting some effort into encouraging loving time with our spouse and families. "...A small, simple routine...A powerful, memorable, connecting time." Basically, find a way find a time whether in the morning or afternoon or evening depending on your schedule to just connect with your family. Her special time was coffee in the morning. And that is probably one of the best ideas (if you don't like coffee insert your favorite drink here lol). In other words, strive to find a way to have a special time whether it is an hour, two hours, or even thirty minutes to just connect. I think the most important thing she said was this, "...only positive communication is allowed." Make sure when you are setting aside this much need and very important time you aren't using it as a way to iron out issues. It should be a time to just enjoy each others company and catch up with each others lives (especially if you have kids). This is actually something that has been weighing on me a lot lately since we made our big move. I have been wanting to find a way to set up a routine (not a forced one obviously) that just gets us together in the mornings or evenings but not around the TV. I can think of two ways I want to try to start implementing this. The first is in the morning. Now I am a lazy bum in the mornings. I literally sleep as long as possible before I have to get up and leave for work. I am just not a morning person. I would like to be though! So I think I will take a page out of her book and try to see if I can drag my lazy self out of bed early to enjoy morning coffee with my husband. Another idea I have been leaning towards is in the evenings. I am an avid reader so I thought maybe I could start implementing "reading time." We can pick a book and I'll read some and then maybe just sink into some quality connecting time and conversation. There are so many different things you could do! We had originally tried to start a tradition at my favorite coffee shop. Every Sunday we would go and it was phenomenal time spent talking about anything and everything under the sun. It's like we were dating again. Unfortunately that got kicked to the curb when money got a little to tight but I am hoping we can turn it back into a tradition again at some point. I digress. Point is there are a multitude of ways to find to spend time just encouraging and loving one another. I think the key ingredient is truly to agree that it will be a time of positivity. Turn on some soft music in the background and talk, take the dogs on a walk, go to the grocery store together! Even though we live with people that doesn't necessarily mean we are connecting with them. Spending intentional time together to talk and connect is honestly the difference between just being in the same house with someone and having a relationship with them! So I want to challenge you to try to find time this coming week to make intentional time to spend together. Purposeful, encouraging, loving time together. Whether it is over coffee in the morning, or sitting on the porch swing watching the sunset. Let the dishes be, leave the laundry for another hour trust me it will all be there when you get back. Big shout out to Lisa Jacobson for inspiring this entire post and helping me remember that purposeful time together is completely different than default time cause you live in the same house.

Have some good ideas of purposeful time together? Leave a comment below or email me at maryannapartlow@gmail.com. Don't forget to like the facebook page! and Hop on over to Club31Women and check out her blog! Until next time! 

Have a Blessed Weekend,

~Maryanna 

Be Still

     It is all finally coming together! Oh it has been a crazy few weeks packing, moving, unpacking, going back packing more, moving, unpacking. Painting, cleaning, remodeling. My goodness it has been quite the adventure! Finally though it is all coming together! I am hoping that also means I will finally be able to get back on the band wagon of blogging. With starting this new chapter in our lives of having our first home there has been a lot of things that I have noticed we had been lacking. Starting with a decent meal most nights and ending with the simplicity of a few moments of quite. As I sat on the couch yesterday taking a break from all the unpacking and reorganizing I realized how long it had been since I felt like I could just be still. It’s funny how we don’t always notice the need to just have a few moments of peace to ourselves. With work, possibly kids for some of you, dogs or other animals, cooking, cleaning, planning the list goes on. Sitting on the couch in that moment I remembered the quite calm of letting the heavenly Father handle it all. I looked around my cute little house and the complete silence surrounding me (the dogs and my husband were outside) and I prayed. Just a little thankful prayer for His providence. I’ll be honest I felt kind of guilty for not being more deliberate in making time to just sit and be still. I’m not talking about time relaxing, watching tv, or doing some other activity. I am talking about complete quite. This time is typically enjoyed by most during early morning or late evening devotionals after the masses have drifted off to sleep. That is perfectly find and completely reasonable especially for those of us who have busy schedules. However, I would like to encourage you to maybe at least once or twice a week to try to find a way to just sit and be still. Even if it is only for five minutes. Time to simply ignore the long list of need to do’s and the twelve million things swirling in your head. Just sit and be still. Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” With all the demands in life it can be difficult to remember that God instructed us to BE STILL. As with all things God did not arbitrarily place that in the Bible. He knew the importance of being still. Trusting Him. When we are constantly running around trying to keep it all together. Stressing about the bills, the housework, what’s for dinner and the million other things we can get side lined. Feeling like the weight of the world is on our shoulders as we try to handle it all ourselves. The importance of being still is to remember that we aren’t alone. We aren’t handling this by ourselves. God is in control. For me in that moment of complete silence when I didn’t have to be doing anything for those precious five minutes, it was like a refreshing breeze just taking every stressful worry away. So try your best to find time and be still. Take a few moments to breath and understand you don’t have to have it all together because the Creator has a plan. Trust Him.  

I hope you enjoyed last month’s series “Finding Normal” if so then I hope you will enjoy my next series just as much! Stay tuned for updates about my next series which will be coming soon! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our email list (I will be adding a special 5 day series for new subscribers also COMING SOON!) And if you liked what you read then give us a like and a share on Facebook and twitter. Don’t forget to leave a comment or email me at maryannapartlow@gmail.com

Finding Normal Week 4: Remembering the Reason for it

Cooking, cleaning, shopping, tidying up, scheduling, planning, stressing, being a housewife is a truly exhausting task. Think about it. You want to have a perfectly lovely little home. Clean and tidy. Everything in it’s place. I delicious hot meal on the table for your family. You want to do all these wonderful things. But it is exhausting and stressful and overwhelming at times. Sometimes we let the overwhelming aspects get to us. We turn our everyday lives into mindless little tasks that are honestly just time consuming and depressing. So what do you do? It is in these terrible moments of wanting to give up and feeling like a failure because you can’t keep up that you need to remember the reason behind it all. Glorifying God. Literally everything we do should be done to the glory of God. The thing is, when we look at it that way we end up finding so much more joy in the things we do. Cleaning, cooking, keeping the house together may not seem to be a big deal in the eyes of the Father. I mean, does He really care if our house is clean? The answer is yes. He cares because it is how we serve Him. How we have a testimony of service. It’s not about the clean house. It is about the mindset behind it. It is about wanting to serve our family through our efforts. Wanting to create a sanctuary and a place to recharge. A place of peace. I am not saying in anyway that if your house is messy you aren’t pleasing God. What I am saying is that when we put even the most menial task in a perspective of serving God it can completely alter our attitude towards that task. Instead of being another mundane task it turns into a joy. The real reason behind our every action should be glorifying God! I know, I know, we all hate housework even the most organized neat freak gets tired of the constant need a house has. So what do we do? well here are just a few ideas of some things that may help you get in the right mindset.

Play Music

Music is just wonderful. It has the strangest ability to completely alter anyone mood and can turn a boring chore into a fun activity. So turn on some upbeat tunes or some good praise and worship music and get to work!

Stay Positive

The biggest downfall we have is our own negativity. Being positive is the key essential element of accomplishing anything! So keep a positive mindset. Even if it isn’t a task that is your favorite try to find something positive about it and if that is just impossible then try looking at it in a different perspective. For instance I hate hanging up clothes I don’t know why I just do. So when I get really, “I totally don’t want to do this” I look at it in a different light and say, “It is a blessing that I have enough clothes that I can hang them up. That also usually helps me clean out my closet because then I just think of all the people that could use the stuff I have (win-win). Point is stay positive. Try not to dread your tasks and just find little joys in them instead.

Worst things First

Do the things you hate the most first. Having the most dreaded item off your list makes all the other things seem so much more enjoyable.

Be Thankful

Honestly when it all comes down to it, the cooking, cleaning, chores, everything is one of our greatest blessings. It is how we show the love and servitude of Christ to our families. It is how we become the Proverbs 31 women God intended us to be.

I hope you have enjoyed this series as much as I have! I hope it has helped and encouraged as well. Let me know what you think! Leave a comment below or email me at maryannapartlow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to like and share on your favorite social media site!