WHY DO I BLOG? - white house black shutters

The first *real *home blog (besides apartment therapy) I read was Young House Love. When thinking about renovations we'd need to take care of if we bought our house, I had searched google for pictures of painted wood paneling. In the next few hours I spent crawling their blog, I was totally smitten and I knew I'd have to create a blog of our own.

I started this blog in September 2009, the day after we closed on our house. At first I just thought I'd kinda keep it to myself as a journal of sorts. Charting our progress, taking before and afters, it was like my very own *tiny* version of HGTV. 🙂

I could not believe the power of the before and after and being able to SEE my progress. Not only in seeing the improvement and how much better it looked, but actually being able to reflect on how it used to look and say

WOW.

I did that. We did that.

And it only took an hour and a can of paint.

After I started posting links to some of my posts onto facebook, I got a ton of feedback from family and friends who loved what we were doing. I was soon getting emails asking how to spray paint things like light fixtures, lamps, everything. I only knew what I was doing, I had no idea how to teach people! So I just started giving my personal tips, looking things up, figuring out the right way to do it from people who knew, and passing on that information.

I want to inspire people and show them that they could do pretty much anything they set their mind to in their home. I want to be an inspiration on how to start spending less money by shopping second hand. I want to show you that you can have a stylish home while still in that stage of your life where you're stepping on cheerios like they're land mines.

Don't let money limit you, don't let having three kids under the age of three limit you. Make your home a beautiful place, live simply, don't get frustrated, and enjoy your life! Time's going by too fast, we should take time to just soak it all in.