New Kitchen Hardware

Can you believe that we started building our house ten years ago this coming May?  

A lot has changed in home decor trends in 10 years.  As a blogger (Can I even call myself that anymore? Maybe I'll just stick with "someone interested in home decor that shares too much on the internet"), it's hard to stay content with your home.  It's hard to stay happy with your almost 10 year old choices while "everyone else" is moving on to new builds/different homes, gutting their 3 year old kitchens, etc

Total first world issues? Am I right? (I'm right.)

Stepping away from blogging has given me some perspective on enjoying our home.  By not continuously tearing it apart, I've come to appreciate how nice our home really is.  It's provided the perfect backdrop to start our family and make some wonderful lovey-dovey memories.

But (there's always a but, isn't there?), where's the line of contentment versus calming those twitchy things in your head that say "FIX ME. MAKE ME PRETTY."?

After a fairly difficult morning potty training our toddler, I spent nap time sipping iced coffee staring at our kitchen and everything wrong with it. (Normal people do this, right?)  Ugg. The cabinets don't go to the ceiling.  Ugg, our granite has that weird 4" backsplash lip.  Uggg, our island is bar height instead of counter height. Uggg, the hardware.

After I finished my coffee, I gave myself a pep talk. 

So what do you like about your kitchen?  Well, I like that's white and I still do really like the black granite.  I'd totally do a subway tile backsplash again.  Our kitchen is a great size.  It's perfect for entertaining/meal prep.  Beings I picked all of this out almost 10 years ago (when I was 25 and had zero clue what I was doing), I actually did fairly decent.

What would be something easy to check off your "uggg" list from above that might calm your twitchy brain that doesn't involve a gut job (because that would be expensive/wasteful/dumb)? Hmmm.  The cabinet height and island are things that are fixable but not exactly easy.  Hardware! Hardware I can do! (Nate was on board as long as I did all of the work myself. Mainly because he thought I wouldn't do it. I'LL SHOW YOU, HUSBAND!)

I spent the rest of nap time searching for new hardware.  My options were slightly limited because I wanted to work with my existing hardware holes. (I was afraid filling/painting holes would look cheap and messy.)

I settled on these pulls for the doors.

And these pulls for the drawers.

After they arrived, I spent the next two weeks installing them.  My lack of patience and short attention span limited me to about 4 per night but I did it all myself. (I'm pretty sure Nate thought it would take me a year to complete.)

Making one fairly small change to update our elderly kitchen has given me fresh perspective. 

Now if only I can figure out how to keep it this clean.  I want to blame the toddler, husband and/or dog but I'm the one that spilled an entire pot of pasta across the room last night. #makingmemories

I hope I've encouraged some of you to take a fresh perspective on your home.  Room updates don't have to be dramatic to make a huge impact. What's a small change that you could make to your home?

Other Christmas Scenes Around the House

Last week I shared our living room decked out for the holidays. Today I'll share a few other spots that got some holiday touches.  Our theme is slap lights, garland and wreaths on it. Boom. Christmas decorating done.

Let's start outside.  We need a few more lights.  Nate is sad that most of these strands are on their last leg. I'm happy because we can switch to warm lights!  The mixing of cool and warm makes me twitchy.

I bought a big strand of fresh garland and chopped it up and threw it all over the house. Our house smells amazing.  And there are pine needles everywhere. (Thanks goodness for the Roomba!)

Our dining room gets our family memories tree. I love it so much. There are ornaments from Nate and I's childhood, our wedding and now Clark's ornaments. It makes me so happy.  And sappy.

I always try to keep the decor to a minimum during the holidays because our kitchen takes a holiday baking beating and I don't need anything else in my way!  

Here's a large sneak peek of a project we completed this year in our basement.  I told you, nothing is safe from garland. 

Lastly, here's our tree all lit up at night. We're actually going to have to turn the house lights on again in January.

Did you get all of your decorating done? How about shopping? And baking?!?  I'm good to go except for the baking!

Need Help Getting Dressed

I'll be back this week with the rest of our house tour but I wanted to pop in quick and share my secret to dressing myself. (Don't worry, you'll soon see that I'm not turning this into a fashion blog.)

Before I had Clark I loved shopping for clothes. I had plenty of time to browse and try on clothes.  Shopping was fun. After having Clark, my free time was drastically reduced and dressing myself quickly fell to the bottom of the priority list.

I then discovered the Putting Me Together Clothing Challenges. I did the Fall challenge in October and it totally changed my perspective on buying clothing and putting together outfits.  The sign up for the Winter Challenge is today and if you're in a clothing rut, I encourage you to join in on the fun! 

Aubrey is the blogger behind Putting Me Together.  She puts together a capsule wardrobe (with a shopping list) and 40+ outfits from that wardrobe.  I have totally embraced the capsule wardrobe life.  I found with the Fall challenge that I didn't feel the need to continuously shop because I already had a ton of cute clothes. I think having the capsule and the outfit guide really showed me that I could do more with way less.  I also LOVED the daily outfit guide.  Decision fatigue is real and not having to think about what I need to wear is truly amazing.  Borderline life changing. (Not a dramatization.)

Here are a few of my outfits from the Fall challenge.

Here's a sample of some of the outfits are in the Winter Challenge. I got the full outfit guide this morning and I'm obsessed.

via Putting Me Together

Part of the Challenge includes access to a Facebook group that I love.  Everyone in the group is so kind. It's refreshing to be part of a positive online community!  You can get outfit feedback, find good deals, etc.  Super fun.

As a previous challenge member, we got early access to this challenge's shopping guide and I've already put some items to good use!

I just thought I'd share this little secret of mine!  You can join in on the fun here!  

*Totally not sponsored. Affiliate links for the program are included but only because I'm a big fan of the Putting Me Together Challenges!*