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Camping Birthday Party
Happy Campers As a mom it’s always so much fun to watch your kids’ interest evolve over the years. When planning their birthdays I pay attention to what they are currently obsessed with and then I run with it. This summer while we were out hiking on our National Parks vacation, my youngest mentioned to me that maybe he would like a National Parks themed birthday party. We brainstormed ideas for a while and had fun coming up with ways to incorporate our theme, but once we got back from our trip he decided maybe a camping theme would be better. I was pretty excited for his new suggestion because I think there are so many…
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French Country Kitchen: Color Palette Inspiration
I really LOVE how this all turned out. The colors are so calming to me and the light cabinets really brighten up the kitchen. We decided to leave the trim dark because it really captures the character of our Tudor-style home. We also carried the dark colors throughout the kitchen by choosing antique bronze finishes for the light fixtures, hardware and faucets. The light and dark contrast really brings everything together. So happy!
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Kitchen Remodel Before and After
Our kitchen remodel was not the typical situation where a construction team was hired and the job was completed in a few months. We took our sweet time, about 18 months to be exact. The majority of the time was spent researching ideas and troubleshooting ways to make our ideas come to fruition. We hit several road blocks along the way, but we were very determined to try every avenue needed to make it work. Our adventure began when we discovered our dishwasher was broken sometime in March of 2012. After pulling the dishwasher out, we learned it had been leaking behind the cabinets and under the floor, clear into…
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Adding Decorative Details Without Breaking the Bank
For years (maybe even decades) I have drooled over kitchen magazines. The designs that really made my heart sing were were the ones that featured lots and lots of finishing details. I love classical Roman architecture, so anything with pillars, corbels, detailed molding and carved trims make me very happy. I’m the opposite of a minimalist. I like details and lots of them…but guess what? Details are really expensive, especially in the kitchen. For instance, the corbels offered by the company that made our cabinets were going to cost $300…each. Well, you can’t have just one corbel holding up a counter, so we were looking at $600 just for one…
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Ernst Family, Tear Down Those Walls
Extreme Home Makeover: Ernstopia Edition Who hasn’t watched “Extreme Home Makeover” and wanted to just throw a sledge hammer through a wall? I know I have and although we didn’t have a sledge hammer the crowbar is equally gratifying!We saw no need to pay a bunch of construction workers to come over and tear out the kitchen when we had three willing and able kids who would do it for free! I might venture to say they would even pay us to rip out more walls! As you can guess, they loved every minute of it! Not wanting to be left out of the fun, I hopped up on the…
