I was approached by Food Network Magazine a few months ago with an interesting challenge—create an Easter egg inspired by my home state. No restrictions on the medium used.  Ack! What to do? The first picture that popped in my head was an elaborately painted landscape with a big bull elk at the center. (Well they contacted the wrong person for that). Instead I proposed something that was a little more me—a modern wheat design that is inspired by the pattern I created for my blog background.  They loved the idea and told me to go for it.  This project caused me no little st ..read more

This farmhouse kitchen has some redeeming qualities. Double ovens (do they really need to work?), two-tone cabinetry, and cushiony baby-knee friendly carpet. Nevertheless, these clients are ready to take this time capsule into the modern generation. THE BEFORE LAYOUT PLAN The U-shape layout is functional, so the plan is to keep the layout mostly the same and eliminate the soffit and take those cabinets to the ceiling. The clients like having 2 ovens, so this plan includes double ovens and a 30" gas range.  To save a little money on appliances, I offered an alternative that included a wid ..read more

Another upgrade we did to our house this past year was painting all of our upstairs interior doors and adding new hardware! It might seem like a minor change, but it wasn't an insignificant amount of work.  The funny things is, when people saw this photo of our entry (below), I got comments about how cool that door was. From afar, yeah, maybe. But these were not nice solid wood doors. They were laminated hollow core doors—some painted, some not, and not matching throughout the house.  Yes, for a not-small investment we could have bought new, nicer doors. We may still do that someday ..read more

I am excited to show you our new bedroom today! It isn't finished—I don't seem to have a stash of cash to just go out and purchase all the accessories I want all at once, but it is in progress and I am too excited to wait until it is "finished" to show you! I like things to flow from room to room and feel cohesive. Therefore, I used the same wall color I've used throughout our home, and repeated the accent wall color from our living room. When we remodeled our living room we purchased enough of this hickory wide plank solid wood flooring to eventually do this room also. It sat on pallets in o ..read more

Welcome to the new and improved view inside our front door!  (I know that office wall is really bare right now. That will change!) As a little reminder, this is what the office area looked like before.  And now, it looks like this! Not quite finished. We opted to put frosted glass sliding doors in so we could fully close the office off and still let daylight in. The barn door hardware and doors are from Home Depot, and considerably less expensive than most others on the market, but I'm happy to say we were pleased with the quality.  The little windows on the side were added f ..read more

Hang with me for one more Master Suite progress post—this isn't the one where I get to show you pretty pictures. Lest you think we don't work for the reward I have to show you the dirty work. :) Paneling and drywall coming down in the office This is a terrible photo, but this this Tom in the crawl space under the office inspecting the structure to see why the office floor bowed. There are plenty of settling issues in this house and we ended up using a jack to shore up this beam. While dismantling the bed it was very clear from the few patches of preserved carpet under the bed area how much ..read more

Well hi there. I thought I would pop in and tell you what we've been up to on our house. Ready for an update? We finally started in January of this year on our Master bedroom. This is exciting because this part of the house is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door! Let me throw some awesome before pictures at ya: The bedroom: Of course, we moved our own furniture in, but otherwise left things as is in anticipation of much bigger changes when we were ready. It took us 7 years to be ready. And trust me. We were very ready to rip out that old carpet.  Back in this post f ..read more

While we are on the topic of living rooms, I wanted to show you some pillows I made last year. (Actually, Abby did all the sewing. It's great to have kids with skills!) A friend of mine who went through the same design program as I did at Montana State (Go Bobcats!) did the coolest senior project. She designed fabrics inspired by the prairie where she grew up (she is a farm girl like I am) and sold them on Spoonflower. You can still purchase her designs there on fabric, wallpaper, and wrapping paper. The designs I chose were (front to back) crop rotation, fields of gold, and montana skyscrape ..read more

I recently was inspired by Arhaus to share what my dream living room would look like. I don't typically design rooms in my own house from scratch. Usually they evolve over time, one piece at a time as I can afford to make changes. But I've discovered that thinking about my own room design as a whole is a great exercise. It forces me to evaluate what may or may not be working together, and gives me a vision and direction, even if I can't make changes all at once. And normally my budget is pretty limiting, but what if I could erase those restrictions and just think about my ideal space? Challeng ..read more

What I'm doing: Staying warm. Shoveling snow. Going to lots of basketball games. Paperwork, bookwork, and house cleaning. What I'm resolving: I've had several profound experiences lately that have opened my eyes to the intentions of others. Simply by listening, my view has changed from one of judgement and resentment to one of understanding and compassion. Its amazing how often we jump to conclusions and damage relationships simply because we don't understand the other point of view. So this seems like a great resolution—to listen more and seek to understand the intentions of others.&nbs ..read more