It’s been nearly a year since my last blog post, and while I didn’t really intend to take a break, it turns out it wasn’t such a bad thing. We’ve been doing well, and it wasn’t for any reason in particular. I’ve kept busy with farming, flowering, raising kids, house projects, schooling, and trying some new things along the way. I thought we were well overdue for an update on the kitchen, since I left you hanging in the midst of a ORC. I can’t even seem to remember why… I guess life just became full. We had one of our best years homeschooling ever (which is lovely to say, since I was nervous ha ..read more

This week we are making progress on the kitchen in the way of getting the backsplash installed, and choosing paint! I am finishing this kitchen off as part of the One Room Challenge. It’s technically week 4, but week 2 for me! If you have been following me for some time, you might know that I seem to have this thing for painting cabinets. In fact it was painting our original farmhouse kitchen cabinets in our last house that put this little blog on the map. So of course, I can not leave well enough alone… the kitchen island was begging for some color. In my heart of hearts I kind of wanted to p ..read more

It’s a very exciting time at the old farm… our 100 year old farmhouse is getting a new kitchen!! Its been a quiet several months here on the blog, but I decided it was time to come back with a kitchen renovation. I will be sharing our English Country Inspired Kitchen Renovation over the next several weeks, and jumping in (2 weeks late) as a guest participant for the One Room Challenge. This is not my first time signing up for the challenge- you can see the other kitchen we renovated here, and the bedroom we did for our boys here. When we moved to the farm 2 years ago, we started out by cleanin ..read more

Life has felt full and lonely all at once. December came in a fog, with a flurry of snow. A blanket of white covered our barns, land, and trees, every bough heavy. In a way it was beautiful, and in another I couldn’t help but feel trapped. Angry, wishing for it to stop. Waking up in the morning dreading to look outside. Knowing that every task was made more difficult. When the morning comes, the embers of the fire are long cooled down, and it isn’t an inviting place to be. Inch upon inch of snow, cloudy day upon cloudy day. I wanted to go somewhere else, to feel the warmth of sunshine on my c ..read more

Little by little I have been getting our DIY desk area finished! In case you missed it, we needed to add an area to our home for our kids to do their school work, and this little corner seemed like the perfect spot. Our goal was to do something that brought some character to our home, while keeping the costs low, as we are planning to do a kitchen reno which will include replacing the floors in the main living area. I love how this DIY desk area is coming together, and what is more important, the kids are using it a ton! I had sampled several colors and decided to go with Backwoods from Benjam ..read more

shop the full range of Beauty Counter Products Here (Canada and US) A little over a year ago I was introduced to some clean skincare products that I had heard of again and again, but just hadn’t gotten around to trying! It all started with some brightening facial oil, and then my sister and I decided to take a deeper look into their products. She spent the last several years working for a large skincare company, and we were drawn to Beauty Counter not just because of their effective skincare and cleaner beauty products, but also to the mission behind the company. I’ll be the first to admit I ..read more

What’s a farm without animals? How we went from one cat to 39 farm animals. (and counting) It’s funny how I can sometimes wonder what we were busy doing all summer, and why I didn’t ever feel like I had time to share more here on the blog. But now as I look through photos, and reflect on the season, it’s all making a bit more sense. While we did inherit some animals when we moved ( 3 barn cats) we also added quite a few of our own. Let me start out by saying, we didn’t want to add animals just for the sake of having animals, as they are not only quite an expense, but also a daily responsibil ..read more

It’s hard to believe that our first season flower farming at the new farm has come to a close! I shared a lot of behind the scenes and many flower filled photos on our farm instagram page @coastalislandfarm. I had a blog post planned sharing our farm’s name and all those details, yet somehow life got busy and I never published it! So, our farm is called “Coastal Island Farm” you can find the farm’s website here, and we are on instagram and facebook too. I was kept relatively busy with weekly bouquet subscriptions, supplying local shops, custom orders and stocking our weekly roadside farm stan ..read more

We are slowly plugging away on our office area, and the first project was this desk build. We added some shiplap style pine panelling to the wall (it comes pre-primed which is nice!) and repurposed a cabinet base we had from the cottage. Matt cut off the kick plate of the cabinet to bring it closer to desk height, and added a slim spacer underneath. Kitchen cabinets are typically about 36″ tall, and desk height should be between 28″-30″. This desk is a little taller than that, but it definitely works! We ordered an 8 foot piece of butcher block counter top from IKEA- and just like that we had ..read more

We have found ourselves in need of some desk space in our home, and so we are beginning to gather inspiration and materials to create a space for our kids to do their school work. Traditionally they have done work at the kitchen table, but I have 2 of our boys taking online courses this year, so they are often doing work at a computer. We have a bit of a strange space off our kitchen/dining/living area, and it seemed like the perfect spot for a desk area. This summer we had planned to make it a “coffee bar” spot similar to what we had in our last house. (you can check that out here) but once s ..read more