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When we moved into the farmhouse, the upstairs consisted of one bedroom and an open loft area. The whole upstairs is in a plus-sign shape, so there was the potential for three smaller "rooms". We needed one more bedroom to give the girls each their own rooms, so we will finally build a wall in the next few weeks to give Harlee some privacy. We also added a bathroom, so the girls could have their own bathroom up there. The leftover loft space became our farmhouse playroom.
 And now....the moment you've all been waiting for...the Room Reveal for our Farmhouse Playroom. To be quite honest, this room has already evolved a bit since we moved in last July. We had originally planned to have the Barbies and doll clothes housed upstairs, but with the older two girls having bedrooms up there and our three-year-old downstairs, that setup just didn't make sense anymore. So we moved the Barbie house downstairs to Mattie's bedroom and made the playroom a little more functional for the preteens.
For nine years at the old house, we tried to carve out a place for the girls to relax that was "their own".
First, we had a nursery in one bedroom and a playroom in the other. When we brought Baby #2 home, the playroom got changed into a "big girl bedroom" for Baby #1 and the toys stayed in there. We put the girls together eventually and moved the playroom to where the nursery had originally been. When Baby #3 came home, the playroom became a nursery/playroom combo. Before we moved out here to the farmhouse, we even tried to put all three girls in one room to sleep and have the toys and desks in the other. It just never worked out quite like we had pictured. Until now. The farmhouse playroom is all I had ever hoped for. It sits opposite the new bathroom, with the older girls' bedrooms on either side. When Harlee's wall is complete and the new bathroom has a door, I will do a walk-through of the whole upstairs. Can't wait to share it with you SOON! Happy Sunny Saturday from the Farmhouse, friends! ❤️🏡❤️
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I really love Amazon.
We have had a Prime account for several years and use it for everything from coffee to toilet paper, books to home decor, music to movies. Some day, I will talk to you about the joys of Amazon's "Subscribe & Save" program and my new-found love for Audible. Some day, I will talk to you about how amazing the Amazon app is and the fact that I have a dream to sell a children's book I wrote on Amazon someday.
Amazon has a host of items that fit my taste...and my budget.
As you've probably seen in some of my other posts, I love signs and wall-hangings to fill the walls of the farmhouse. Amazon has a nice selection of high-quality signs.
I have tried to be very intentional with the items I bring into the farmhouse, since we moved in last July.
One of the things I try to think about when I purchase items is the functional purpose that they could serve in our home. These containers are perfect for organizing AND looking adorable.
A nice warm throw is always a good item to have lying over a chair, reading available for snuggling up with a good book. I also love the natural pop of color that this wreath brings.
Seek out items that bring joy to your heart and make your home feel peace and calming to you.
Be responsible in your spending and intentional in what you allow into your home. And enjoy the process! Happy Friday from the Farmhouse, friends! ❤️?❤️ January 9th marked our six-month anniversary of our "first night sleeping at the farmhouse". Six months. In some ways, it feels like that was ages ago...and in some ways, it feels like yesterday. Over the snow days (and ice day and really cold wind-chill day) that we had off of school last week, I really reminisced about our time here at the farmhouse so far. I started looking through some of my old blog posts and Instagram photos. One of my most favorite memories for the rest of my life will be from 9:00 at night on the first Saturday night that we slept here. Our minister and his wife came out and prayed over the farmhouse. You can read about it in my blog post from that day...Bless this Mess. Since that warm July night, we have enjoyed family movie nights cuddled in the living room, mornings on the front porch reading our books, pick-up games of basketball out to the north of the house, friends over to BBQ, softball practice out in the yard, and for Thanksgiving we hosted our first TWO family dinners out here. We experienced our first farmhouse Christmas with the girls. We have painted and decorated, Added an upstairs bathroom, Tore down a barn, Added a chicken coop, Purged belongings, Purchased furniture. It has been quite the journey and I know we are nowhere near "finished".
Mr. Farmhouse has been working tirelessly in all of his spare time to get the girls a second bathroom. We paid a buddy of ours to do the rough-in work and plumbing (thanks, Brent!), but Mr. Farmhouse decided he could finish the rest out himself. With lots of help from our dads, we have finished the sheetrock, cement board for the tile, and wiring. Next up is paint, then putting in the vanity & sink, finishing the accent wall with barn wood & metal from the barn that is lying beside our house, the tile work, and installing the toilet & plumbing fixtures.
The book is basically an introduction to the five love languages and ways to tune into your spouse's love languages to love him or her better.
The profile assessment that you can take to learn about your love language overwhelmingly confirmed that my number one love language is acts of service. I like to do. To serve. To fix. Mr. Farmhouse's languages, however, are quality time and physical touch. Of course. Opposites attract, right? So over time, I have started to become more intentional with my time spent with Mr. Farmhouse and the girls. I'm working on "speaking his love language" more, to strengthen our marriage and to be a good example to our children. One of my lifelong bestie's main love languages is gifting. She is so thoughtful. She thinks of gifts months in advance. She is always on the look-out for a good gift that the people in her life would "just love". My mom is the same way. I'm more of a "grab a gift card at Dollar General twelve minutes before the party" kind of girl, myself. (Anyone else?) However, the farmhouse has been a great opportunity for me to appreciate the thoughtfulness behind those who have the "gift of gift".
What a humbling experience it has been to have our friends and family wrap us up during the (somewhat lengthly) transition we made from our familiar home of eleven years to our dear farmhouse.
God has been teaching me a lot about quality time and the importance of physical touch over the last few years. He's been teaching me about the importance of sacrificing my comfort and agenda and how to work more on putting other people before myself...mainly my dear husband. And now...He is teaching me about showing love through giving gifts. I'm trying hard to look deep into those I love to find out more about the love languages that speak most clearly to them. I'm a work in progress. ❤️ ? ❤️
Let's be real. I have made MANY impulse purchases of items from Target that happen to be clearanced. Usually, those little clearance tags with the red outline call to me from the aisles. "Look at this amazing throw pillow that needs to be on my couch!" "Ooooo...an aqua- and coral-colored organizational basket!" "Matching clothes for the girls!"
So I made my first ONLINE clearance impulse purchase at Target.com. It came in a nice big box and sat in the living room for a few days. Then one night, Mr. Farmhouse got home early from checking cows and I said, "Hey, can you do me a favor?" "Sure." "Can you put something together for me?" (sigh) "What's that?" And in that moment, I revealed my amazing clearance purchase of this adorable yellow cabinet for the kitchen. Mr. Farmhouse was not impressed. In fact, I think "the ugliest color of yellow I've ever seen" was inserted somewhere in the conversation. But he loves me.
Banana Split Yellow, yet adorable.
Happy Almost Weekend, friends. ❤️🏡❤️ Growing up, I collected keychains. I would grab a keychain on any family trip we took or even something that seemed interesting to me on a shopping trip. Family members even started buying me keychains and bringing them home for me when they traveled. For several years, I looked through the keychains and remembered some fun times with family. And then one day, I stopped. They just weren't that enjoyable anymore and they ended up in a big metal coffee can, where they lived until I eventually threw them all away when we moved to the home my parents live in now. At that point in life, the keychain collection just didn't MEAN anything to me. In the end of my high school years, Willow Tree angels were just coming out and I loved them. Do you know the ones I'm talking about? Beautiful, creamy-colored angels that were were replicas of Susan Lordi's hand-carved angels. My parents started getting me an angel for big life events...my 16th birthday, high school graduation, holidays. And I loved them. Each angel represented a time in life that was important and special to me. At first, I housed these angels altogether on top of my piano. Until there were too many. Then I split them up and put half on the piano and half in my Great-Great-Grandma Hannah's antique secretary that sits in our home. They were fine there, but I just felt like nobody ever really saw them. It felt like they were kind of thrown out there much like the keychain collection of yesteryear. Like when people looked at my house, at my angels, it was hard to appreciate each angel for what it was...a representation of a very specific moment in life. I had an angel from the day I became a teacher...the day I lost my grandpa...the day we found out we were expecting a baby. I had an angel that represented my relationship with my parents, Mr. Farmhouse, and each of the girls. These were reminders of monumental occasions and my most cherished relationships...and they were collecting dust instead, seemingly unloved and unappreciated. Until I began to decorate using what I call "groupings".
 I'm still waiting on five pictures from the photo lab for this grouping. Can you tell where they will go? The two metal prints on the left and the larger framed print on the right are John Deere pictures. John Deere runs deep into both sides of our family history. Mr. Farmhouse and I have both lost our grandpas in the last eight years and they were both John Deere men. I have a picture of each of them with their tractors getting printed to be hung on this wall, as well as pictures of the girls in their Key overalls. (Sidenote: Having the DVDs on display like that just about makes me crazy. Still trying to find a way to hide them that won't cost a fortune.) Pictured above:
(top left, represents the stages of our life - marriage, pregnancy, baby, toddler, big girl) (top right, in my office - my praying & praising angels, my "create" sign) (bottom left, education - the two books on the left were Matthew's great-grandparents', my reading and teaching angels, and a primitive framed alphabet from my in-laws when I became a teacher) (bottom right, give thanks...Matthew & I with the girls, displayed in the gathering room) I love having all of my favorite things on display in the farmhouse. All of our reminders of our favorite memories, our favorite people, and those big moments in life that have molded us into who we are now. Decorating with groupings has helped to make this happen. ❤️🏡❤️ In the old house, we didn't have a dining room. We had an eat-in breakfast nook that could seat all five of us if we moved the table out from the wall enough to fit one of the girls there. It has worked perfectly fine for us, but one of the things that was really exciting to me about the farmhouse is that there will be a separate dining room for us to spend time in, eating as a family or entertaining. Of course, the farmhouse table I bought on Craigslist was the perfect focal point for the gathering room. I also found these chairs on www.target.com, but they were unavailable online.
We decided that Mr. Farmhouse's grandma's China cabinet would fit nicely in the gathering room, but instead of filling it with his great-grandma's dishes that we had been storing at the old house, we decided to use those dishes! The beautiful dishes his great-grandma had left us had been sitting in the China cabinet for ten years, collecting dust. They are beautiful and special and we decided that there is no reason to keep them there taking up space and not being lovingly used by our family! And now, it has all come together.  The farmhouse table and chairs make a stunning centerpiece. The China cabinet is now a display case and will be admired and enjoyed, instead of overlooked. The piano now has a home in a room away from the hustle & bustle of the main living room. The dining room leads directly into my office nook, which I'll be working on this week. I also have plans to build a sliding barn door to close off the laundry room when needed. I'm still missing a few prints of the kids to put on the wall and need to hang this cool old window I found from a friend's garage sale. But for now...it's beautiful. I could not love it more. Today, the front door of the farmhouse opened and two high school kids were standing there with a buffet that has been sitting in my parents' dining room for the last several years.
Earlier this morning, before the buffet was delivered, this old pie safe was dropped off at my house. This one belonged to an older man that lived out by my grandparents' farm for over fifty years. He recently passed away and his son & daughter-in-law contacted us to see if we would be interested in any furniture. I feel like this piece was just made for this wall in my gathering room.
I finally (almost) finished a room today. The farmhouse bathroom is now (almost) complete. I need to hang a picture of the girls and maybe a few other signs, but for the most part, it is how I want it. So here it comes. The very first "room reveal" for the farmhouse. Try to remember that I had some "help" from a certain 3-year-old while taking the photos. 
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