Our Simple Fall Home

After a pretty long stretch of 90 degree days, we're finally experiencing some cooler temperatures.

I was motivated to do a little fall decorating.  I don't do a lot, just a few touches here and there.

 

The shelf in our dining area gets a few fall touches; I change the decorations out on this shelf for different seasons. I tried to take a picture of the room with the lights on, but the bulbs glared really badly. I make most of our home decor. Not trying to "toot my own horn" or anything, I'm just a creative person and love making special things for our home. I rarely buy things to decorate with. The sign is an old chalkboard that I painted. I made the candle sticks from wood posts and I picked up the pine cones outside. I did buy the mini pumpkins of course!

 

I've really become fond of simple framed signs lately. Just one word can make a nice statement.

I saw a sign similar to this on Pinterest that I really liked, so I decided to make one for my kitchen.

You may have noticed my kitchen looks a little different from the last pictures I posted. We put in a new countertop and backsplash a couple of weeks ago. This is something we've planned to do for years, I'll do a post on the new look of the kitchen soon. A little makeover on a small kitchen is easy on the budget!

 

 

 A little Fall message on my kitchen chalkboard; I change out the messages on this for the seasons also.

A new scented candle. I decided to buy a soy candle because we try to be careful about what kinds of fragrances or chemicals we bring into our home, but honestly I was disappointed in the strength of it. I could barely smell it when it was in the kitchen, so I gave it to Leah for her room; it smelled much stronger in the smaller space. I may have to buy a Yankee candle, you really can't beat those!

That's our fall home. We keep it simple, but we enjoy it that way.

A Little Tour of Our Place

I always enjoy seeing the homes of my blog friends. Home is my favorite place to be and I know many of you feel the same way. Home is where we build a solid foundation for our children. Where we grow closer and learn to work together as well as play together. I thought I'd give you a little glimpse of where we do life!

Here's the front of the ranch house that we call home. Our house is a little over 2,000 square ft. which I feel is just perfect for our family. I would not want anything larger to take care of! The day I took these pictures was rather cloudy as you can tell. We have been in our home for nine years now and we have made many changes over the years to make this place our own! The room to the far left used to be our garage but we converted it into an office/guest room. Darrell works from home a day or two each week and it was necessary for him to have a quiet place for teleconferences.

A view of or house and shed from the bottom of the hill. We have 5 acres and most of it is actually in the wooded area surrounding our yard.

A different view of the front yard from the driveway.

One of the new trees we planted last fall and one of our raised garden beds in the distance.

View form my front porch. We need to pressure wash the sidewalk from the looks of this picture! There's always something that needs to be done, but we just try to do a little at a time!

Our little front porch and a LOT of landscaping. We used to mulch this entire area every spring. That was SO much work and money spent every year. Not to mention that our dogs would run through it and track it everywhere. Since our porch is pretty much even with the ground, rain would always wash the mulch onto the porch. It was just a messy situation all the way around! I was constantly sweeping mulch off of the porch and sidewalk. Last year, we "bit the bullet" so to speak and put down landscaping rock. It was hard work rather expensive up front but it will pay for itself soon since we will no longer have to buy and spread truckloads of mulch each year. No more messy mulch to sweep up constantly. I'm so happy we did this!

We are working towards simplifying things around here and making it easier to maintain things. This project was a huge step in that direction.

Screened porch off of the back. We spend a lot of time on our porch. We honestly consider it to be one of the rooms of our house! All of those rocks lining our landscaping came from the ground when they were building the house. We have tons of that rock in our ground. We have built fire pits with it and given some to friends for fire pits. It's great to have so much available for projects, but not so great for gardening! We have to use raised beds because we can't plant in he rocky ground. That's the Tennessee hills for ya!

This is just a portion of our driveway. We are 1/4 mile from the road so there's a lot more of our driveway that I didn't get pictures of.

Well there's the little tour of our place. We have enjoyed raising our children here where they've had room to explore and enjoy being outside. No matter where you live, it is important to make it home and be grateful. Our place is nothing extravagant, but we love it just the way it is. It feels right for us and we enjoy practicing hospitality when we can!

Organizing a Small(ish) Kitchen

When we were house hunting 9 years ago, at the top of our list was space for our kids to run and play, a spot for a garden and whatever else we could dream up to do outside. When we found this house, we knew it was perfect for us. It's a modest ranch style house sitting on 5 acres. We have a nice little trail through the woods and a creek at the bottom of a ridge. Great location, pretty central to Darrell's work and our church. This was the place!

The one thing I really did not want in a house was a galley kitchen. When we checked out the inside, of course that is exactly what I found. I wasn't thrilled, (how petty was I) but there was absolutely nothing else we disliked about the place, so it became our new home.

Today, I actually love my small(ish) galley kitchen. I have learned how to keep things simple and clutter free. That's very important since I do a LOT of cooking and baking without a ton of counter space.

I call my kitchen small(ish) because I don't consider it to be tiny. It's actually not a bad size for a galley style, but it certainly isn't large either! You can see our eating area there at the other end of the kitchen.

Keeping the counters clear of clutter and cleaning as I go while preparing food is the key to working efficiently in my kitchen. I don't have an island or any other workspace, so I have to clear things away as soon as I'm done with them!

I only have kitchen items that I absolutely need. Just the basics. I don't store away things that I'll never use, I simply don't have space for that! I don't have extra sets of dishes for holidays or special occasions. I have white Mikasa dishes in the English Countryside pattern. Those dishes were wedding gifts, so they're now 22 years old. I have had to replace a few of them over the years, but they were easy to find and inexpensive on Ebay. You can see on the far end of my kitchen that I took the doors off of the cabinets where I store our dishes. It makes them a little more accessible.

The oven, refrigerator and microwave are on the other side of the kitchen. Just a little counter space over here! I don't mind a bit that my appliances don't match but we are going to have to replace the 15 year old oven soon. Two of the eyes aren't working properly and it will not be cost effective to fix it.

The pantry had a door on it, but we decided to take it off because as you can see the laundry room door is to the right and those doors were constantly hitting each other. This is SO much nicer.

I turned this into a baking pantry for the most part. I store canned goods and cereal boxes in another cabinet behind closed doors. I bake all of our bread, so this makes getting to my baking supplies nicer and easier. It's the little things!

That's the grand tour of the little galley kitchen that I didn't think I wanted!  It serves my family well and I'm so thankful for it!