Happy Birthday to My Husband!

Today is Kevin's birthday.  He's finally as old as me ;)  I'm six months older than him, and he never lets me forget it.  But for the next six months, we are are the same age: 27.

He says he doesn't read my blog, but just in case:

Happy Birthday babe!  I can't wait to spend 100 more birthdays with you.  I love you!

Weekend Recap: Hockey Game & Birthday Fun

And it's Monday.  I'm still waiting for someone to put the three-day weekend law in place...

Anyway, this weekend was a good one.  It was a good balance of friends, family, and time at home.  Friday night was rough.  When I got home from work, I had a headache, body aches, and was freezing.  I laid on the couch all night and went to bed at 8:45 pm.  Luckily, when I woke up on Saturday morning I was feeling MUCH better.

Saturday was spent catching up on laundry and doing some things around the house.  Saturday night we went to dinner at Judson's Steakhouse with some friends and then went to the Grand Rapids Griffins hockey game.  It was a fun game and the Griffins won!  We decided to head to the casino after the game for a little while.  None of us won, so we didn't stay long, but it was a fun night with friends!

Kevin's birthday is this Thursday, so on Sunday we headed to his mom's to celebrate.  She made us a delicious alfredo lunch and birthday cake.  Then we went to the movies and saw American Sniper.  It was a great movie, and now I definitely want to read the book.

Hope you had a great weekend.  Happy Monday!

Junk Free January: Update

Catch up on my Junk Free January: 30-Day Room Challenge posts

Before Photos

Progress

Last weekend I did a lot of work in our office.  I went through a lot of the "piles," organized, move the furniture around, and even hung a few things on the walls!  It's from from done, but I can see the potential and it makes me more excited to get it done.  As a reminder, here's what the room looked like when I started:

And here's what it looked like after some work over the weekend:

I love these wire baskets from Decor Steals.  They are perfect for holding papers and mail, rather than having them piled on my desk or kitchen counter.

 My favorite part is my little coffee bar area I'm working on.  Our kitchen is small and there is not room for a coffee bar in our kitchen, so I made a little spot for it in our office.  My Dad actually made the shelf 22 years ago for my mom and I talked her in to giving it to me, because I knew it would be perfect for hanging a few mugs over my coffee bar.

This free coffee printable can be found HERE.

Like I said, it's far from done, but it's getting there!  I'm happy with the progress I've made so far, and can't wait to get even more done this week.

Weekend Recap & Some Inspiration

It's Monday--boo!  If you have the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. day, I'm jealous.  Anyway, this weekend wasn't filled with anything too exciting, and I am perfectly ok with that because the next few weekends are going to be jam packed.

I did do a little work in our office, which I'll share later this week (part of the Junk Free January: 30-Day Room Challenge).  Other than that, we ran some errands, did some laundry, went to church, and watched football.

Kevin and I ordered fitbits and they arrived on Friday.  I'm still learning how it all works, but if you have one, let me know and we can connect on fitbit!  I'm hoping it will help keep me accountable with staying more active.  Kevin and I are pretty competitive with each other, so I'm sure it will be fun to see who is getting more steps every day.

I'll leave you with some words of wisdom/inspiration that I'm loving for this week.

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Have a great week!

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday!  I'm looking forward to the weekend.  It has stopped snowing and it is starting to warm up around here...well I mean, if you consider it being in the 20s "warming up."  I don't think I've done a Friday Favorites post since before Christmas, so let's get back on track, starting today.

ONE.  On Monday I shared our coffee table makeover, and I'm still so in love with the way it turned out.  Thank you all for sweet comments on it--it's the first time I've "re-done" a piece of furniture, and it has totally motivated me to do more!  You can check out all the details and lots of pics HERE.

TWO.  I've been doing pretty good keeping on track with my Tone It Up workouts the past couple of weeks and it feels so good!  Especially when I get to wear cute clothes, like this top:

My sister gave it to me for Christmas and it's so perfect!

THREE.  Am I the only person who doesn't watch The Bachelor?  I think I watched first season or two and then gave up on it.  I'm just not in to it.  But don't get me wrong, I do love me some reality TV: Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Real World, The Challenge, Duck Dynasty, American Idol...the list goes on.  Maybe I should give The Bachelor another try?

FOUR.  How cute are these Toms Herringbone Wedges?!?  I would not be upset if these made their way to my house...and they're on sale right now!

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FIVE.  This weekend I'm going to work my butt off in our office (read about what I'm working on HERE)...it's quite a disaster so wish me luck!

Have a great weekend!

Linking up with Momfessionals for Friday Favorites!

Junk Free January: 30-Day Room Challenge - Progress

Last week I shared about the Junk Free January: 30-Day Room Challenge that I am participating in (HERE).  I shared some "before" photos of our office, which is the room I'm working on.  Today I'm sharing an update on my progress.

We got several of the big items out of the room, which has already made a big different (in my opinion).  We finally took the giant TV stand downstairs, got rid of the box of old magazines, moved the box of yard sale items to storage, and I've sorted through a couple of piles.  I've also started a new box of yard sale/get rid of, that I plan to keep adding to as I go through things.  

I know it doesn't look like much, but getting those big items out of the room is a great start for me.  But now the real work begins...I'm at the point where I need to take everything out and go through it all before putting it back in the room.  So that's what I'll be up to this weekend!  I also want change the furniture layout in there this weekend.  Wish me luck!

Coffee Table Makeover: Wood Plank Table Top (Ikea Hack)

I hope you had a great weekend!  We spent ours finishing up our coffee table and end tables.  I LOVE the way they turned out and I'm so excited to share them with you today!

We got our coffee table and end tables from Ikea about four years ago.  They were cheap, and they did their job, but the lack/laminate finish was starting to chip and bubble.  I didn't really want to spend a lot of money on new tables, and I had seen some great makeovers where people added wood planks to their tables.  I really liked the way those looked, totally my style.  When Melanie from Making It In The Mitten shared her coffee table makeover, I convinced my husband we should do the same to ours.  And when he got a miter saw for Christmas, he agreed (I think it was just so he had an excuse to use his new saw, but whatever works).

Last weekend we re-did the coffee table and this weekend we did the end tables to match.

I didn't take any photos of the process of doing the coffee table because I was too excited and just wanted to get it done.  But don't worry, I took some pics when I did the end tables and the process is exactly the same.

First, I took the table apart and lightly sanded it all with 120 grit sand paper.  I also sanded all of the wood planks on both sides and the ends.  I kind of rounded the ends so they weren't rough.

Then I cleaned all the wood off and painted one coat of primer and two coats of white paint.  I just used paint and primer that I already had at home.  I let them dry overnight and then added one coat of clear polyurethane to protect the paint from chipping.

I used Minwax stain that I already had at home to stain the boards.  I let those dry over night too.  And of course I decided to do all of this in winter with a foot of snow of the ground, so I did all of this in my basement.

After everything was dry, I put the table back together and had Kevin help me screw the boards to the top of the table.

At first we just used wood glue to attached the planks to the coffee table.  We put large stacks of magazines on it over night to weigh it down while the glue dried.  It held ok until Kevin and Admiral were messing around and hit the end of the table.  The boards came unglued.  So we decided to screw  the planks to the table.  We used black screws which blend in pretty well with the table and I'm very happy with the way they turned out.

And now for the fun part, all of the pictures!

I took the pics of the end table last night, so the lighting is horrible--sorry!

I am so happy with the way this turned out!  I think it makes the Ikea tables look a lot nicer.  I'm hoping this allows us to get a few more years out of them :)

If you're looking for other DIY coffee table ideas, check out this post: Drink in These Decadent DIY Coffee Table Ideas.

Oh andI have to share this photo.  I was taking "before" photos of the coffee table and Admiral decided to photo bomb me.  I showed my husband this picture and we were both cracking up.  Hope you get a kick out of it too :)

So excited to have been featured on:

Pin-Worthy Wednesday

Linking up with:

Your Turn to Shine Link Party
Weekend Re-Treat Link Pary
Wake Up Wednesday Link Party
Let's Get the Party Started Organizing Challenge

Junk Free January: 30-Day Room Challenge

One of my "goals" for the New Year is to be more organized, so the 30-Day Junk Free January Room Challenge could not have come at a better time.  Serena from Thrift Diving is hosting this challenge and I could not be more excited to participate.  I thought this would be the perfect way to get me on track to being more organized this year.

The room I'm choosing to do is our office.  It is basically just our "catch-all" room right now and it is a disaster.  Today I'm sharing the before photos.  They are scary--you've been warned.

There are boxes of things to get rid of, old magazines, our old tv stand, and more things that I probably forgot I even own.  I can't wait to clear everything out of this room and get it organized.

Here are my short-term goals for this 30-day challenge:

- Move tv stand to basement.

- Move boxes of yard sale items to storage.

- Get rid of old magazines.

- Clear everything out and re-arrange furniture.

- Only bring back in the room what should be in the office.

- Organize everything so that it is a functional office.

I know I will probably only be working on this room on the weekends, so I don't have any major plans in here over these 30 days.  However, I'd love to do some bigger projects in here...maybe this Spring.  My list of big projects in here would be:

- Paint trim white to match the rest of the house.

- Paint desk white and removing backing on hutch.

- Paint the room (when I finally decide on colors).

- Fix curtains (they are too short, so I'd like to add some length to them.

I'll be posting weekly on my progress in this room.  Here's to making our office junk free by the end of January!

Do you have a room in your house you'd love to make junk free?  Tell me I'm not the only one who has a room that looks like this!?!