Earlier last week, before this took the blog world into a mad craze, I discovered an AMAZING resource in the form of one very crafty and thrifty blog – Knocked Off Wood.

She takes popular furniture pieces, like this canopy bed from Pottery Barn…

And creates floor plans for the DIY carpentry enthusiast!  Or beginner

Her plans include more than just a picture, though.  She’s got dimensions, cut lines, recommendations for wood and finishes – she’s thought of it all!

I’d love to try making any of these that she has plans for:

A sleek book shelf that I think would look great on our second floor.

A great console table or buffet.

This cute little craft organizer that’s very customizable.

Or if you’re super advanced, try this island table!

It’s originally $5000 from Williams Sonoma, but you could build it for probably $200 (not including the granite counter, of course!)

What a great way to save money AND have a wonderful piece of furniture that you built yourself and could pass on to future family members!

Is there some piece of furniture that is way outside your budget but you’d like to take a stab at and build yourself?  Or maybe you’d just like to dream about building something?  Is it a simple table, shelf, or a more complicated entertainment system?  Do tell!

Even though I will only be at home for less than 14 days out of the entire month of December, I still wanted to decorate.  I wasn’t going to let anything stop me!

A few years ago, I got a bunch of random ornaments and a small fake tree off of Free Cycle (those were the single days) but when DH and I got hitched and moved cross country, I left most of the stuff with my old roommates.

All we had for Christmassy stuff was stuff our parents had given us, which is actually quite a lot!  A couple of years back, my mom gave me a bunch of adorable stuffed Santas and angels (she used to decorate the mantle with TONS of Santas – it got a little out of control at one point, and that’s when I think she decided to give some of them away), her old Christmas tree skirt, a nice wreath, plus a few ornaments I’ve collected over the years as gifts that she was keeping safe for me.  DH also had a few ornaments from his parents.

But most of it was kind of hodge-podge and not totally my style – well, that’s not true.  I think I could do rustic-country if I really tried, but I’m resisting.  :-)

After I found a little inspiration that I posted about yesterday, I decided to head to the store and stock up on some simple round ornaments of varying colors, plus some garland.  Here’s what became of it!

9 ft of (fake)garland for $4, people!  I thought that was quite the steal.  I tied silver, green, and teal ornaments onto the garland with string and hung it from the wooden bench in our foyer.

I also decorated our piano a little

I’m not quite finished yet – I still want to wrap a few frames and put up a few more pictures and hang a few remaining ornaments.

I put a few more ornaments inside our cake dome, which is handy and turns upside down to be a pedestal bowl!

There was a nice white tablecloth with little silvery-gold threads in it, but DH vetoed that, reminding me how much of a messy eater he is and the fact that we actually eat in our dining room.  :-/  Bummer, ‘cuz it looked so pretty!

Last but not least is one of my favorite things.  When DH and I got married, a woman from our church asked if she could give us a special gift to remember New England.  One day at church she showed up with all of these small white boxes.  She explained to me that one of her good friends had passed away several years ago and these always brought her joy around Christmas time….

Yup, a whole car full of Department 56 houses!

They are a set for “New England” – and I love them!  I grew up with my mom setting up similar little displays around the house.  I always loved the glow of the homes at night and just imagining little scenarios where the little people would be caroling or bringing home their sled after a day on the hills.  Such joy as I remember those growing up!  My mom still has a bunch, but she probably won’t part with them for a while, so I was thrilled when this friend gave me her collection!  How generous!

Last year we set them up on the piano, but this year they are making an appearance on a low coffee table in our foyer.  I wish I had a better place and way to display them, but this will have to do!  Here’s our little New England winter village.

I love it!  I can’t wait until there’s actually snow on the ground and we’ll be living in a little midwest village witner wonderland, with a piece of New England right in our foyer!

The heat finally broke in the midwest, and we were able to spend some time outside this weekend without suffocating because of the humidity.  It was a beautiful weekend!

We spent most of Saturday outside working in the yard.  And it needed the work!  I don’t have any recent before pictures, but this is what it looked like at our last walk through before we made an offer on the house (pic is from mid-April)

You can see a small garden in the center of the picture near the back corner of our property.

It’s easier to see from here…

Except, there’s no more playground.  And there’s leaves and you can’t actually see any of this from our windows anymore.  It’s like Swiss Family Robinson!

Anyways.  The garden had become pretty overgrown with weeds because our seller pretty much stopped doing anything with the yard once we had our offer accepted.  I don’t blame her, I woulda done the same thing.

We inherited a lot of dandelion weeds and Creeping Charlie.  I had no idea what this weed was until my mom told me about it when she was here visiting last week (she got the whole weeding process going – thanks mom!)  Let me tell you – it is the most annoying thing EVER!  Check out this wikipedia article.  It’s basically like mint, it spreads quickly and reroots itself as it spreads.  When you get down on the ground, it just looks like cute little clovers or something.  But if you look closer, there are all these tiny  little vines way down by the dirt that snake through your yard/garden, connecting each leaf.  When you pull it up, sometimes you can get strings of the weed several feet long!  You can kill it with a solution of Borax (which can be toxic to other plants/animals if it’s too strong) and some commercial herbicides.  Or you can do the dirty work and weed it by hand…only to have it grow back almost instantly.

We decided to go the cheap route and do it by hand for now and just get it out of our gardens first.  I spent all day Saturday pulling up weeds in our little 6×16 ft garden.  I have the sunburn to prove it!

Our wonderful neighbor wondered over to check out all the action, and one of them generously offered to let us use his gas powered tiller!  Sweet deal!  So DH got an arm workout and tilled the garden real good!  We took a trip to the local farm store and farmers market on Saturday and Monday and got a bunch of vegetables and herbs.  On Sunday we pulled out some of the loose roots and grasses, and finally, on Monday night we planted everything and gave it a good watering.

We’ve got basil, chives, rosemary, lettuce (leftover from the seller), tomatoes, some type of mystery squash (also leftover), red, yellow, green and thai peppers, and jalapenos, plus some cabbage!

It’s a little late in the season to plant a vegetable garden, but we didn’t care.  All of the plants were half off and we have no idea what the soil is like, so we just thought we’d go for it.  I’m going to get some more herbs this weekend to put in a pot – mint, oregano, parsley & cilantro!  It will be fun to see all of this stuff grow.

We’ve gone out twice so far, and let me tell you, it’s an interesting experience! Homes just really run the gamut, and I’m realizing how thankful I am that I’ve grown up in and rented nice homes that weren’t weird. Because there is definitely some bizarre stuff out there.

Things we’ve seen:

“Bedrooms” the size of closets.

Master bedroom without a closet.

A bathroom with paint literally pealing off the walls and the light dangling from…something.

Recently flooded basements.

Master suites that are definitely NOT sweet.

The largest tree in town, that was filled with cement – apparently it’s still growing.

Half finished attics.

Half finished basements.

Drop tile ceiling in a kitchen.

Bathrooms where the sink and toilet are so close together that acrobatics would be required for a man to use it 50% of the time.

Kitchen’s the size of closets (the fridge opens into a cabinet, which would hit the cook anyways)

Kitchen counters not attached to the cupboards.

Master bedroom with no door.

Lights falling out of the ceiling.

Wood floors with a plethora of pet stains.

Many, many, many “bedrooms” that have stairs up to the attic, and the attic then counts as a closet. ???

Itty bitty yards (We’re talking your deck touches the neighbors fence sized yards. DH called it a sheep pen)

Basement foundations with HUGE bowing going on. Major issues loom for whatever fool buys that place.

Wallpaper that made me want to vomit.

Appliances from 1945. No joke.

Kitchen counters pealing.

Washer in the basement, dryer on the first. Sounds convenient.

A neon pink bedroom.

But it’s not all bad. We’ve seen some beautiful stuff too.
Some amazing wood work in some of the older homes.

Full office and workspace added to a heated garage.

Finished attic with master suite bed and bath.

All new appliances in kitchens.

One house with the original carriage house finished into a 4 bedroom apartment (2 for the price of one!)

Huge beautiful yards.

Original stained glass windows.

Nice patios.

Big porches.

A private balcony from a bedroom.

Fully finished basements.

Still haven’t seen a kitchen that I just LOVED in a house I also loved, which is a bummer. I’m convinced it doesn’t exist.

We’ll see what happens. I think we might go out and look at a couple more, and then revisit our top two (I think we’ve both subconsciously narrowed it down to two places). I’m not going to post links quite yet, but I will once DH and I agree on something It’s very possible we may just end up waiting…

I know it’s been a while, I’ve been pretty busy with the start of the semester. I won’t go into detail, but it’s been a good semester so far!Today is mountain day at MHC, which means everyone is taking the day “off” -or catching up on homework, depends on your type. Also, Romy and Backie are here for a visit, which is exciting. But perhaps the weirdest thing is the recent ‘addition’ to our house – a cat. Well, Lois’ cat. We’re borrowing it. Yup, borrowing a cat. We have a little bit of a mouse problem, and our efforts at using traps have failed. So, we asked Lois if we could bring her cat Aslan to our house for a few days so he could kill a few mice.That was on sunday night.He’s already killed two! YES! It’s also just strange having this affectionate little guy around – climbing on all of our book shelves and walking on our table, and then rubbing up against our legs. He’s very friendly, much friendlier than my parents cat. I kinda like having him around, even though he would probably make a mess of my room if I left jewelry out or food or anything. He’s a nice little kitty. But most importantly, he’s exterminating the mouse population quite effectively!