Every year I like to recap the work we’ve done in the house whether it was a big renovation or a small DIY. It shows how much you’ve been able to accomplish in a year even if there were not huge projects. Not everything needs to be crazy before and afters or work that requires you to eat, sleep, and breathe it but small updates to your home over time make it your own and make it right for you and your family! Some years we’ve done a ton of work and other years we’ve done minimal, this year was definitely minimal work but it was also our first full year with our son, so we were sure to soak up all of our parenting moments!
Looking back, I realized we basically did 2 main projects to our home. We updated our living room a bit and we finally made a massive stride to updating the spare bedroom that we use as our art and music room! In between these projects, we threw a 1st birthday party at home, went on our first family vacations, enjoyed our summer, and tried to make as many holiday memories as we could amongst the chaos that come with that time of year. Take a look at all the work we did and click through to the full blog posts to show all the details of each DIY and home project!
DIY Built-In Book Shelf – Phase 1
This project was a long one and definitely required a lot of work and time. We started the first phase of our DIY built in bookshelves and desk in 2022 and finally finished the phase 1 in 2023. We are actually about to start phase 2 (the top built in shelves) to be fully completed!
When we started the bottom portion of the built-in shelves and desk, I was still pregnant with Graham. Once Graham was born, we let the project sit for a while and soaked up the newborn stage. Once the colder weather of 2023 hit and we were almost always inside, we got to work to finish the bottom portion of the built-ins. You can read all about the first phase of our DIY built in bookcase and desk here!
New Bamboo Cordless Window Shades
Something we have been wanting to do since we moved it was replacing all the blinds. If you didn’t know, blinds can be very expensive so we didn’t rush to get them right away. We finally felt like it was time to invest in new shades for the back large windows and I knew I wanted that bamboo shade look.
I found a great option for a great price on Home Depot that allows you to basically customize the width that is needed. Such a great ‘customized’ feature without the custom price!
You can read all about the new blinds for our living room windows here.