Forever Home

hi y'all! weather lady here (my mom will appreciate this since i affectionately call her the weather lady as she and my dad are really into the weather). yesterday it was in the 40s. the 40s!!! never thought i would be so happy to see 43 degrees. and it looks like we'll be in 40s all week which means major melting of our mountains of snow! YAY.

*before getting into today's post - there is a big yard sale coming your way on wednesday! lots of good stuff and a couple of things i can't believe i'm parting with!! mark your calendars! :)*

lately mr. r and i have been talking more and more about long term plans for our house and we're coming to the realization that this might be our "forever home" or at least our "for a long time home". eek! i said it out loud! it's weird how we're almost 3 years in and it's just kind of hitting us now. but unless he agrees to move me somewhere south (not holding my breath ;), we're here for the long haul. we love the location, we love the neighborhood, we love the construction, and we love the layout. those four things are hard to come by. it's not perfect - the yard is kind of non-existent in the back so we use the side spaces which is ok but a little awkward. but the good definitely outweighs the bad.

so we've started to map out what kinds of projects we'd like to focus on that are real investments in the house. for example, the shutters that we're adding to the front of the house. they're not critical to the exterior but it's a detail that's important to us. it's hard to let go of that "resale, resale, resale" mentality a little and start thinking about what works for us. other projects on the radar include adding built ins in the office to make that a truly functional space, bringing in california closets or one of those to improve the use of space in our linen and master bedroom closets, somehow warming up the master bedroom more which might mean some built ins, and also adding built ins to the basement to house the tv and all of the STUFF that comes with having two kiddos! back to reality - we can't do any of this right away so it will all be something we plan for, and save for, over time and work on in stages. or we win the lottery. that's plan b.

because i'm a planner and a sucker for little nooks and built ins, i've started collecting ideas for some of the projects. i saw this image on la dolce vita's instagram feed and fell in love. it's exactly what i'm imagining for the basement or the office, minus the tv, for that matter.

i love how clean it is and the flush drawers. it's pretty much what dreams are made of. :) so what are the projects on your list? oh and sorry for being so wordy - it's a lot for a monday i know!!