What the New Year has in Store

As you might have learned by now...I'm a big list person. I like to make resolutions, although I'd consider them more of goals (Philip says that's the same as a resolution), maybe they're more "yearly tasks/accomplishments".

One note made on the poll last week by Christine Steendam was that a lot of people don't make resolutions. While true, something to know is that you're 10 times more likely to make a change in your life if you make a 2013 goal. According to Real Simple anyway. They also recommend making your goals public, so while we share a couple of ours on this blog, feel free to add yours in the comments. We're back to polling through our site, the Facebook poll was not as well liked (didn't realize that it would show who voted for what - making it a little more public). We'll extend the same poll question this week so more of you can have a chance to answer. I'll share my resolutions for the big 2013, while Philip shares his next Tuesday.

I typically make a list of resolutions, addressing different areas of my life, and then in order to make them more achievable I break them down by quarter/month/week...that kind of thing. This year I kept it simple and I made a one page list of resolutions (color coded), followed by a break down of a couple things I can do in January to work towards accomplishing each of the goals for the year. We'll see how January goes, and then I'll work on a February list. In the interest of keeping things a bit briefer than Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, I'll share just one goal in each area of my life that I highlighted (this kind of back-fired...it got long, but hopefully sharing most of my goals keeps me accountable this year!)

The categories that I divided my resolutions into were: God Related, Philip Related, Health Related, Blog Related, House Related, and Finance Related. 

God Related: In addition to getting back on the Scripture-reading routine that we started out strong on when we first got married and have slowly fallen off of after moving, I really want to make sure to go above and beyond in the areas in which I volunteer at our church. That means doing a great job with my 4-year old Sunday School class, as well as in leading our care group.
In January, that means grabbing a devotion book that I can read each day - we were doing a chronological Bible reading plan and we were probably almost done but it became a little bit of a chore and so I wouldn't mind mixing it up for a little bit with something else. Any recommendations? 

Philip Related: Hopefully our new Date Jar will help with the resolution to have at least two intentional date nights a month. With a home renovation and a lot of other commitments, these can easily slide. 
In January I'll have to make sure we get those two dates in (I've already marked days I think will work on our calendar). 

*Swoon*

Health Related: One thing I've noticed since I quit my job back in March, and especially since Winter has come around, is that it's really easy to go a day or two without getting any sunlight. It makes me really tired and so one of my goals is to get outside for a bit each day. It's definitely a goal that haunts me as I look out my window at all the snow and neighbors in their winter jackets. Philip will like it though because it might mean coming home to an already shoveled walk, or more snow women to keep Concetta company (somehow she's still going strong). 

Our snow woman is still hanging out in our yard after over a month.

Blog Related: I am full of dreams for this blog, so hopefully 2013 will be an exciting year in this department. One thing I want to get better at is writing posts ahead so I'm not scrambling at the last minute, and so there is more time for editing and making posts as great as they can be (so bad at this one - but maybe I'm getting there - it's Friday and this post is for next Tuesday!). I also want to improve in things like Photoshop to make my posts better, and hopefully line up some special blogging series, posts about some other homes that inspire us, and maybe even some guest posts. If you have any ideas on how we can improve this blog, or would like to contribute in some way, contact us! Our information is on the About Us page and we'd love to hear from you!

House Related: You've already seen our ambitious To-Do list, and know some of our house goals for this year. The main thing that they all add up to is having a main floor that we're happy with and feel settled in. We know we likely won't get to the kitchen and living room for a year or two, so for now we want to finish the back part of the house (bedrooms and bathroom), and organize the living room and kitchen to be places that we feel content with for now. 

Finance Related: Philip shared our budgeting tool a little while back, but the one thing it requires to work is us entering receipts and expenses regularly so it's actually up to date. I'm almost caught up on the pile of receipts we'd let slide, and then I want to keep it up every day and review it together once a month so we know where our money is going and can save up for more renovation projects! 

That's it for me this year! If I can accomplish the above, I think I've had a pretty successful year. Is anyone else this crazy about their lists? Have you ever fully completed a resolution?

A Family Tradition & Quick, Easy DIY

This is a super easy project, and can even save you money if you are a gift tag person. It's a great thing to do as you clean up your Christmas decorations.

Philip's family has a long-standing tradition of reusing the gift tags on their gifts. There is always one gift under the tree with a gift tag on it from my father-in-law to my mother-in-law which has been around for all 35 years of their marriage. It's a neat and simple tradition, but my problem was that I didn't want to buy a bunch of gift tags as these gift tags are going to be around for years, you don't want them all to be the exact same or it would be kind of boring.

I decided to cut gift tags out of my Christmas cards to use next year. It made me feel less bad about recycling the beautiful and thoughtful cards we'd received from friends and family this year, and it saved me money on gift tags. Also there were some really lovely Christmas designs on them, so I have a ton of unique gift tags for next year now! I'd recommend cutting out the pretty snowflakes or ornament decorations, rather than a picture of your close friend smiling with their dog...but it's really up to you - you have all the creative license on this one.

Just realized that I already packed them up and they're at the very bottom of my Christmas box...so I don't have a picture for you, but I bet you can imagine it.

It was definitely one of the easier Christmas-clean-up projects I worked on...on Friday while cleaning up Christmas decorations I broke one ornament, and while washing dishes the same day smashed a glass in the sink. #getmeawayfrombreakables

When did you put away your Christmas decorations? My aunt had them all put away by the time her kids woke up on Dec 26, while I procrastinated a bit more and put them away on January 4. Maybe you still have them up and are enjoying the Christmas cheer a little longer.

DIY Gift: Vow Art

Yesterday you heard about my date jar gift to Philip, and so today we'll be talking about the homemade gift that I received from Philip. While it is Friday and Philip is the typical author of today's post, he's busy enough writing the drama for our church's dinner theater (at Eastview around Valentine's Day if you want to mark your calendars), so I'm taking this one for the team. I won't try to incorporate him in this post with a painting like I did my date jar yesterday (phone randomly fixed itself, so there is an actual photo over there today!)

When preparing to write this post he emailed me everything I'd need to know about how he came to make this beautiful craft, and so hopefully I can do it justice.

After seeing some great pieces of art that featured wedding vows or other wedding memorabilia, I had been hinting pretty heavily that I'd like something similar. Here are a few of the pieces that I had shown to Philip but didn't want to buy because I knew Philip could easily make something amazing and it would be more meaningful than buying it off Etsy.

I heart this personalized print from Silhouette Blue.

While I don't need Train lyrics on my wall,
 I like the graphic feel from Alexander Creative.

I really love the idea of personalized art (I think I've mentioned that before), and so it was really thoughtful of Philip to take that into consideration and make me an amazing Christmas gift.

Philip started with a completely different idea than what he ended up with. Beginning with an owl inspired (due to the owl trend that's invading the stores these days - and I might have allowed it to come into our house a bit) piece. 

While this is really cute,
I'm so much happier with what Philip ended up with!

The goal with the owl artwork was a layered and textured feel, looking custom and professional, but also really cute and fun. It didn't work out because pencil crayon on black construction paper didn't work as well as Philip had hoped, and the owls ended up looking a lot more juvenile (although I do still love the owls that he made and will definitely hang them somewhere) than what the content would call for. 

I'll still give a bit of a run through on how to make the artwork above, if it's your groove.

Philip started by printing the vows and adhering them to black construction paper with Post-Its (so that the construction paper wouldn't be damaged when it was removed). This way he could trace the letters onto the construction paper below to achieve the font and look he'd planned. 

An innovative use of Post-Its. 

Philip had designed the owls ahead of time on the computer so he had a plan when it came time to craft.

Cutie owls, I do still really like them!

After creating the owls virtually, cutting them out of construction paper in layers was a lot easier and well planned out. It turned out so adorable! I can't wait to hang them up. Have I mentioned how talented my husband is? I couldn't make that on the computer, and I'm definitely not a master of using scissors, can't even imagine how long it would take me to make that tree trunk out of the different papers, let alone the owls. 

The most beautiful construction paper craft I've seen to date.

These owls get their close up.

Anyway, this craft didn't work out for reasons mentioned above, and overall Philip just didn't like how it was looking. So he moved on to another plan, which took about the same amount of time as this failed attempt.

Philip changed to a simpler design, one that he found airy and knew would look great in the white matted white frame that he'd purchased, as well as on any of our wall colors. He went with the colors from our wedding invitations, yellow and grey, because it was definitely a reminder of our beautiful backyard wedding. 

He started similarly to the owl print, by getting the text onto the paper he wanted to use. That's one thing I really appreciate about the artwork he made, he could have easily printed it off the computer, but he hand wrote everything. 

Philip wrote our vows in a heart shape, the left side with my vows and the right side his.  (In the background you can see how he made a light table out of a reading lamp propped up under our glass desk.)

Philip wrote our vows in a heart shape (you can kind of see that above), the words were written in yellow, with the verbs in grey. The left hand side are my vows to him, and the right side are his. Then at the bottom he included our wedding date, August 6, 2011. I have wanted to have our vows framed somewhere in our house for a while, I like the idea of seeing our promises each day and using them as accountability and reminders of what we want for our marriage. 

Philip then cut them out, into two separate heart halves, and glued it on to yellow construction paper, in order to make it a little bit more 3D, similar to the effect that was meant with the owl art. 

All done, just needed to cut the mat.

After finishing up, Philip cut the mat to make room for the artwork inside. I love how it has a bit of a monochromatic and airy look, will definitely go with any kind of paint color or decor that we have in the room it hangs in. 

We opened our gifts first thing in the morning, which is why I'm looking a little sleepy and wearing an always flattering Seattle Mariners t-shirt.

I was so shocked to open it and love it like crazy. I can't wait to hang it up in our bedroom with some wedding photos. I still can't believe we've already been married for almost 2 years, it definitely doesn't seem that long! 

My favourite part of making crafts for each other was probably the fact that none of our rooms have doors right now, so we worked in opposite corners of the house with Christmas music blasting so we couldn't accidentally hear any hints. 

Anyone else make a creative Christmas gift or get surprised by their spouse? Almost done with Christmas posts a week into 2013, on Monday I'll share one other quick anyone-can-do craft that might help with cleaning up your Christmas decorations a bit, and then on to 2013! Make sure to vote in this weeks poll on the Facebook page and on Tuesday you'll hear about our resolutions! Have a great weekend!

DIY Gift: Date Jar

As hinted in yesterday's post, we added a little DIY flavor to our Christmas gifts to each other this year. My homemade gift for Philip was the Pinterest-famous Date Jar. The first place I saw them was here. 

Life in the Green House Date Jar Inspiration

This was a pretty elementary craft, finished in a couple of hours, minus the time I had spent thinking up date ideas throughout the week before which was more scattered and not really dedicated time. 

I started out getting a jar from my mom's house. I cut out a piece of paper for the top to cover the expiry date (popsicle sticks with words on them don't expire - fancy that). On the paper I wrote what the different colored sticks would mean. 

After shopping with the intention of buying popsicle sticks and paint, I could only find already colored popsicle sticks which actually saved a lot of time. I used blue for Winter dates, yellow for Summer, and green for anytime. Then I painted the tips of any dates that cost money with white. This way when we go to pick we can pick something more specific to what we're wanting to do that day. 

Date Night Examples:

• Movie Night: His Choice
• Go to a restaurant we've never been to
• Make a craft together
• Make dinner together
• Pick out a 5 dollar item each from Superstore to make a surprise date night
• Build a snowman

Philip appreciated the thought that went into it, and it was fun and easy to make. It will hopefully also save us some time every time we want to have a date night and don't have any ideas. 

I have some pictures of it, but for some reason my iPhone decided to crash today...not too sure what will happen with that. Hopefully we can get it up and running tonight and it doesn't cost a fortune. I will add some real pictures tomorrow hopefully, but until then, this I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-photograph illustration should tide you over.

Update: Phone randomly fixed itself, so here's some photos!

Finished date jar!

60 popsicle stick date ideas!

Also be sure to head to the Facebook page and answer our weekly poll! We want to hear all about your New Years Resolutions or plans for 2013, and we'll share ours as well next week. 

Christmas 2012: In Review

We had a great holiday, and now we're back Monday-Friday at Grandpa Joe's House. Before we get back into the swing of things with home renovation projects, we thought we'd give you a rundown of our Christmas break. 

Most ominous performance: Philip spent a large portion of his vacation working on the drama for our church which he directed and also performed in as the never-once-seen Director (it was a play-within-a-play) whose voice creepily booms throughout the sanctuary. He's now frantically working on the upcoming Valentine's dinner theater (mark your calendars!) and we'll see if we get to see him this time.

Jokes that live forever in our mammaries: The theme that quickly emerged as the gifts on Christmas eve were unwrapped was anatomy as I received some huge jugs (green in color) and some cute little hooters (white ceramic owls) for Christmas.

Our First Christmas Tree/Decorations: Although this was our second married Christmas, our house allowed us to bust out some more decorations than the condo did, so we improved from some ornaments hanging in our condo window to a real tree and even some additional decking of halls.

I love our versatile Ikea tree decor, and how it goes with my homemade pine cones along with a little  Russian ceramic rabbit from Philip's Oma and a classy polar bear ornament from my mom.

Thrifty Shopping: We set a budget of $30 for each other's gifts (in past years we've definitely spent well over $100 so this was tight), and were pleasantly surprised to see how creative we could get. Philip bought me a top to go with some leggings I got from my mom, a Wii game that simulates...wait for it...The Bachelor! (My avatar is already engaged to Jason Meznik, but I can still win those other Bachelors' hearts.) He also made me something that we'll share sometime soon! As for what I got him, I also made something, got him a shirt, some dominoes for playing Mexican Train (we're getting old, people!), an ornament for our tree, and a Christmas pancake pan. I think we did pretty well!

No words can describe how stupidly addicting this game is.

Most Epic Adventure While Sitting on a Couch: One activity that really lived up to the relaxation we hoped for over our break was watching all three Lord of the Rings movies with Philip's brother and his wife. I'm not sure if I'm a total fan of the franchise yet... but it was worth watching. Definitely long though.

One of three movies watched over the break.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back to IKEA: We hoped to get further on our bathroom reno than our break ultimately allowed, but we did make a trip to IKEA and ponied up for some bathroom cabinetry and fixtures that we'll talk more about soon!

I think that gives a pretty decent glimpse into how we spent the last week. There was a lot of couch potato behaviour, some crafting, a few shopping trips, and lots of family bonding. Now we're back on track and ready to share with you some of the renovations we've been working on. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and even though most people had to go back to work today, it can be nice to get back into routine and get productive again. 

What did you do over Christmas? Anyone else turn beautifully innocent gifts into something else with a gutter-visiting mind? Watch twelve hours of movies?

Also, just to be different, I just shared a question on the Grandpa Joe's House Facebook page in lieu of the typical blog poll. We'll try out that way of doing things for a week and decide what we like better. Head on over and vote in this week's resolution related poll.