Reno Report - How To Build A Stone Walkway

this past Canada Day long weekend we paid a little much needed attention to the outside of our house. as you can clearly see, our home is situated on a pretty steep slope, which can make walking down the side of our house very risky. because of that area being our access to the backyard, our grass actually doesn't even want to grow there anymore, so in most cases you just slide yourself down a little mud patch. not so fun when with a lawn mower or when balancing a tray of drinks, etc. being the home DIYer's that we are trying to be, we decided we would tackle building our own stone walkway to give us a much better walking path. after some research, reading and a car load of supplies from the always helpful, Home Depot, we finally managed to cross this project off our list and it has made a world of difference.

so, for anyone who is looking to add a little curb appeal, or function to your yard, here is our simple "how-to" for building your own stone walkway.

first start out by deciding on the stones you want to use. we were fortunate that we had been given some leftover concrete paver stones pieces from a project on another house, so we decided to take this opportunity to use those. once you have the stone pieces you wish to use, the next thing to do is to layout your pattern in the way in which you want it to appear when finished. as i mentioned the side walkway for us had little to no grass growing because of all the slipping and sliding, so we decided to arrange our stones 6 inches a part in the hopes of laying some grass seed between the stones and encourage some growth. fingers crossed!

once you have decided on your patten, you then need to mark the stone area. we used a flat edged shovel and cut around the perimeter of the stone creating a guided area to dig within. once you have your outline cut, dig out 6 inches of grass and earth to create an even hole. it is important to ensure you go at least 6 inches deep so that you can create a strong solid base for your stone path. next add a layer of landscape fabric cut to the size of your hole. this fabric is designed to help stop weed growth, encourage proper water drainage and to create a good non-slip base for your gravel fill to sit on. once your landscape fabric is in place, start adding in your gravel stones until you reach 3 inches thick. next add in 2 inches worth of screening (a very fine sand/stone) on top. using a level, or something with a straight edge, move the screening around in the hole to ensure a nice flat and level surface. be sure to consider how you want water to run away from you house and adjust any slightly curves or angles with your stone with that in mind.

once your think your screening is level, using a tamper, compress your sand mixture. this helps to ensure that all the sand and stones have started to settle into all the small cracks and grooves, making a nice even surface for your stone to sit on. once you have finished tamping, add your stone into the hole. if it doesn't sit flat and level to the ground, readjust by adding or moving the screening around. once you are happy with how the stone is sitting fill ing any surrounding cracks or holes with the earth you pulled out. make sure you pack it tightly enough to create a nice seal.

work your way stone by stone down your path until voila, your beautiful walkway is complete! as you can see from our yard we still have a lot on our "to-do" side of the house list, but at least we have one thing crossed off for now! this path now makes it much easier for us to carry working supplies for more projects, or food and drinks down for summer patio parties!

Reno Report - Shopping for New Windows

image via here 

We are now on our next phase of "big ticket item" reno's on our little old house. this second phase ... dun, dun, dun ... includes windows. brace for impact.

we've learned quite a lot over the last while. when we first bought our place we knew there were a few things that needed pretty immediate attention, and one of those was the upper and lower windows. for anyone who has done it, or is thinking of doing it, it is a big undertaking, but one that makes some serious improvements to curb appeal and energy efficiency in your home. since our windows were original from the 70's, you can but your bottom dollar they are NOT efficient.

when you start out looking for windows it's easy to become overwhelmed by the mass amounts of information. styles, colours, grilles/mullions, coated, wood, vinyl etc., etc., etc. our best advice would be to first set some ground rules and examine your timelines and immediate needs. we have come to learn that the recommend bang for your buck is to do a least a minimum of 4 windows. many good companies recognize that to do a whole house in one shot is difficult for most in terms of budgets, and therefore help you breakdown a process for over a year (or two or three). we like these companies best!

image via here

in the past few weeks we have done a LOT of research and met with a LOT of companies. some good, some bad! here are some key things we have learned and tips to consider:

• casement windows are generally more expensive than single/double hungs or sliders.
• do you open all your windows? if not then make those a picture window to save some money!
• while wood windows are beautiful on a home they are by far the most expensive option and require a ton of maintenance
• the most popular and affordable windows today are vinyl (ask to see a sample to make sure it's a good thick vinyl to support the weight) and can come in a range of colour options to help you fit your needs
• window sizing - while some companies will tell you they can make a window for any size it's important to do your homework on general size restraints for a select type of window option, as bigger windows can be very heavy and must support the weight of the glass and the structure around it
• when it comes to choosing colours and upping curb appeal many experts recommend keeping the exterior colour scheme the same for all windows front to back and upper to lower
• a brick to brick replacement with spray foam installation while more expensive, is considered to be the best option for a well insulated window 
• a good installation is the key, make sure you use the manufactures in-house install team if they have, or a reputable company with a good track record – a bad install can in many cases void a manufactures warranty
• once a house settles on a new window you can sometimes encounter the odd issue (harder to open etc.), make sure the company you choose outlines any procedure and coverage should that happen
• grilles can add a lot of beautiful visual interest for a low cost, and we highly recommend placing grilles inside the glass so you never have to worry about dusting or cleaning them!
• many window companies now offer lifetime warranties, transferable to new homeowners if you ever sell
• most old windows have an aluminum spacer between the two panes of glass in a window, good quality windows now have a foam spacer to help reduce heating/cooling conduction, as well as are filled with argon gas.
• when calling suppliers don't hesitate to ask for reference, and call recent customers to ask for their likes and dislikes before choosing a company
• there is almost always room to negotiate on a quoted price
• never feel pressured by a sales man – windows are a huge investment and should be mulled over and properly researched – don't fall prey to a good deal in the moment

with all this good information, we now have some big decisions to make! wish us luck! we will share some before and after's when the first round of window's is in! 

The Reno Report - The After Kitchen

I am very excited to finally share these before and after pictures of our home kitchen. to help give this some perspective here are a couple of reminder photos of what this space looked liked when we first saw it and then purchased the home. it's a galley style kitchen, so it's long and narrow. our main goal was to brighten the space and add a little bit of a modern facelift without sinking a ton of money into it. click here to view our inspiration board from this old post. some of the cabinet space didn't justify being there, so after we moved in we spent a couple months planning how we needed the space to function and where we needed things to be. this gave us a focus on what needed to be included, removed and how to make it all a little more friendly and multifunctional.  

again much like the rest of the house, as new home owners we really want to work with what we have for a few years. we started by pulling off the old cabinet doors and hiding those old wooden handles and exposed trim along the ceiling and floors with fresh white paint. following that we freshened  them up even more by adding sleek stainless steel pulls. with the help of our family we painted the walls a nice soft buttery yellow and cleaned up the window and baseboard trim with more of that clean white paint. we then removed the old dusty metal blind from the window over the kitchen sink and added white linen french bistro style curtains. we love natural night, so aside from the one window  we decided to leave the bay window bare. it's heaven. a few months ago we were also fortunate enough to source a really great dishwasher on a major sale and scooped it up fast so we could retire the off-white  old one (it sadly had rust inside it causing spots on all the dishes).
 

what you now see as our morning coffee bar used to be a very narrow worn out broom closet. since that cabinet literally could only fit a broom and held the light switch for the room, we agreed to  rip it out and replaced it with the all white and wood top butcher block on wheels that we sourced from the Cuisinart line at Canadian Tire. i'm still impressed at how well it blends in the space. we added two stainless steel shelves above for our coffee cup display. this is easily my favourite spot in the kitchen. it added a great focal point to the room and an unique way to add some storage space.

 

 

as you can see we also had a section of unused space in the corner beside the bay window seat. here we placed a smaller waist height cabinet (also butcher block style and on wheels) that came from Canadian Tire. we then custom fit shelving above for additional small item storage. this help us to maximize every corner we could for storage space in the kitchen, freeing up counters. helpful hint - if you find you don't have enough storage, the best thing to do is look up. add a shelf over doors ways for cook books or, platters. adding height can also make the room feel taller and more spacious. 

we kept the old seafoam glass table from my old apartment and fitted the bay window with some pillows for seating. i love waking up late on weekend mornings and sitting there with a warm coffee, good book, looking out over the ravine behind us. 

we feel inspired cooking and creating in this space. it's comfortable when we have parties, and we love entertaining. it feels refreshed and bright and clean and that's what we love the very most.

What we used!

• Paint - Benjamin Moore, Dijon
• Trim Paint - Benjamin Moore, Cloud White
• Cabinet Pulls - Home Depot, Satin Nickel
• Linen Curtains - Handmade
• Magnetic Knife Rack - Ikea, Gruntal
• Table - Craigslist
• Chairs - Ikea, Ingolf
• Cabinet Butcher Blocks on Wheels - Canadian Tire, Cuisinart
• Hanging Planter - Etsy, Monique Cote

The Reno Report - White Kitchens

our kitchen before ... 

our inspiration board after weeks on pinterest ... 

images via

i love the use of white in a kitchen. it's so fresh and clean and bright. it's calming and it makes me feel really creative. as i'm getting older i find i really love to cook, so i like saving my bright colours for food and in my dishware. much like a few of the other rooms i have shared, we have a number of elements we have to work around until a bigger reno is possible. in the case of our kitchen we have faux wood looking countertops and some old cabinetry. so, most of what we are trying to do is a few updates to help make what we have look a bit more modern, i'll just call "phase 1", aka. the temporary facelift. for the past few months we've been chipping away at putting a little love and life back into this main hub of our house.

the update list we are tackling includes:

• paint old wood cabinet handles white and add cabinet pulls
• remove the blind over the sink and add curtains to the window
• removed useless and extremely small small broom cabinet (that actually only fits a broom)
• paint the yellow hoodfan
• change old light fixtures 
• hang some small fun art/images
• change out old not working properly dishwasher 
• maximize or increase storage space to the fullest potential
• paint ceiling a nice bright white

we are almost done getting through this list and I just cannot wait to show you the results! i'm very excited with how much happier and brighter this kitchen feels. our life right now is all about budgets so learning what you can do with a little pocket money is so important, and I think i have some great ideas to share. 
 i would love to see your before and afters, link them in the comment! what does your dream kitchen look like?

The Little Home Office That Could

sometimes people ask me where i blog from, well the answer is i blog from my newly completed little home office. when we bought our house, the space which is now our office, was used as a small spare bedroom for visiting  out of town guests by the previous owner. since right now it's just the two of us sharing this home, and we have more bedrooms than we could need at the moment, we decided  to turn this small space into a working library/home office. after a bit of brainstorming and strategic pinning we came up with the best design plan for what we envisioned for this area. before you renovate or redo any room, it's important to ask yourself what you need out of the space and assess what you want will make this area unique to you. what "things" will you need to house there? what's function does this room serve? how often will it be used? do you want a comfortable casual space, or a more formal one? it's important to plan properly in order to save yourself  the extra hard earned pocket money, and the heart ache to redo it.

 

for us the answers quickly came down to maximum storage and function. we both do a lot of work from home so we definitely needed enough surface desk space that we could both easily spread out paperwork. secondly we needed to effectively store office supplies and keep all my art supplies within reach. we then came to realize that we have a TON of books that we needed to still unpack (after a year of having them in boxes). clearly in the modern age of kobo's and online readers, we still cannot pry ourselves away from good old hardcopy books. lastly, photography is a huge passion of mine (which you can see more of here), so we wanted a place to store reference books, old photographs,  albums and camera equipment all together.

much like the "pinspiration" images above, we agreed on creating a cozy dark space, with deep rich tones and library inspired wall-to-wall shelving. as a finished space we wanted it to feel an inviting place to work

to give you some background, here is the room before ....

and here is what it looks like today!

i LOVE how this turned out. the room immediately looks so much bigger than before. after a bit of back and forth with the furniture placement, we finally figured out that the L-shaped layout of desks was the configuration that maximized the best working surface space. by also mixing Ikea Expedit and Ikea Billy shelving with the Rubbermaid track shelving for it not only create a healthy balance of visual depth and interest, but it also quickly increased our storage space and achieved the library look we were after. much the opposite of what you might think, ceiling to floor shelving in a small space can actually increase the visual height and width of a room. the trick is just to keep the shelving to two or three walls.  if you can't use shelving, stack diploma's or a series of framed abstract art above a desk up to draw the eye up towards the ceiling and around the room. in this office we wanted to go with a dark and cozy feeling which is why we painted the walls light and used a blended mix of warm wood tones and dark brown/black to off set the colourful books and objects that adorn the shelves. as a helpful tip create the look of a bigger space in a small room, paint shelving in a tone the same or similar to that of your wall colour. now that this room is finally organized, I love coming into this office and working in this space. in fact, i the day we brought home the small succulent plants for the office was the day this room officially finally felt finished to me!

 

now every time we go in our library home office, we feel organized, at ease and ready for business.

Our Office Supply List

• Ikea - Expedit Shelves
• Ikea - Billy Bookcase
• Rubbermaid Fast Track Upright
• Home Depot - Goodfellow MDF Black Shelving
• Honey Brown Maple Desk (created by a family member!)
• Ikea Micke Desk
• Benjamin Moore Paint - Barren Plain
• Hampton Bay  Egon Ceiling Mount Light
• West Elm - Wire Mesh Storage Baskets
• Amazon - Tech Tools Madness Series Stop Hand Bookends
• Storage Solutions - Birger Drawer Storage in Grey
• Overstock Dali Native Bamboo Roman Blind

**For more HOME RENOVATION before and afters click on the sidebar tab, or click here!**

Renovations: Let's Bench It

please don't judge me by this horribly fast slapped together photoshop job of our master bedroom, but i wanted to share with you what we are hoping to do. now that the major reno's in this room are completed, we are well into the fun decorating phase. always my favourite phase, of course. much of the furniture we currently have (outside of the bed frame and mattress) are borrowed from our lovely family until we find pieces that best fit our needs. in this awkward adaption you will see that we are on the hunt for a vintage looking rug, wooden side tables, wall mounted lamps, light coloured curtains and .... the debate of all debates - a bench/benches.

in short, we know we want to add either two small stools or one longer bench at the end of the bed, but we just can't seem to decide what is better. we love the idea of having a place to sit and put our socks or tights on, and a location to house all the decorator pillows before bed (off the floor). as always we want to find something that is multifunctional, since we are all about investing in timeless pieces that we can use and reuse in a variety of ways in years to come. something classic and simple that will create a nice visual accent to the room. that can't possibly be that hard to find right? well now the hunt is on... and i'm open to any and all suggestions that you readers have. what option do you think would fit our space best? does anyone have either and do you find you use it?

since i haven't yet shared any before and afters of our master bedroom, here are a few photo's from the walk through before we bought it, up until where we are current at (minus the dresser).

to help understand where we have come from to where we are, here is a bit of a breakdown. the upstairs in our home was fully carpeted so we jumped at the opportunity to replace it with this beautiful maple hardwood before moving in, which matches what we already have downstairs. in the midst of pulling up rolls of old carpet,  we had this genius idea to remove all the stucco (otherwise known as the evil popcorn finish) off the ceilings. scraping off stucco creates a HUGE mess. so much of a mess that you wouldn't dream of tackling this after you move all your stuff in without the help of a professional. so, hence why we jumped to try our hand at this DIY project before the floors went in. techniques on how to remove stucco is a whole other dedicated post that i will happily share in the future, but as a starting point invest in a good dusk mask.

once all that demo needed was done in the room, walk-in closet and ensuite (see our ensuite before and after here), we then got the ceiling painted and moved on to picking out a wall colour. we knew we wanted something dramatic. something that wasn't overly masculine or overly feminine, but a colour that would create a cozy and modern feeling. after days of hunting out paint swatches we finally landed on this very dark purple from Benjamin Moore. i think at the time our family literally thought we were crazy, and i will admit i had  my fair share of "crap what did we do" moments as we were applying the paint, but the truth is i really love this aubergine colour. it is rich in the winter,  cool in the summer and it has undoubtedly created a cave like sanctuary that we love going to at the end of a long day.

at the time that we moved, we also bought a bed together and decided to go for a king size. i was positive it wouldn't fit (and was WAY too big) but my better half was determined that it was now or never, and that we 100% could make it work. as nervous as i was on when it got delivered it fit perfectly, with a surprising amount of room to spare for night tables on either side. 

now that the fundamentals are in place we are trying save up (yup, i said save up because let's be realistic these things take time and you gotta hunt for the right deal), for a dresser and night tables. we saw some beautiful ones like this Post and Rail rustic style at Urban Barn that you can check out here. but while we have all that in mind, we are still on the endless search (and decision) for the best bench/stool or something at the end of the bed, and a few other timeless design elements that will help bring this whole room together. a renovator's work is never done, am i right?

** I will post more before and after photo's once the whole room is done**

The Reno Report: Guest Bath

it is back to bathroom business. after we finished the master bedroom ensuite, our next bathroom to tackle in our new home was the upstairs guest bath. it is probably the biggest out of the three we have in the whole house, and because of that we wanted to get it off our to-do list quickly. since again, this bathroom like all the others, has no windows it was extremely important to us to make it still feel light and bright. our inspiration for this reno update was the image above, a clean and modern oasis. now, on we go to the before shots ...

when we first met our house, this is what we saw... pause for shock... .ok, breathing. sure it isn't sooooooo bad, it could be worse, right? however it immediately felt dark, messy and very, very dated. the cabinets and the frame around the mirror where the first things we noticed as items we wanted to fix-up. keep in mind that if you read our last reno post for the ensuite bath you will know that down the road our long-term plan is to gut each bathroom and really build them fresh from the bottom up. this means that there are a few things we aren't changing right now and need to work around. at this point in time, that includes, tiles, counter top, sink and toilet. in the before shots of the bathroom you can see that there was about FIVE different colours being using (counter, cabinet, tile, toilet and wall). no, i'm not kidding. the biggest challenge in this space was the wall colour choice. it was essential to me that it somehow blend/bring together in a more appealing way the salmon counter top, and the almond tub and toilet and off white tile in the shower.

amazing what a can of paint and some white towels can do, eh? after much debate and taping of paint swatches to walls we landed on Balboa Mist by Benjamin Moore to do the job. I have to say i'm so, so, so, impressed with how quickly the bathroom changed into a calmer warmer feeling space right after the paint got applied. the second biggest impact (which is still the biggest bang for your buck) was painting the cabinet. we sanded down those blasted  doors, filled the grooves with wood filler, and then sanded some more to make it nice and smooth. once they were ready we gave them a nice coat of Benjamin Moore Night Shade paint and a varnish finish to protect them from any water.  instant modern impact.   this is hands down the best value for your money if you are looking to fix up any old space. after the paint fully dried we added a long brushed nickle handle from Home Depot and arranged them vertically so we could hang our white hand towels from them. doing so really helps to draw the eye around the room and better blend all the new cream and white elements of the space. as you can see we also have a retro built in medicine cabinet that was original to our 70's home (i love using it). to upgrade the look of this unit we first removed the old white floral frame (yuck!), pulled out the cabinet, bought some metallic spray paint and gave it a good ol' couple of coats minus the glass shelves. once that dried we placed it back in, cleaned up the glass shelving to make it sparkle and the Mr created a new sleeker looking wood frame that we painted in the same colour as the cabinet. tips & tricks - if you have a sliding cabinet or door and find it is sticky, grab a candle and rub it on the track. your door will glide like butter! the other little things we did were we pulled down the old light fixture that was there and using the left over spray paint covered any trace of the not to lovely bronze that was there. we then easily replaced the bulbs which instantly made the space significantly brighter. now i must explain that since this is the oasis bathroom, and the plan for now is to use it for guests and as a quiet spa like bath space, i convinced my husband to install a lighting dimmer switch. best. thing. ever. now after a long day I can retreat to a lovely bubble bath, glass of wine, dim the lights and light some candles.  sounds heavenly doesn't it! 

 The Project List: 

Wall colour - Benjamin Moore "Balboa Mist"
Cabinet paint - Benjamin Moore "Night Shade"
Trim paint & door colour - Benjamin Moore "Cloud White"
Medicine cabinet & light fixture spray paint - Home Depot "Rustoleum Metallic Silver"
Cabinet door handles - Home Depot "Brushed Nickel" Pull
Glass Shelf - Ikea "Grundtal"
Bath Accessories - Canadian Tire "Apothecary"
Bath Towels - Gift!
Faucet Hooks - Urban Barn
Shower Curtain - The Bay "Hotel Collection"
Bath Towel Rack - Ikea "Grundtal"
Picture Frame & Picture - Ikea "Ribba"
White side table - From my nana's!

The Reno Report : Ensuite

bathrooms are a central room of any house, so clearly they topped our "to do" list when we  bought our first house. now, let me take a moment to welcome you to our ensuite. first, i should explain that down the road we aim to gut and completely overhaul this bathroom, but for our current 5 year plan we want to make it user friendly, cozy and a functional place to get ready in the mornings. that brings me to my next point. i'm the dork who makes mood boards. there i said. clearly i need visuals, so here was the idea plan for the ensuite in terms of what we both envisioned for this space. it's quite a small ensuite (but an ensuite nontheless so we will NOT complain), making storage an issue as well as form and general function.

i hope you didn't just loose your lunch cause I sure did the first time i saw this. i know i shouldn't judge other people's design choices, to each their own, but really?!  that wallpaper. that cabinet. that countertop. just make it stop. trust me when i say, it was WORSE in person. even the inside of the cabinet had wall to wall wallpaper.  sigh.  aside from putting in new hardwood floors and refinishing the floating staircase in the house, this room was main  priority. I am happy to say i got all up close and personal with that wallpaper. thankfully mood board in hand we had a plan and we tackled this project head on. moving right along...

let's all have a moment to take in just how much better we feel seeing that wallpaper gone. phew! Since this bathroom has no windows it was vital to me that we pick a colour that would brighten the space. we agreed on an off white from Benjamin Moore called Swiss Coffee and right away this small space felt bigger, crisper and brighter. what do you think?  the second best thing we did was paint the cabinet. this can seem like a daunting task, but if you are looking for the best bang for your buck, this is it. trust me. the original cabinet had all kinds of grooves (you can see them in the pictures above) so we spent time filling them with wood filler, allowed that to dry for 24 hours and then sanded it to a nice and smooth finish making it instantly look more modern (we found some wild past colours under there when sanding. holy.). next we used two coats of Benjamin Moore Brown Sugar with a foam roller then topped it all off with a clear coats sealer to protect it from any water . again, the countertop is something we aren't planning to change until we really gut this space a few years from now, and personally with the changes we've made so far it almost blends into the space so it isn't an eye sore. if like us, you find you have to live with something you can't change my best advice is to pick a paint colour that compliments that item. take your swatches and try and pull out a tone, and it all else fails stick with clean bright white. this ensuite is still just in progress at this point, so it was back to the list which had lots of little things left before completion.

TA-DA! i give you the ensuite in all it's glory. i feel good about this project knowing where we came from and doing our best to work around things we aren't changing at the moment (which sometimes feels hard and overwhelming). i will firstly admit that i still don't have all the accessories for this space just yet (like those wire baskets and perhaps an interesting vintage sign) but i'm happily taking my time to find those pieces. overall it's basically done, we finished re-caulking the countertop and tub, changed the shower head, installed new cabinet handles, added extra storage space and silver accessories. we've come along away and happily we can check it off the master to do list. On to the next room!

The Project List:

Wall colour - Benjamin Moore "Swiss Coffee"

Cabinet paint - Benjamin Moore "Brown Sugar"

Trim paint - Benjamin Moor "Cloud White"

Mirror - Home Depot

Cabinet handles - Home Depot

Bath Accessories - The Bay

Bath Towels - Winners

Bath Mat - Home Outfitters

Shower Curtain - The Bay "Moda"

Bath Towel rods - Home Depot "Brushed Nickel"

Glass Jars - Gift!

A swift kick in the . . .

life is hard, let's be honest. but home reno's they will make or break ya.

sometimes, i wonder what we got ourselves into with this house. all the work, the endless project lists, the way past my bedtime weeknights of work. we are exhausted on even the best day. the second we make progress in one area, i feel like we are two steps back as we breeze by the next room. it's overwhelming, but is it worth it? 100%. this is our first home and come hell or high water, we are making it our own. i have to remind myself of how much we HAVE done and how far we HAVE come. making long lists and posting them so you can see what you've crossed off helps with that. we are by no means professionals, but we are doing one heck of a job all on our own. it may take us longer than most, and i sometimes need to be reminded that "Rome wasn't built in a day" (yes, i like sayings), but we are getting there.  i'm so, so very proud of us even when we're at our worst.  this morning after I finally made it to work (grumble, grumble subway issues) after a late night of  fixing, patching,  priming and painting, and an honest but brief argument this morning with my husband, i landed at my office desk, ripped up my morning yogi tea bag, looked at the note and took a long breath. it's was true. Yogi tea is always true in fact. "the rhythm of life is when you experience your own body, mind and soul." sometimes, in those moments when you think you are at your weakest you just need a little graceful reminder to listen to your guts – to step back and look at the bigger picture. and sometimes, being honest here, those reminders can be a bit more blunt (not cute and on the side of a tea bag). sure these days we fall into bed, bruised, sometimes bleeding, feet and back and hips and shoulders so sore we could barely walk, and then like crazy people start over again, but look at what we have to show for it. I am also proud to say that my husband is the hardest working person that I know. so very proud. with my blistered hands and still sore feet I'm looking at this Yogi note realizing that that is exactly what i am experiencing by taking on our whole home reno project. We are dumping putting our bodies, minds and souls into this place and by doing that we are making a home, and hopefully above all else, a memorable life.