Haven 2014

Hello all! Wow, this week went crazy fast. Only one more month of summer for us – I’m not ready for it to end yet. :(

Last week I was away in Atlanta for our third annual Haven Conference:

I don’t know that any of us imagined it would become the success it has four years ago when we started planning the first one. We had all been attending conferences and none of them touched on topics we were interested in as DIY/decor bloggers. So…we created one that did. :)

Our team consists of five bloggers and one event coordinator and I can honestly say we couldn’t do it without each of us. AND our incredible speakers, attendees, sponsors and volunteers.

Stuffing four hundred swag bags is no joke:

  

Once again our main sponsor was Home Depot and they knocked it out of the park:

Our keynote speaker this year was Chip Wade from HGTV:

His designer Cristi joined us too – I met her at another event years ago and her designs on the show are awesome. Their show is called Elbow Room – I’ve loved it since it started last year – you may remember Chip from Curb Appeal too. He does some of the coolest projects I’ve seen anywhere!

And Ballard Designs did another fabulous job at decorating our “living room”:

We use this space for booths and sessions and parties and it’s so wonderful to be able to plop down and relax for a bit:

We may or may not have laid down on one of the beds for a while at one point. Exhaustion sets in. ;)

The sessions were awesome this year – I think the best we’ve had. I’ve been blogging for six years and I learned more at this year’s conference than any conference I’ve ever been to. There’s ALWAYS something to learn.

Our sponsors rock – when we walked into the Procter & Gamble luncheon on Friday there may have been a few squeals:

Bubbles! Our friends Brooke and Mandi did the decor and they did SUCH a great job.

We had some amazing parties every night where we danced till…uhhhh, late. :) Rustoleum threw a great one Friday night and we ended the event on a fun note at the Ryobi party on Saturday:

Yeah. They know how to throw a party. Need a party planner? Ask them. ;)

I couldn’t imagine making this happen without these ladies every year:

(L to R: Beth, Chris, Kristin (our awesome event planner!), Traci, me, Rhoda)

It is still funny to me that some of my closest friends are ones I only see once or twice year. But those rare times are so incredibly special.

We’re already making tweaks for next year and then we’ll take a little break before planning starts again for 2015 this fall. Whew!

This year we kicked off a special initiative in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity. Next Saturday, July 26, will be “Hands of Haven” day:

 

The conference has donated towards a build that day and Atlanta-based bloggers will be onsite, but we want bloggers and readers from all over the country to join in! If you’d like to donate to our effort click here or to purchase a HoH t-shirt you can click here. We started selling them at the conference but wanted to make sure everyone could purchase.

On the 26th we encourage everyone to join in on build in your community, shop a ReStore or just donate some household items to one. We’ll continue the spirit into September as well if you can’t make next Saturday! Make sure to tag #handsofhaven if you join in in any way.

Have a wonderful weekend all!

A love letter

Hey all! I hope you had a lovely week! Anything fun planned for tonight? We’re just planning on pizza at home but I’m looking forward to a relaxing night with no plans!

Sometimes I just want to take a minute to say thank you here on the blog and I thought today was as good as any. Sharing the love and all. :) I so appreciate those of you who come back every day or once a week, a month or whatever. I am truly honored and humbled that you choose to do so.

My six year anniversary of blogging is coming up in a couple months and I’ve been thinking about it a LOT lately. I can still say without a doubt that blogging still brings me great joy. This is the best “job” I’ve ever had and I can’t thank you enough for helping to make it happen.

You know when someone asks you what you want to be doing in ten years? This is my answer – exactly what I’m doing right now. I truly, completely love it. Yes, there are days when there is stress, but those are far and few between (and usually due to my procrastination) and as I’ve always said, it’s the best stress I’ve ever had.

So again, I just wanted to pause for a bit send out a heartfelt thank you to all of you who read here, comment, email or communicate on Facebook, Instagram or whatever. It really means the world to me.

That is all – just feeling all squishy today I guess. :) I appreciate you and never want to lose sight of the fact that I couldn’t do this without you.

Have a LOVELY Valentine’s Day and a happy, safe weekend.

Top ten pins

Hey all! Well, our winter break turned into three weeks – another day off school today! We got more snow last night and the roads were crap so I’m glad they canceled again. We’ll hit 40 today and I can already hear the snow falling off the roof (SO loud). I’m ready to see the ground again!

I’ll be back to normal posting next week for sure – they won’t go up quite as late in the day! :)

So are you (still) a Pinterest fan? It’s kind of lost it’s dazzle to me – I still use it but it became a bit overwhelming. Just a lot of STUFF and overstimulation I guess. I do use it a lot to search for specific DIY/decorating things though – probably more than Google now. It’s just not not the obsession it once was for me.

So I was interested when my blog friend Melissa recently shared how to look up my most popular pins for any time period, say in the past year. (Go to analytics, set your time frame, acquisition, all referrals, Pinterest.) It was fascinating to see, especially since so many of them didn’t have great photos. I know the perfect shot will be pinned more, but many of these weren’t all that great so I thought that was cool.

My tenth most popular pin for 2013 was this one for my black doors in the basement:

I don’t see the black door trend going anywhere soon. At least I hope not cause I love it. :) You can see the post for the how-to here.

This one is a great example of a random picture that seemed to pique people’s interest:

That photo is a Goodwill lamp I spray painted and I think it’s funny that a shot like this would bring so much interest. Just goes to show it doesn’t need to be perfect. :)

One of my favorite projects ever, my $50 wood planked wall was number seven:

It was so easy and we get compliments on it every time someone sees it. Check out the update I made to it recently. :)

Here’s one that surprised me too – a shot of my glittery reindeer in process:

It’s funny because like most of these pins, I got more traffic than actual pins by far. (High pins doesn’t always mean high traffic and vice versa.) This only had 83 repins but brought in a lot of traffic – I think people were probably like, what in the world is that? :)

This one did not surprise me – it’s actually one of my most popular posts I’ve ever done. I shared my ideas on decorating above the kitchen cabinets here:

I think it’s a hard spot to work with and obviously others do too!

My painting tips post, again with a so not fancy photo, was high up there too:

I use an old mug when I’m painting with a brush – it’s so much easier to carry around than a gallon of paint!

This one made me smile – I shared my (easy) “summer beer” recipe in a post about our deck and the drink is what was popular on Pinterest:

It is pretty darn good. ;)

I thought this was interesting because it was a Christmas ornament DIY that wasn’t pinned till late in the year, but it was my third highest for traffic:

Like so many of these, the project wasn’t even from this year!

Another one along the same lines – an end of the year pin about my almost free Halloween decor and it was the second highest pin for traffic:

They really are cheap and easy ideas – file those away for next year. ;)

And my highest that brought me the most visits was a photo of our warm and cozy family room:

Our family room doesn’t look anything like that now but I did love it then! The sofas and rug didn’t hold up well at all – this was from three and half years ago. I think a traditional look will always be popular, that’s for sure! It’s classic and cozy – the reason I love it.

I just thought these were interesting and had to share. What was crazy was how some of the lowest repinned posts brought in more traffic. And some of mine with way more repins aren’t even close to the top ten for traffic.

Are you pinning as much as you used to? Has it lost it’s luster for you? (If you’d like to follow me you can do so here.)

And go ahead and try the summer beer in the winter – it’s allowed. ;)

It was a good one

Hey. Remember me? My name is Sarah and I write a blog. You may have heard of it.

I didn’t mean to take so much time away but it was nice! I am now ITCHING to get going on something other than holiday decor, let me tell you. I have a list a mile long (I’ll share soon) that I want to tackle. I’m ready to get my hands dirty again (with something other than Christmas glitter)!

I’m also excited about organizing again. Since I purged most of the house earlier this year I feel more in control of our STUFF than I ever have. Now I just want to keep it going in 2014 by making the most of each space.

But today I’m looking back at 2013 at my biggest projects, according to your responses. I have to start with one I’m most proud of -- mostly because I love it, but also because I’m so dang happy to have it DONE:

The downstairs powder room was a work in progress for about three years. Or more. I lost track a couple years back. I’m SO happy with it now, it was truly worth the wait.

I’m slowly but surely (I’m the tortoise of DIY if you couldn't tell) working on redoing our master bedroom. I sold our old bed and so far haven’t even come close to using the money I made from that to redo the space. There were a few popular posts from that room this year, including the new DIY king-sized headboard for less than $100:

And then the 80’s nightstand redo that didn’t cost me anything:

And finally those brass thrift store lamps that were made over into glossy navy blue goodness:

I have big plans for this room coming soon – I still haven’t even finished painting it yet. :)

After a lot of trial and error over the past (nearly) ten years in this house, I’ve finally figured out what works in our yard. In other words – I’ve stopped killing things. Our backyard is coming together as a beautiful oasis for us, and I gave you a tour here:

I was busy in the kitchen this year – some of it I splurged on, like our new sofa table:

And some I did myself, like this IKEA table turned farmhouse table:

The whole nook got a new look with the table and the new light:

It works SO much better in this space compared to our old round table and we can easily fit six around it to eat (even without pulling it out).

I was craving color earlier this year and tried out one of my very favorite chalk paint colors in our foyer:

I painted one of my favorite Craigslist dressers with it and it’s such a deep, gorgeous color. LOVE it!

Speaking of that beautiful blue -- another bathroom in our house that sat undone forever was completed this year too. I showed you how I installed the floating wood shelves in our basement bathroom:

And then later on in my no-spend August I finished up the room and used that chalk paint color again. You can see the finished space here:

I made a few simple changes in the family room this year that made a BIG difference. The first was to change out the old dark mirror that was over the fireplace:

To this lighter, brighter one:

This mirror is one of the top five things I get asked about – I got it at HomeGoods and still haven’t seen another one like it since! It made a HUGE difference in there. Seriously…big. (You can see more about the fall mantel here.)

I saved up and finally found a rug I loved for this space too. It truly transformed the room:

And finally – if you’re like me the last thing you want to see right now is more Christmas stuff, but my holiday home tour was a big one and I appreciated all your sweet comments there so much:  

As always, the posts that got the most feedback were those that just talk about life, and usually those are my favorites. :) You can read more about our mouse problem and how I dealt with that here (I wish I had read something like this before we had the problem), my new favorite place to visit here, a BIG change in our lives (and the love of my life) here, giving up my soda addiction here and a rousing discussion on the prices at Goodwill here.

It was a very good year. Probably one of the best. I am so, SO grateful to do what I do. I have you to thank for that. Thank you for coming back to see what I’m up to, I truly appreciate you and I value the connections I have with so many of you. I’ll be back next week with some DIY and my plans for the new year! Have a great weekend!

Franklin, TN

Hey y’all. I’m talking about the south today so I can say y’all, right? I always want to spell it “ya’ll” by the way – must be the northerner in me. ;)

Last weekend I took a quick trip to Nashville to meet up with the Haven team – we were regrouping after this year’s conference and doing a little planning for next year. After meeting for a long while we took a break and drove to Franklin, TN to eat and shop just a bit.

I fell in love with this smaller city because, well…it was super cute and the shopping was amazing. But it also very much reminded me of the area we live in too. Felt like home in a way.

I just had to share some of the places we stopped along Main Street. The stores are not cheap – by…a lot. ;) But there was SO much inspiration, it was worth it to just walk around and take it all in.

We started by eating at 55 South, and didn’t realize till the end of our meal that we actually sitting in a place called Cork and Crow. I think they must share a menu. The food was amazing but the decor was what I was mostly focused on. This wood wall was so cool:

The meat cleavers even add a little something. ;) I loved the look of the wood in combination with the really delicate glass chandeliers. Just stunning.

On the other side of the room was a bottle light fixture that I loved too:

Not a great picture, sorry. I noticed while there how beautiful the light is coming through those bottles – it truly glows in ambers and greens…really cool.

We walked around a bit and one of my favorite spots was a shop called The Iron Gate. As soon as we walked in I knew I would love it:

It was a mix of industrial and glam with a little bit of shabby chic thrown in. None of which are necessarily my style, but I loved every bit of it.

They had a lot of older pieces, like these massive old doors:

They were perfect as they were – no paint needed on those!

This clock was just massive – probably five feet across? Maybe more?:

Loved the huge clock hands. :)

Like I said, they had some shabby chic decor and it was beautiful. I loved the touches of gray and purple on this bed:

And this one was just dreamy. Seriously, let’s not thinking about dogs or cats or kids getting it dirty for a second and just think about falling into that every day:

Lovely, right?

I thought that large metal table next to it was awesome too:

I thought it would look so cool on a big front porch. I can just see it.

The lighting in their was spectacular! Any one of these could have gone home with me:

If I a.) could have fit it on the plane and b.) had eleventy million dollars and c.) was cool enough to pull off that funky starburst one. None of which happened. ;)

Of course there was plenty that we would see and whisper to each other “Do you KNOW how easy this would be to make??” I’m sure the shop owners love people like us. :)

This nursery art was just adorable:

And…they were $44 each. Get a coupon for a canvas at the craft store and you could make this for less than $10 (if that). Just saying. If you wanted to. ;)

And I just loved this display of coral:

It was just so delicate and beautiful – they had some HUGE pieces. That blue one on the shelf really struck me and we determined it looked as though it was painted. (Is blue coral a thing?) Makes me want to grab some chalk paint and have at it.

We had such a lovely time walking around and ohhing and ahhing at everything. Then, being the DIY/thrifty girls we are, we headed over to the antique shops. :) I found a little old copper pot that was in my post earlier this week: 

It’s the one on the candlestick table by the chair – I lined it with some plastic and put a plant inside. LOVE it.

Later that night we took in downtown Nashville and it. was. crazy. We even had an Elvis sighting:

:)

I’ve been to Nashville a few times before and it was NOTHING like last Saturday night – so busy but fun!

So have you been to Franklin? We didn’t have time to visit many of the stores that I wanted to so I may have to check it out again sometime soon. It would make for a great girls weekend, that’s for sure.

Have a great weekend…y’all!