Farmhouse Inspiration ~ Winter Sunlight

Time for some FARMHOUSE INSPIRATION!!! It is the heart of winter here and I've been enjoying all of the bright sunlight that streams into our farmhouse this time of year. The sitting area of our dining room gets so much sunlight it is almost like a sun room on most days.

Winter time calls for warm and cozy areas to curl up with a good book or magazine. My mom loves to sit in here and drink her tea when she visits and Millie loves laying on the crib daybed to read her books.

I really can't believe that it is the end of January already...we have been spending just about every free second trying to get our master bedroom finished so this month has really flown by! I am working on a blog post about our master bedroom and now that most of the furniture can finally go into it we have most of our downstairs (which was acting a storage area for all of the bedroom furniture) back. I am still working on the dining room blog post but now that we aren't using it as a storage area I should be able to get the post finished soon! Here is a little sneak peek at our bedroom...we are almost to the decorating phase so I am getting sooo excited!
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Farmhouse Inspiration ~ Staying Warm and Cozy

Since a lot of the country is being swept by snow storms and frigid cold temperatures I decided to make this "Farmhouse Inspiration" post all about staying warm and cozy!!! For me nothing means warm and cozy more than soft and warm quilts and lots of candles!!!

I found the beautiful quilt above at  The Vintage Market show we did in Monroe, Michigan in the fall and the gorgeous one below I bought at the last Springfield, Ohio Antique Show   that we did in September. There are always so many beautiful quilts at the Springfield Show but this all white one was calling my name.

I know I said this last winter but the outside is so beautiful here this time of year that I like to keep the inside super simple so that the outside seen through all of our big windows is really what you see when you move from room to room. Most days it really does feel like we live in a giant snow globe.

We took our Christmas tree down this morning but we always move it to the back porch so that we can continue to enjoy it even after Christmas is over. I always feel so badly for the tree, I mean it spent all those years growing just perfectly and then its life is suddenly cut short so that it can be someone's Christmas tree for a couple of weeks. I feel like if we can continue to enjoy it for a while longer then maybe its not such a wasteful thing to have cut one down.

Today the high is 5 degrees and we have a couple feet of snow so it is definitely a stay inside kind of day. This is one of my favorite times of the year because with only the inside of the house to focus on and no desire to go anywhere in a blizzard my creative juices really get flowing and I can get so much done in a day. Although Neal may feel a little differently as he is the one that does all of the shoveling and plowing! On that note I can't wait to show you guys all that we are working on...I hope to get a blog post up this week showing our progress on the master bedroom!

Until next time stay warm!!!

Our Feature In Farmhouse Style Magazine!!!

I have the most exciting news to share with you guys!! Our home is featured in a new magazine called Farmhouse Style and it is available in stores now!! Most of you know how passionate I am about restoring our farmhouse and about decorating so you know HOW BIG OF A DEAL this is to me!!

This is what the cover looks like so that you know what to look for!!  

It was hard to keep this secret so long as it was June when we had the honor of having the talented Anne Gridley and Gary Graves come to photograph the house. Anne had been trying to shoot our house for some time when she finally got the okay from Country Sampler to come and photograph it for a brand new magazine. I have to say I was hesitant at first because so much of our house is still in major renovation phase or just plain old gross/embarrassing whatever you want to call it phase. I really struggle with people seeing the undone parts of our farmhouse because they are just so bad they aren't even worth trying to make presentable so I have kind of just given up on them! But having our home in a magazine is a dream come true for me and Anne felt confident there was enough to photograph so I decided to swallow my pride and roll up my shirt sleeves and make the house the best we could make it in the time frame we had to work with.

Neal and I had quite a few sleepless nights getting the house ready...I mean honestly my worst fear was that they would move that one piece of furniture that I hadn't cleaned under and find a dust bunny or something! That probably did happen but I didn't see it if it did thankfully! I tried to stay out of their way but also close by if they needed something in particular. My absolute favorite part of the whole experience was watching Anne and Gary work together, with their trained eyes they seemed to be able to read each others minds as to what needed to be reworked or restyled. Styling is my ultimate dream job so seeing how they worked almost effortlessly at it gave me the utmost respect for them. Plus it was really neat seeing how other people decided to display my things, even if it wasn't exactly what I would personally do I loved walking into a room after they were done shooting it and seeing how they have moved things around. It really was one of the best days of my life and I will never forget it. A big thank you to Anne and Gary and to Country Sampler for this amazing experience and most of all to Neal because he always works so hard to make things exactly how I envision them and is willing to stay up with me until 3 in the morning to scrub every single floor in the house on occasions like this.


I was so worried that our home wouldn't actually make it into the magazine or something but sure enough we got our copy last week and it was so exciting to see it all put together!! Most importantly I feel like our farmhouse is finally getting the recognition for the beauty Neal and I saw in her from the very beginning.


I hope you guys will go out and get a copy or you can order one from Countrysampler.com if you can't find it in a store near you. So many of you have been following my blog from the very start and I can't thank you guys enough for all of your sweet comments and support over the years!!