So like a year ago, my husband and I started work on our laundry room to office conversion.

To recap, because I know it’s been about 52 weeks since we’ve had an update, our laundry room used to be this small closet under our stairs. It was great in theory, very accessible and the hot pink color I painted inside was motivational, but we had a small problem: we didn’t have a dryer vent.

Not having a vent meant that we had to run the dryer with the closet doors open for ventilation. We were afraid the heat would eventually warp the doors.* And the humidity fogged up all of our windows and made all of our non-porous surfaces wet and the lint drove our allergies nuts. Later, through a friend who knew the previous homeowner (gotta love a small town!), I found out that the builders originally forgot to put in a vent (which was corroborated with our septic guy a few months ago) and so the homeowners rigged one, then tiled over the rigged vent later.

I hate that and I also hate this tile. I want carpet or hardwood. But that’s another topic.

In February 2009 we initially discussed the idea and it’s nice to see it finally finished. We moved our washer and dryer into our garage, a move that led to us having to replace the washer after the temperatures dropped to single digits and our pipes froze. Great decision, right?

I painted the office (and our little bathroom, but we’re not talking about that) a light blue, reupholstered and painted antique chairs and Darin installed a wood desk top with a plexiglass cover.

I think that was likely the last update. I kindly spared you photos from over the year – my mess has invaded the space!

Like most wives, I’ve been nagging Darin about the shelves he promised for several months. Last week we finally got them in! I painted them white to go with the chairs (though the color on the chairs is a light, light blue) and Darin installed them.

And it’s done! Finally! After a year! (And I finally have a lens that can photograph this space – another reason to celebrate!)

How awesome does it look?!

This small space has to function as a home office, home-based business office and kid office (storing their art supplies and such). Talk about multi-tasking! I have to store my cameras, lenses, tripod, flashes, etc. here in addition to all of the books and magazines I’m reading, my promotional products, blank DVDs and cases, backup discs, samples, forms and contracts, important documents, school picture day proofs, drawings, camcorder and all of the other menial things (like bills!).

I keep my camera bag in the spare chair to store all of my flashes, memory cards, lenses, batteries, chargers, etc. The rolling filing cabinet between the chairs holds important paperwork, Christmas stationery I didn’t use last year, construction paper and coloring books.

I really love this because I’ve incorporated many functions into this space, but also several things I love: photography and vintage cameras, the beach, books and my family.

The old Mason jar is recycled from our wedding, which was recycled from Grannie’s basement, and contains shells I’ve picked up from the beaches of the Outer Banks. The other jars hold markers and crayons and give a little color. Along the top shelf are my books (including my Book of Common Prayer and New Testament), shell jar (we also have two of these in the living room and two in the master bath), boat I bought off of a friend for $4, a box of my promo items, pool blue stickers from Archivers (rectange and circle), blank DVDs and cases and magazine boxes for glossies as well as important stuff. The double horizontal boxes on the bottom shelf contain samples and user manuals, an old Yashica camera, photo of our family from our July 4 trip to the zoo, kids’ art supplies, a photo of my church family from our food packing event (and in a frame from Dara) and some fun, pretty ceramic vases and a candle.

On the desk top: my external drive and card reader, a lamp I want to replace, of course the all-important MacBook, my calendar and catch-all center (pens, pencils, return address stamp, to-do list pad, CDs, thank you notes, etc.), my late grandmother’s hobnail container that is currently empty, my handheld scanner (muy importante for a reporter or anyone else who’s nosy), plus the mail (my new voter registration card came that day), my file folders and some crap I need to put away already.

You totally caught me on a clean day. Thank you!

I’m really in a sharing mood, so you get to see the inside of some of the boxes. Lucky you! This is the inside of the kids’ box: mini composition book, glue, scissors, stencils, colored pencils and regular-sized markers and whatever else may be lurking inside.

My samples from minted, WHCC and Miller’s. In the bottom drawer I have all of my user manuals, software, product keys, warranties. This is a fun box here, let me say.

As much as I love everything else, the desk top is my favorite part. I love being able to slip keepsakes between the wood and the plexi glass! I have envelopes decorated for me by two of the children, a little Post-It gallery Jaylen drew that night, a paper airplane Jaylen decorated for me (complete with “I [heart] you Mom” – aww!) and a few other things. It’s super sweet!

Each of our children has quite an imagination, but Jaylen is the one who most often translates it into drawing. The furthest left is “sun people”, then a monster truck, a house and pickles. lol. He’s so silly (but he LOVES pickles)!

This is one of my favorite things. Ever.

And of course, a little office nook this cute wouldn’t come without its issues, right? Of course not. I use an aircard from Verizon for Internet and, well, our service sucks. See, we live in a hollow (or holler, if you’re a Randy Travis fan) and we have very spotty service with both AT&T and Verizon (so much for more bars in more places and 97 percent coverage, right?).

It’s supposed to be akin to broadband, but it’s slower than dial-up in certain areas of the house. The office being one of those. In terms of bars, I have one bar in the office, two everywhere else. But if we go up to the lake, where you aren’t supposed to get service, I have four bars. Go figure.

*When we converted to an office, we took the doors off and reused them. One was painted black, topped with plexi glass and is now the tabletop for my husband’s work bench; the other was used as a flat surface to hold items when they were being spray-painted.

New-to-you homes can be kind of a pain, don’t you think? You finally find The House, only to have to dump a ton of money into painting it because the previous owners decided to Subway gold was a hot color for the entire house. Oh, and dark green ceilings. Bleh.

Darin spent A TON of time painting. TONS. First primer, then a color called sandstorm.

Oh how nice, our eyes are no longer bleeding. This is typically what our house looks like close to Christmas. Football is the only channel we get when it’s cold.

I subscribe to a lot of DIY and decorating blogs and hate my house a little because it doesn’t feel like a home. It’s not really decorated. Why? Too many decisions. And also the little expense of feeding, clothing and housing four kids. Plus daycare. I rarely get to make home decor purchases.

Last summer we splurged on a roll of fabric for curtains in our living room. Over Thanksgiving my mom and grandmother sewed them and when we tried to hang them, well let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. The back half of our house is crooked and trying to situate the curtains just so, so the crooked-ness was less obvious, was stressful. And I had the wrong size rods. And our curtains were extraordinarily long, or so we thought.

On Sunday my parents came over and gave hanging them a shot. Obviously, it went a lot smoother because we finally have curtains! They definitely change the room, I think. And they definitely make me happier. We have this perpetually summer theme going in our house, I think. Beach-inspired, but not ridiculously so. It’s casual and airy with beachy things.

We’re still not finished, of course. (I would love to have an endless supply of money so I could afford all kinds of things.) We are looking at coffee tables and end tables, because we literally only have one table in this room. And I want a jute area rug, but first we have to remedy our puppy pee-pee problem (sigh).

But there you have it: curtains!

I had a great idea for dinner tonight: a dinner picnic in the park, followed by kids playing on the playground and parents walking around the track.

It was a good idea in theory, but for children who’ve been in the sun a little too much over the last few days, no bueno. So we decided to go with sandwiches in the house. Everyone had sandwiches for lunch, though.

A fun twist? A lunchbox dinner.

I made sandwiches for each of the children, gave them (Scrabble) Cheez-Its, string cheese and drinks inside their Shamu lunchboxes (what kids’ meals are served in at Sea World) and they thought it was fantastic. Everyone ate with almost no problem. They were waaay too giggly, but battling giggly is a lot easier than battling children who refuse to eat.

They each had the opportunity to choose what went on their sandwich, which always helps keep the dinnertime fights at bay. Why? Just like adults, children want control and power. Choosing what you eat is something simple that makes a big difference. I’m not a short order cook and I don’t run a restaurant, but from time to time we do plan dinners that allow them options: PB&J or ham & cheese? Pepperoni pizza or cheese?

One of my brothers recently criticized this, telling me I shouldn’t give four-year-olds choices. And why not? We were eating lunch that day and my kids cleaned their plates and thensome while … let’s just say his didn’t. Doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s worth a shot. Especially if some of your children are like some of mine and hate eating some nights.

I forgot to post our meal plans for last week and the week prior, but we’ve been working on eating out of our own pantry and trying new things while still trying to maintain eating healthier than we used to.

The first week I remember having BBQ chicken breasts, some meatless suppers, macaroni and cheese, broccoli and cheese rice and … goodness, I don’t remember everything. Oh well. And last week our something new was pan-seared salmon with a mango chutney, sauteed spinach and polenta cakes; we’d never had salmon (at home), mango, a chutney or polenta. It was a pretty great meal, I have to say. I need to work on my chutney, though.

I was also given a pound of Neola Farms beef as well as a roast, so we had beef tacos one night and the tastiest roast another night.

This week I’d planned on cleaning the upstairs bedrooms and sacrificing my weekly grocery store trip, though I did pick up some breakfast items, a few ingredients for Sunday’s supper and hot dogs and bratwurst. My total for this week was something like $50-60 (and I saved about $15).

On schedule this week, we have:

Fennel-crusted pork with roasted root veggies, a recipe from this month’s Real Simple magazine (Darin was the only one who liked the parsnips, though)
Cheddar brats, hot dogs, chips (not that healthy, but it was my attempt at giving the family a break after all of the new recipes)
BBQ rotisserie chicken, macaroni and cheese, rice
Homemade chicken and rice soup (using leftover chicken and rice)
Homemade vegetable soup
Tortellini or rotini with marinara sauce
Leftovers (whatever’s leftover from the week)

It’s nothing too inventive, I know, but it uses what we already have. We’re also expecting some frigid temps later this week, so I don’t mind two soups (in fact, I’m looking forward to them!).

Looking for new recipes? Check out daylicious, the food blog I write (and need to update!) with my sister-in-law, Dara.

And if you’re looking for meal planning printables, look no further! We have several meal planners and shopping lists, which are free for a limited time (until Jan. 31, 2010). Happy meal planning!

Have I mentioned yet that my husband is fantastic? I mean, except for the fact that he pronounces “LOL” like it is an actual word, he completely is.

And we all already know that I’m full of myself and so, naturally, I wanted to print some of my work out as large as we could get it and hang it on our walls. I love many of the photos we took on our honeymoon, not just because we were at my favorite vacation spot but because we were there together. And we had a fabulous time, so much so that it has influenced our overall design scheme in our house (except for in our kids’ rooms).

We have – or want to have, if all of the seashells and back issues of Coastal Living are any indication – a coastal-inspired home. Which is a little ridiculous because we are landlocked and in the middle of farm country, but whatever.

A few months ago I decided I’d like some canvas prints of our wedding rings in the sand (which is also the wallpaper on my cell phone) and a shot of a lone seagull in the shore, watching the waves crash on the beach. I was going to just order them, but Darin said he could do it for a fraction of a fraction of the cost.

We chose 22×28″ for the ring photo, which is in the master bedroom, and 24×36″ for our little seagull friend. Husband had the canvas printed and purchased frames at Hobby Lobby for like, $1.69 each.

Last night, we had a little excitement as Darin, who used to be a framer, hooked his favorite wife up with two canvas prints. I shot the photos, he printed and stretched them. Go Team Day!

Forgive the poor quality of this photo. I was shooting with my old camera, minus the speedlite, and our lighting pretty much sucks when the sun goes down. I was trying to hurry because he didn’t want to wait for me to stage a photo. (Stretching canvas – ur doin it too fast, Mr. Day!)

Also, I was in the bathtub reading when I found out he what he was doing, so I drained the million gallons of scalding water, grabbed a towel, went to my car to get my cameras (I forgot to get them out! Eek!) and started snapping away.

And then, voila!

A canvas was born! I love how the shadow from our chandelier formed a heart on our little work of art! Or perhaps that is Darin’s heart beating out of his chest, all large and swirly, because he loves me so much? Yeah, that sounds good.

And this is BOB! Our little seagull friend. (He totally had to have a name!) We introduced him to the kids (or I did, because Darin would never introduce the kids to a photo, they have pills and straightjackets for that kinda thing, ya know?) at breakfast and Jenna goes, “Bob? Bob Seagull?” Her accent made it sound like she said Bob Seger. Ha! And when he is in trouble for like, pooping on my mantle or something, I will call him Robert Clark Seagull and he will sing me sweet blue-eyed soul melodies. I heart Bob. He was also my desktop wallpaper at work for months.

Did you also see my new boat? And my message in a bottle? We’re also rockin’ the sea oats on the mantle.

Opposite the fireplace, we have art! From Shanee! Plus shells we picked up on the beach at Duck, North Carolina (stored in Mason jars that came from my grandmother’s cellar), Bob’s stiff as a statue buddy (he needs a name!) and some little bud vases we got as honeymoon gifts. Bonus points if you know why we have those colors there. We’re Navy brats, what can we say?

We’ve actually had most of that there since August, I just never shared for whatever reason. (Probably because I’m lame.)

Since we moved in, we’ve had family photos on the mantle – an 11×14 family portrait from 2008, one of our engagement photos and the Easter portrait of the four kids. But Bob is now bogarting the mantle, so we are moving those to another wall. Well, the frames are being moved. Today I ordered our 2009 family portrait, a 5×7 of us kissing on the beach and an 8×10 of the kids from Hot Springs for the wall. I can’t wait to hang them because, drumroll please, it will look like we actually live in this house.

While I was ordering the photos, I realized that, aside from today when all I did was clean my daughter’s room and make meals my son hates, we really do have a good time as a family.

And the rings? Master bedroom, of course.

I adore this shot.

We actually worked together to produce the shot, too. (By the way, we used to have a collection of circular mirrors there.)

It’s hanging here, above our bed, as a reminder. Our fabulous honeymoon in North Carolina. Our vows, our commitment, our love and respect for one another. And the fact that we aren’t too shabby.

The rings are huge, though. I kinda want to take a pair of scissors to it, cut out Darin’s ring, and wear it around like a hat. And Emma could probably live inside the shell. LOL! (And no, that is not lowell, Darin, it’s LOL.)

The whole project set us back $4 – well, $16 if you count the staple gun and staples! See? I told you my husband rocks!

I know many of you remember when Jaiden was born; yesterday she cheered for her first basketball game. If she was nervous, she didn’t let on; she was very excited to grab her pom-poms, put on her uniform and cheer.

Incidentally, it was also the first basketball game she had ever seen. Their team won 17-16.

And as everyone knows by now, we have been experiencing some very, very cool temperatures. We’re talking in the teens. Freezing divided by two and minus four, for instance. For those of you north of the Mason-Dixon line, this is nothing; but when Southerners beg for temperatures to warm up to the freezing point, you know there’s a problem.

We’re fascinated by this thing the rest of you know as normal winter. We get in the car with our cameras and drive around, looking at cold things.

This lake? Well, part of it is frozen. A lot of the ponds and lakes around here are frozen and rumor has it parts of the Mississippi were frozen over, too. The river is much deeper than this lake, though, so I don’t know if there is any truth to that (perhaps the shallow parts near the bank). (Isn’t this photo awesome? I love it.) (more…)

This year we are putting in a garden.

We talked about it last year and tried to grow tomatoes in five gallon buckets, but we were pretty unsuccessful. Unless you count the two baby cherry tomatoes that grew, ripened and were then picked off and tossed under the deck by Jenna.

For months we have discussed garden placement, but nothing seemed right. We have an odd shaped yard and about 1/3 of our acreage is wooded; there is no good, out-of-the-way place to put a garden on the other 2/3, though. Darin came up with a good place to put in a garden, even though it will require dropping a few small trees. It’s right at our property line and in an area that has sunlight most of the day.

We’re hoping it will be a good location. We were reluctant to put a garden back towards the woods because of the deer and the planned location for our future garden is close enough to the house that we don’t anticipate a huge problem.We hope, anyway.

And while it’s still below freezing outside, Darin decided today would be a good day for Project Garden 2010 to commence, to choose which trees we want to keep and start dropping the others. I wasn’t looking forward to suiting up and heading out there to consult with him on this because it’s so cold, but I’m glad I have a husband who is not afraid to step up and do things. (And during a playoff game, to boot!)

He measured the area off and dropped all of the trees (5-6 very small ones). In the coming weeks, he will need to clean the underbrush, till and amend the soil and then we can plant.

We’re planning to have a 12×24′ garden with one or two outer, more organically-shaped beds for herbs and flowers.

We had plans for raised beds near the garden which would contain herbs and flowers and we planned to use the trees we’re dropping as borders for the beds instead of the traditional landscaping stones or timbers. We like to reuse or repurpose items when we can; this summer we turned our laundry closet into an office and repurposed the hollow office doors instead of trashing them. One is now painted black and topped with plexiglass and is the tabletop to his workbench in the garage, the other is now a surface we can set small items on when we spray paint.

That said, we are also in the beginning stages of converting our gas fireplace to woodburning, so we can also burn the wood; this will save money on our heating bill next winter.

Saving money is also one of the primary reasons we plan to grow fruits, vegetables and herbs this year. The other reason – the best reason, in my book – is because fresh produce tastes the best. We are lucky to live in a rural area and have the opportunity to purchase produce from roadside vendors, so we know just how great fresh, homegrown veggies really taste.

Over the next two or three months we need to take stock of what produce we use most often and decide what we want to grow. So far we’re talking about the obvious: corn, tomatoes, green beans, peppers, strawberries, cucumbers. We’re entertaining the idea of lettuces, spinach, carrots, onions. I wish we could grow citrus fruits here, because I use those all summer long. As for herbs, we’d like mint, thyme, basil, oregano, etc. We’re also hoping to grow some lavender, just because it smells heavenly and looks beautiful.

I would love to have apple, pear and cherry trees eventually. And grapes, blueberries and raspberries. My parents have blackberries on their property line and we can pick those, but it’s a little tricky (hello, thorns and a chain link fence!).

I am looking forward to spring and summer, to harvesting the fruits and vegetables of our labor, and spending some time in the dirt. I have fond memories of picking strawberries in Grannie’s garden when I was a kid and I can’t wait to share that with my own kids.

What do you grow in your garden? And while we’re at it, what’s your favorite vegetable?