Before we get to dreaming about our dream house… We thought we were dreaming when we got the email from Jackson Design & Remodeling telling us that we won the Best Remodeling Blog Award!!!! We were seriously floored because there for a while, the race was really tight (even down to the .1%!) and we’ve seen voting like this take a turn at the last minute. So, once voting closed this past Friday, we had no idea what to expect. We couldn’t have done it without you all! We seriously appreciate you taking the time to vote for us. Thank you!!

While we love, love, love our house – even though there’s still much to do and decorate! – deep down, we know this isn’t our “forever house”. We’re not planning to anytime soon, but one day it will be time to move on. Once we’re ready for a change in pace, we’d love to buy a large piece of land with lots and lots of trees and build a house.

With Greg’s line of work and the fact I do freelance work over the World Wide Web, we could move pretty much anywhere. We love the idea of Charlottesville (it’s so gorgeous in the fall) or maybe even Nashville (we’re both fans of Tennessee since that’s where we went to college) and we’ve already talked about our love for California life (ahhh, California) – or we might just end up right down the road in Manakin-Sabot. Who knows! Wherever we end up, Greg wants to be “out in the middle of nowhere”, but I, on the other hand, must be close to a Target. If the powers that be want to be really awesome, a Whole Foods would be nice too… and a Crate & Barrel.

Even though this next chapter will start probably years from now, we’re already daydreaming about the house we want to build. We don’t want anything huge or extravagant that would be hard to maintain, but we have a handful of “wants” at the top of our list, including 10-foot ceilings, lots of natural light, a basement, and (I know this might sound crazy) I really want one of those “tornado rooms”, haha. Dorothy I am not. 

A few weeks ago, I started a Pinterest board called “Dream House in the Woods”. It’s where I collect our inspiration and ideas for our forever house. There aren’t too many photos pinned just yet, but that’s because I’m super picky about what I pin there. It’s like my protected, super-serious lock box of our ideas for our dream house. I thought it would be good to start collecting this stuff so when we do get to the point in our lives, we have a nice collection of thoughtful photos to refer to for inspiration – rather than it taking over a year to make decisions… like we’re doing with this house, haha.

From looking over the few photos I’ve pinned already, it’s quite noticeable that we like a lot of crisp, clean white and tons of windows – something we definitely wish we had more of in this house. There’s also a pretty dominate theme of texture including white-washed brick, planks, and subway tile. Ahhh, I love every bit of it.

So, how about you guys… What’s your daydreaming style? Pinterest? Scrapbook? Cork board? All of the above?

As for our weekend plans, we have a few small DIY projects up our sleeves that I’m excited to cross off the “I really want to try that list”. I also wanted to pressure-wash the carport and patio area to get rid of the cloud of yellow that possesses everything in sight. But, as it is every year around this time in Virginia, it will be yellow again within about five hours – or less. Oh, the joys of Pollen Season.

Okay, so Monday is normally the day we have a giveaway (which, by the way, we’ve extended the Lamps.com giveaway, so make sure you enter!) or share whatever project we did over the weekend. Well, the thing is, our weekend was completely consumed with our Home Depot Style Challenge project (more about that here). Every. Single. Waking. Hour. As I mentioned in this post, the project was due last Monday but because of an unwanted house guest named Sandy, followed by three days of continuous rain, that didn’t happen. The kind folks at Home Depot gave us an extension, so we’re feverishly working on getting it done.

I can’t give away what we’re up to until the project is posted over on Home Depot’s blog, The Apron, but I can tell you we’ve been tackling something rather…. large. It will make sense once you guys see it, promise. This whole project is something completely new for us – as “baby DIY’ers – and at times we’ve felt that maybe we’ve bitten off more than we can chew. But, we’re coming to the end, and we’re really excited to take the final photos (which will be happening today) and show it off for the neighborhood. Even though they might think we’re a tad crazy for decorating the outside of the house for Christmas three weeks before Thanksgiving.

If you follow us on Instagram, you’ve probably been seeing the photo hints. Greg in particular has been having fun with these…

So, any guesses? One of you guys on Instagram said you thought it was a Trojan horse… that elves are going to jump out of. Another said a giant Who village complete with animatronic Cindy Lou Who. That would be awesome, but it’s not even close!

Now, please excuse me while I go get the paint out of my hair. Again. : )

“What’s this, a post on a Thursday?!”, you say? Yep, we hope you’re tuning in, even though this isn’t normally considered a “blogging day”, because we’d like to pick your brains for a second and ask  you a question… When you’re shopping for new art prints for  your space, what size(s) do you generally look at?

We realize there might be a a lot of “Well, it depends on what it is” and/or “Depends on where it’s going in my house.” So I guess you could rephrase the question to be, “If you were to buy art for your place today, what size print would you buy?”. Some people prefer large pieces of art as opposed to smaller ones and vice versa but we want to know what your thoughts are about art sizes in your home.

We’re asking because we’re in the midst of adding a bunch of new art to the store. At the moment, Etsy doesn’t have a way to list multiple sizes of one item without listing each size/type individually. So rather than having a bunch of different listings for a bunch of different sizes (which may result in a lot of confusing listings) we thought we’d try to find out the most popular sizes among our “target audience” (aka you guys!) and go from there. Make sense? We hope so! Otherwise, we would just sound like crazy people. Well, we are in fact a little crazy.

So, what say you? Are 8×10′s your jam? Or do you like larger prints like 11×17′s and 24×36′s? Or even larger? Or do you like dainty prints in the 5×7 family?

Photo from Real Simple.