"Say Please"

I found these cute little encouraging cards to give to my kids.  They are supposedly for their lunchbox, but I use them to put in the kid's desks (or under their pillow, on their dresser, bathroom mirror, etc.), since we homeschool. ;)  They are super cute and the kids love them!  They have a sweet, encouraging message for the kids on the front and on the back it reveals a cool fact about something.  Here's an example of what a card would say:

{front} Spending time with you is one of my favorite activities.  {back} An earthquake in 1811 caused the Mississippi River to flow backward for a short time.

I thought I'd share, so you could give them to your kids as well! :)

Have a great week!

Check back for more renovation photos!  We've been busy this past weekend and got the kitchen cupboards all painted! 

Click here for the "Say Please" website!

All Seasons Room....

This room is off of the kitchen.  It's a nice, long area so we can have lots of dinner guests.  We actually have 3 different areas for eating and I love it.  We always have enough space for dinner guests. ;)

The BEFORE:  it had blue carpet and the walls were just primed white.  They had never been painted.

So the first thing we did was paint the room a light celery green color.  We put in grey/white wood floors and 2 new ceiling/light fans. (we have LOVED those the most)  The only difference now is the black chairs...are now painted WHITE.  It looks so much better, but this was taken right after we moved in.  I didn't have time to paint the chairs yet, but they definitely look better white. ;)  

The old church pew was in the barn.  That was from my church a LONG time ago...from the old building.  I love old church pews. ;)  It's a cozy space to hang out and chill.

This is just another angle of the room.  

So that's it for this room.  We use it a lot and we really love all the windows.  It looks over the whole property and it's just gorgeous.  Plus, there is heat in the winter time, so we can enjoy it all year long!

TODAY...the kitchen is being painted!  Can't wait to show you the end result. ;)

Have a great day!

A Slight TWEAK to the Granola Bar Recipe

Ok....so I made the granola bars again (I've been on a long lost search for a really perfect granola bar for a long time) and they are perfect for us now!  I love them and so do my kids!  Yay!  Win/win is always good. :)

So I thought I would share the changes I made to the recipe to make them super good! (or at least to our liking)

The original recipe is below....

The first 5 ingredients are perfect. {you can use peanut butter instead of almond butter or sunflower butter or whatever you want there}  I did all of that the same, but I added 3/4 cup of honey and completely eliminated the brown sugar.  I also added a generous amount of peanut butter.  Maybe closer to 4 T.  It was TOO sweet for me the last time I made them with the brown sugar and honey is better for you anyway.  The less processed and refined ingredients the better, right? :)

Moving on.....I also eliminated the cinnamon and ginger (I love cinnamon and ginger a LOT, but it was too distracting for me for some reason.  I feel it didn't fit here.), but did keep the vanilla and salt the same.  I added the 2 cups cereal (our fav is Special K....rice crispies would be good too!)  

{sigh}.....

 My kids do not enjoy dried fruit that much. (although 2 out of the 3 will eat them)  I decided since I eliminated the refined sugar, that I could add in a few dark chocolate chips (per their request).  The dark chocolate really isn't that sugary anyway, but SO yummy!  And....because I put chocolate chips in the bars, I skipped putting it on top.  

They were perfect!!!  

They didn't taste overly sugary at all and had a nice peanut butter/chocolate flavor.

If it were just ME eating them.....I'd take out as much sweetness as I could (only use some honey) and add in a bunch of nuts, seeds and dried fruit!  I love them that way.  However, I also can't be eating a whole batch of granola bars by myself, so I need to listen to the opinions of my littles.  I feel like we had a good compromise between the chocolate and the sugar.  I hope you enjoy them as well....however you may like them! ;)

Granola Bars

1 3/4 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1/2 cup coarsely chopped almonds
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons almond butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
2 cups crushed cereal (whatever you have on hand)
3/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
Heat oven to 300 degrees F. Line an 11x8-inch baking dish (you could probably sub an 8x8-inch dish) with foil; coat foil with cooking spray.

Place oats, coconut and almonds on a large cookie sheet. Bake 5 minutes or until light golden brown and fragrant.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together butter, almond butter, honey, brown sugar, vanilla, salt, cinnamon and ginger until well combined; stir in oat-coconut-almond mixture, cereal and apricot until well combined. Press mixture into prepared dish. Bake 20 minutes or until golden brown and fragrant.

Cool completely before lifting foil out of pan and slicing into bars. (I would recommend refrigerating them a while for easier slicing.) Melt chocolate chips in a small ziploc bag, in the microwave, for about 1 minute, or until melted and smooth. Pipe melted chocolate onto bars and allow to dry.

Makes 12 large bars (you could cut them smaller and get more)

Laundry Closet Reformed!

Here is the BEFORE of our back mudroom/laundry room area.  There is a laundry closet, mudroom and small 1/2 bath.

So we painted the room a light mustard yellow color and put in wood floors.  We took off the bi-fold doors and opened up the laundry closet.  Mark built me a pedestal for the washer/dryer to set up on.  I love the height of them now! :)  So much better than sitting on the low floor. 

He also built me some shelves from old barn wood that was in the barn.  Then I gave him an old window and asked him to make me a little cabinet out of barn wood and he did!  I love it and now I have a place to hold some of my cleaning/laundry room stuff.  Looks so cute too. ;)

We're not totally done in here.  I want to put something on that top shelf, but I'm not sure what yet.  I like it for now though. :)

The Front Closet

Here is the really BEFORE picture....

Here is a BEFORE of our front closet (we had already laid the floor, painted the walls and put in the new light fixtures in the hallway by this point.  The closet just hadn't been touched yet.).  The closet had bi-fold doors and we took those down.  It had a white shelf in there and that's about it.  We wanted to make it a little prettier and a little more useful.

I took a few pictures with my phone as the guys were working on it.  Mark and Peyton working hard!



I came up with the design and colors, etc. and Mark built everything for me.  I found the barn wood in our barn and the hooks were from Anthropology (LOVE that place! :).  Everything was custom!  He did a great job! ;)  The walls were painted grey and the bench and shelf were painted white.


I took this picture during Christmas, so I still had all our Christmas cards hung up! :)

I bought the pillow from etsy.  LOVE IT!

I got a lot of the items on the shelf from our barn, but some of the picture frames I bought from etsy.  They are reclaimed tin ceiling made into frames.  The big tin ceiling I got from our barn.  I found that piece of old wood in our barn and painted "Love" on it. :)


I think that's it!  I love how it turned out and it makes our entryway look so much more inviting. ;)  It's very useful for guests coats and it blends in nicely with our living room and kitchen area.
What a talented husband I have. :)

Homemade Granola Bars

I'll talk a little more about the changes I want to make in our home in another post.  

However, making more homemade healthy snacks for the kids is one thing I'd like to do more often. (not that they eat all boxed, unhealthy food or something, but I haven't went out of my way to make homemade food everyday for their snacks.)

I'd like to be a little more intentional about our health and foods we're putting in our body.

 Now...that being said....these aren't the most healthy granola bars you can find, but they are healthy (no preservatives!) and they DO taste good.  You can also switch out some of the ingredients to make it as healthy as you would like to! :) It's a pretty easy, flexible recipe to make to your liking.

 I just used what I had on hand this time, so I used dried cherries instead of apricots. (although I think apricots would be good too! :)  I also think they were a little too sweet for me, so next time I'll cut out the brown sugar completely.  They were super yummy though and very filling!  A great, healthy snack to give the kids! (and yourself! :) Enjoy! 

Granola Bars

1 3/4 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1/2 cup coarsely chopped almonds
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons almond butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
2 cups crushed cereal (whatever you have on hand)
3/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
Heat oven to 300 degrees F. Line an 11x8-inch baking dish (you could probably sub an 8x8-inch dish) with foil; coat foil with cooking spray.

Place oats, coconut and almonds on a large cookie sheet. Bake 5 minutes or until light golden brown and fragrant.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together butter, almond butter, honey, brown sugar, vanilla, salt, cinnamon and ginger until well combined; stir in oat-coconut-almond mixture, cereal and apricot until well combined. Press mixture into prepared dish. Bake 20 minutes or until golden brown and fragrant.

Cool completely before lifting foil out of pan and slicing into bars. (I would recommend refrigerating them a while for easier slicing.) Melt chocolate chips in a small ziploc bag, in the microwave, for about 1 minute, or until melted and smooth. Pipe melted chocolate onto bars and allow to dry.

Makes 12 large bars (you could cut them smaller and get more)

Master Bedroom Renovation

I thought I'd show you what we did in the master bedroom.  It's actually not too exciting, but the things we did made a big difference and we really like it now. ;)

Here is the BEFORE:  

When we moved in, the walls were just primed and the carpet was the dirty, old blue carpet that ran through the rest of the house.  It just needed some updating. :)

'

We painted the walls a beigey/cream color and put in new cream color shag carpet.  We added some white curtains and a new ceiling/light fan.  I love it!  Simple, clean and it works for us. :)

I found the barn door on the side of the road one day, so we turned that into our headboard.  Mark made our extra tall bed and I found a vintage bedspread on Etsy. :)

We plan to switch out the interior doors, but they'll have to stay for now.  

Did I mention we're doing all our renovations with CASH!  So it takes a little longer when you have to purchase everything as extra money is available.  We haven't owned a credit card in probably 10 years and we're not going to start now.  So...our progress is slow, but at least we're not in debt. :)

More progress to show you tomorrow.....