A NEW YEAR & A NEW ADVENTURE {Want to come along?}

Happy New Year Lovelies!

I hope this finds you snuggled up somewhere with your favorite people, soaking in the amazingness that is a brand new year!

We spent the morning remembering the fun that was opening up our doors last evening to a group of friends and family while we celebrated a dear friend’s birthday with an annual tradition of popping champagne and indulging in birthday cake, among other indulgent goodies. (We hear the diets start today?)

Along with being new years day today, it is also the seemingly most hopeful day of the year, 365 unwritten days upon us!Within those days there are going to be hundreds of opportunities to see sunrises and catch sunsets and to fill the time in between day break and night fall with everything our little hearts desire. I love the idea of a brand new year filled with possibilities, don’t you?

After a lot of snuggling and coffee this morning, we dragged ourselves out of our pajamas and ventured out into the snowy world where it felt like hope hung in the cool air.  We then made a healthy stir fry for dinner (’cause we heard everyone was doing that today.) and sat around the table discussing our  families hopes and dreams for 2017.

One of our children shouted out that they wanted to become a better reader and to start taking piano lessons, the other one wants to play more hockey and get even better at math. Hubby and I momentarily looked at each other with pride beaming from our smiles. Were these our kids??? That was until our baby piped up that his only goal for this year is to go to Chuck E Cheese and devour all the pizza.

#prioritise
#balance
#pizzatrumpsall

Hubby and I rarely make resolution lists but after the busiest couple years of our lives, we do have some goals we want to accomplish this year! After seven years of consistent  DIY renovating our main goal for this new year is to get more organized. And by “more organized” we actually mean “just organized” but by saying “more” it makes us sound like we don’t have the messiest garage and basement of all time. Speaking of our basement, we desperately need to renovate it this year! Stay tuned!

We also want to offer our readers more opportunities to learn and create with us in 2017. In 2016 we introduced the idea of workshops and got some overwhelming support. We have listened to your opinions and are planning even more for you this year! (You can read about our first one HERE and our second one HERE.)

When we started this blog five years ago, our aim was to share easy life and project hacks here but to ultimately connect and learn from other creatives. We craved community and authenticity. Years later and nothing has changed. Around here we love to show you our real life messes and challenges along with our momentarily picked up room reveals because I suppose we are just like the kids cramped around the dinner table and we believe in a healthy balance of real vs seemingly perfect.

We share the messes and the real with you here because we crave authenticity after all and know you do too. In a world that is seemingly Pinterest perfect the need for authenticity and real life glimpses have never been more needed by families like ours. We want to share with you the other side of perfection. The side that is messy but happy, difficult but achievable. The side that everyone endures and embraces but few rarely shout from the roof tops.

Beyond getting “more” organized, our biggest goal for 2017 is to connect with our readers even more this year and to take that uncomfortable step into being even more transparent. We want to share the whole journey, both sides of the story, real time renos and our real familie’s story with you immediately.

Hooray!! No more waiting for the tutorials you asked for months ago!

We want to share with you our real renovations and projects in real time!! The good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the problems and the solutions, the juggling and the simplifying, the before and afters and all of the in between. That’s why today, on the first day of the new year, we want to share with you our family’s newest project yet.

Our hope is that our new adventure will inspire you to try your two hands at creating new things. Hopefully, by joining us, you’ll learn to love the process of turning your house into a home that is made from and filled up with beautiful memories. PS: Who wants us to house crash your place and give your home a makeover? Subscribe to our channel to find out what we are dreaming up for this year!

Without further ado, here is a little look at what is to come in 2017.