A Quick (and cheap!) Outdoor Update

I love my house. a lot, it’s a 1950’s cape cod style house, and its adorable. I have an awesome front porch with a cute porch swing that we use all the time. The exterior of the house is a unique red brick with mix of black bricks thrown in every now and then. I looooove the bright red brick, I hate those weird orange brick houses, and wouldn’t know the first thing about painting brick houses, so I’m glad I lucked out.

Anyway, the outside of my house, even being as cute as it is, is a bit boring. I have all these ideas to change the look of the front, but, I’m tired, I have a toddler (who loves to “help”) and am pregnant, so I need a quick and easy project to appease me. I’ve always wanted to have a bright colored front door, but never knew what color to go with, I was so worried that it would be the wrong color, so in turn, I just let my boring white door stay. After a while I seriously became fed up with it, so I decided to act. I had this idea that a light blue would be a perfect color, it wouldn’t fade in, but it also wouldn’t be too… weird. I did buy a back up plan- charcoal, and also had left over white, from another project. But after finishing up the one coat of blue, I seriously FELL IN LOVE! (I went on to finish a couple more coats, obviously) but I didn’t need the extra colors, this one was perfect. And even better, the entire project cost me only 6 dollars! I bought 2 jars of the paint samples from lowes, I probably should have bought the exterior paint, but seriously, that would have cost ATLEAST twice as much, I’m cheap. I figure that with the storm door, its not going to be getting the rain, so I didn’t have to worry so much. In a year or two if I’ve changed my mind paint is easy to cover up. So here it is! voila! Don’t you just love it!

Next up on the front porch, getting rid of the HIDEOUS grey indoor/outdoor carpet on the front steps!

  Enjoy!!

It is Well with my Soul Printable

“It is Well with my Soul” is a very important hymn to me. I always loved it in church, but when my mom passed in May of 2011, it gave me the strength to move on for myself and my family, especially my daughter. She was my best friend and when I lost her, it was like losing the world. This hymn refers to 2 Kings 4:26, the meaning behind the hymn is a story of a Shunammite woman whose son died but was restored to life again because of her faith in the Lord. It is about dealing with loss, I hadn’t realized that, until I listened to the lyrics of it closer. But it can relate to the rest of life too, such as when your life is a mess, you can be well within your soul, if you ask the Lord for the help. I made this printable/poster, for about my mantle to remind me of this ever day.

I love the look of this printable, I LOVE how it looks on my mantle, but who wants to spend upwards of 30-60 dollars on one off of Etsy.com or the like. I made this poster for around 10 dollars. Seriously. And I’m talking EVEN the frame. It is just a cheap 18”x24” poster frame, I got mine from Joann Fabric for $7.49 (it was on sale 50% off) but sign up for their coupons, they ALWAYS have coupons, I actually use the mobile app, because I forget to carry the coupons, but ALWAYS have my cell phone. The print was really cheap too, I took the printable I designed, on a flash drive, to FedEx/Kinko’s and had it printed to fit my frame, they did all the hard work of resizing and EVERYTHING, and on top of that, it only cost $2.49 for the print.

I put it into the frame and arranged the rest of my mantle around it. And I have to say, I’ve fallen in love with it. And you can do it too! Here is a link to the printable, feel free to use it as you wish (but pretty please, don’t sell it yourself). Enjoy!