Please don't hate me...

Let me preface with a few of the reasons I started writing a blog in 2011.

1. I graduated with a degree in journalism. My job doesn't have me writing much, except emails, and that doesn't count. I wanted to keep my writing skills sharp. 
2. In 2011, I knew a little bit about web design and content management, but not much. I wanted to challenge myself to do more with that.
3. I love design and photography. But again, I don't get to do much of that at my current job. I wanted to give myself an outlet to keep pursuing the things I like to create.
4. Technology is changing faster than my brain works. I created my first blog, Ramble (which turned into mrsblogbacktome after I got married), to give myself an excuse to keep up with the latest and greatest on the Internets.

This leads me the topic for today. In about one week, I will be moving blogs again. I believe that this will be a more permanent spot, as I will be purchasing a domain name.

I want to address a couple of fears I have about doing this, and then explain why I'm doing this.

My main fear is that I'll loose some of you. Moving domains twice is a lot. I hope that I won't loose any readers, because as always, my main goal is to share my struggles and victories with each of you in hopes to be a sort of web-friend encourager to you. I don't want my moving around to different sites to turn anyone off from being encouraged or supported.

The other fear I have is that I'm not good enough. I'll be moving from a pretty user-friendly template from Google's "Blogger" hosting site, to a pretty in-depth hosting site. I'll actually be spending my "splurge" money on the domain name and the host site. In my mind, I keep telling myself that it's silly to do that; I don't have enough readers to maintain anything like this. I'm also nervous about all of the web design and content management that goes into it, because it's a lot heftier than what Blogger requires me to do. But, with that comes a lot more creative freedom.

So here's the WHY:

• I miss being mrsblogbacktome. I loved how fluid everything was with that site. From Twitter to Pinterest, everything was "branded" the same, if you will. Since I work in public relations and advertising, branding is a pretty big thing in my book.
• I really love Heavy & Lite and the idea behind it. I love that it's biblically grounded in scripture of giving everything over to Christ, since that's what I struggle with most often. 
• I love the phases of life that I've gone through in each blog. With mrsblogbacktome, there's my initial blog posts that were so scattered and crazy. Then there was the engagement phase of life that I walked through with Jason. Then we got married and I walked through those first months of marriage on that blog. With Heave & Lite, we've completed our first year of marriage, bought a house, and are trying to get a grasp on this whole adult-life thing. 
• The new site will allow me to combine the two blogs so that I have access to everything in one place.
• There is so much room to grow at this new site. 
• Everything is accessible and in one place. I already mentioned that I can combine mrsblogbacktome and Heavy & Lite. Also, I can add recipes, folders, Etsy orders, and my portfolio if I choose to. For Heavy & Lite, I was using an external recipe index builder, which is fine, but it's A LOT of work to add just one recipe. This site allows me to have as many as I want and it hosts the index within the site.
• The new host site gets rid of a lot of clutter.

I know a lot of this is just mumbo-jumbo and you probably don't care that much. But for those of you who are sitting there going, "Girl, you gotta get it together!" I wanted to explain myself.

So starting next Monday, October 7th, I will be launching mrsblogbacktome.com. 

I haven't decided if I'm going to keep posting on Heavy & Lite until then, or if I'm just going to save up and have a full first week on the new blog, but I'll keep you posted either way (pun intended).

Last but not least, I want to just shout THANK YOU to all of you who read this little ole thing. I really didn't think anyone would ever read my blog, and with mrsblogbacktome and Heavy & Lite combined, I've had over 13,000 views. I pray that the Lord works through each word that I type. Thank you for sticking with me, and I promise I won't do this to you again (at least for a while).

And here's a little preview of what you'll see Monday:

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Our Crestwood Cottage: Cheerful Welcome - Front Door Makeover

When we moved in almost two weeks ago, we had a black front door with a storm door with bars on it. Very dark, not too pretty. Our porch is one of our favorite things about the house. So Saturday, while my parents were in town, we all 4 went to work on brightening up our front door.

Before:

Dad removed the storm door.
Jason and Mom sanded down the door.

Mom and I painted.

 

The outcome:

We will want to add a door knocker, wreath, and maybe our house number just to add some visual interest to the door. But overall, we LOVE the color and the way our front porch looks.

This was a really simple and inexpensive project with big results.

We bought Behr Ultra paint. It's an exterior semi-gloss with the primer mixed it. We chose from the Martha Stewart collection of colors, and they had to color match it. The color we chose is called "Lagoon". This paint cost about $18 for a quart, and we only used half of the quart. We bought a fine sanding block and sanded the door down first. Then Jason used an electric sander to go over everything to even it out. We used liquid sandpaper last because it makes the door a little "tacky" and it holds the paint on really well. Going from a black door to this bright color only needed two coats of paint!

Come and knock on our door... :)

Our Crestwood Cottage: Master Closet Makeover

When we moved into our house about 10 days ago, our closet was about four feet wide with two bars to hang clothes on and a shoe rack on the door. We didn't even attempt to put our clothes in there because we knew they would not all fit. The previous owner lived there alone, so her clothes probably fit fine - mine would have for sure. But, Jason and I wanted our new home to be 100% OURS, since our apartment was not that way (I lived there first). This meant we wanted both of our clothes in the master closet. I don't know why that was so important to us, but it was. So we did a little closet reno and it's almost complete!

Phase One: We hired someone to knock out the wall that served as the back of our closet and the side wall of a hall closet. Thankfully, we noticed the two closets were only connected by a nonessential wall when we were looking at the house. We had someone come and look at it before closing, and scheduled him to come knock out the wall only 3 days after we'd begun living there. I must say, the noises that I heard at first (I was the only one home when he got started) scared me to death!

One of the biggest things we've had to get used to about our house is the fact that it's OURS and we can do what we want to it! Since Jason and I have always been renters, that's a hard thing to get used to!

Getting a peek at our sub-floor was surreal.

Insulation falling from the ceiling.

Phase Two: No more insulation! Everything was sealed up nicely and ready for some paint!

Phase Three: Everything is painted to match the hallway and living area.

Phase Four: Shelves were hung and clothes were put in the closet. Originially, we were going to have the shelves hung professionally. But the decision came down to professionally hung shelves or a king size bed, and we chose the king size bed. My parents came in town this past weekend, and the four of us hung our shelves. It was actually pretty simple!

Phase Five: The floor still needs to be stained and some of the trip needs to be replaced. We also want to hang bottom shelves for pants, but we will have to wait until the floor is stained.

(come back to see pictures of the last phase)

Overall, this has been a pretty simple process. I'm very thankful we made the decision to do this project right away, because I don't think we would have ever done it otherwise. As of right now, I have no complaints about our house...but I'm almost positive that we would have both been complaining if we would have had to share that little closet that we had before.

The cost of this project was around $1,000. The shelving was about $250, and the labor and materials were around $750.