The Little List

Jan 27

I’ve realized that we are nearly at the end of January and I have not yet tackled a house project in our home this year. In fact, the last time I did was in November, when I wrapped up our dining room makeover. As much as I love to work on our home, these past couple of months have been a rest I didn’t know I needed. I tackling new projects, but I can easily get caught up in my excitement and enthusiasm, which ultimately distracts me from why I want to work on our space in the first place. It’s been a strange couple of months, but I’m grateful I have taken the opportunity (sometimes willingly, sometimes not) to focus on my family rather than this space we share.

With that being said, I’m starting to get the home project itch. We really want to focus on saving over this coming year for some bigger projects in the future, so although I don’t have any major projects planned, I do have quite a few small-budget projects on my mind. I’d like to focus on finishing this year. There are so many parts of our home that are 90% of the way there, but need a little bit of attention to detail. Things like caulking baseboard cracks, putting closet doors back on in a few of the bedrooms, tweaking paint colours, adding areas of focus to some rooms, hanging more art, small DIY builds, and rearranging to better suit our family’s current needs. Nothing stands out as being overly complicated or time-consuming, but even the small projects, when added together, can amount to big changes. I can’t wait to smother our home with love through little acts of service and I’m itching to get started.

I’ve spent a lot of time daydreaming of the home projects ahead, but these are a few of the other things that have been bringing me joy, making me think, or helping me grow over the past couple of weeks:

I can’t get enough of our simple black dining room chairs, especially paired with these simple beige seat cushions. Apparently I’m not the only one in our house who loves them - our cats have been living on them these days.
“Let’s play dance party!” is one of my favourite phrases to hear coming out of Mabel’s mouth these days and we’ve taken the opportunity to introduce her to a diverse range of classic tunes. Current dance party favourites include Boot Scootin’ Boogie, You Dropped a Bomb On Me, and Mambo No. 5.
I have been living in this sweater during these deadly cold January days. It is the perfect amount of cozy without being too bulky. It inspired me to make a little round up of some other cozy sweaters to share on our LTK account, but I’ll leave the links to my picks down below here too.
Mabel and I have been baking together over the past couple of weekends. I love that she is finally at an age where it feels a little more manageable to involve her in the kitchen. It definitely still gets messy, but it has been a really cute and enjoyable activity to connect with her over. This past weekend, we made these simple banana muffins and they were one of the best banana recipes I’ve tried in a while.
Curt and I took a pretty big risk this past weekend and put an offer in on a property that had a lot of income potential. Our offer was beat out, but the excitement of making the effort to shake things up a little bit and dream about our future left us both feeling really inspired and excited. I don’t know what could come next, but we already have a few ideas up our sleeves about things we would like to accomplish together and it feels good to go out on a limb and try. This opportunity may not have worked out (I’m a strong believer that things fall into place when they’re meant to), but it felt good to explore new possibilities, especially after a couple of years of feeling pretty trapped on a lockdown hamster wheel.
This was such a fascinating Dear Alice podcast episode all about colour psychology. The podcast talks about colour in the context of interiors, but whether you are into design or not, I think it shares some really fascinating fundamental knowledge that will change the way you understand colour all around you. I love the complexity of colour psychology and how ambiguous and personal it can be.
A reminder I’ve needed lately.