Making our House a Home!

We have been at it again! If you hadn't already noticed...Marc and I love our house. I know every day that I come home I am happy to be here! Since we moved in we have been gradually making changes to the house to make it our home. This year we did a little work on the inside and the outside. We always have a running list with things that we want to do with the house. It's always a struggle to pick between the needs and the wants! We try to always grant at least one want per year.

Starting with our Interior Renos....

We finally got a bedroom set! We are officially grown up! Since we moved in Marc and I have been sleeping on the floor because we never had a bed frame for our bed. Well thanks to my parents for helping out with this (our wedding present from them) we finally got a bedroom set. Always ones to never make anything easy, we ordered this set from a furniture maker based out of Traverse City, Michigan. It is made out of reclaimed barn wood from barns across Michigan.
It took almost 8 weeks to make the furniture and of course it was delivered when I was away at World Cups. Granted it did give me something to look forward to when I came home. We were a little bit worried about getting it in time before the first snow fall, but fortunately it made it just in time. We ordered two nightstands, a bed frame, and a dresser. It is beautiful and we absolutely love it.
Next up our most recent interior addition a new pellet stove! Marc and I heat our house using wood pellets and a furnace. We try to keep the house warm with just the pellets and this sure helps out. It puts out 64000 BTU's of heat...all I can tell you is...it's a lot of heat! It was a lot larger than what I anticipated, but it is much quieter, cleaner, efficient, and produces about 4x's the amount of heat from our old one.

Next Up the Exterior Reno's

The prize here is our new front door. Believe it or not but we have 7 different doors in this house! Ridiculous. One of our doors in our lower living room had pretty much fallen to pieces, and would no longer shut properly. Instead of getting a new door for downstairs, Norman came up with the brilliant idea of getting a new front door and placing the old front door downstairs. (That Norman he's a real thinker...) We found a door in a catalog that we liked and had this door custom built by a local lumber yard here in town. I think it turned out great. It lets in a lot more light and the window is really beautiful. (Yet another project that was completed while I was away!)
Ok I know this is an interior photo, but check out the windows! We had 3 windows throughout the house that had to be replaced. Two of them had been cracked since day one that we moved in and the third would not shut properly. These windows are casement windows so we will have a fantastic breeze blowing through the house in the summer time. I think the windows make the house look really cozy.
Lastly is a picture of Norman's labor of love this summer. This summer he filled in all of the cracks on the exterior of the house with caulk. (There are a lot of cracks in this log house! But are we ever benefiting this winter because the house is a lot less drafty!) He also chinked the front of the house. The chink are the white lines that you see in between each of the logs. This was a lot of work for Mr. Norman but he did learn that my cake spatula was a useful tool for this project. The real question though is...can he frost a cake now?