January 2012: A Real Chestnut

I take lots of (poorly lit) pictures and unfortunately, most of them end up in the dark corners of my iPhoto library never to be seen again. That's about to change, baby.

Now that I have this little spot on the interweb, I'm going to use a piece of it to highlight events and fun stuff that happened in the past month. A little monthly re-cap, if you will. Hey, the byline of the blog does say, 'DIY and Daily Life,' right? Hopefully this will work to both serve as a kind of fun, interactive diary and to let you in on a little behind the scenes action that doesn't make it into regular FH posts. I'll also set out one small goal for the month ahead. Oooooo, exciting, right? 

The top 8 (how myspace is that?):

1. We started the month and the year by toasting with champagne. Fun fact: for every New Year that we've spent as a couple Mike and I have a picture of us clinking glasses at midnight. Such crazy kids we are.

2. We exchanged stocking gifts when we got back home after the holiday. Mike filled (and I mean FILLED) my stocking with chestnuts and sprinkles of licorice. If you must know anything about me, know that I live and breathe chestnuts between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I almost had an apoplexy from the excitement after peeking into my stocking!

3. In family news, my heart melted a little bit when I got this picture of my nephew. Don't you just want to pinch those cheeks? They slay me!

4. My dad came up from Florida for a snowy weekend! It was such an amazing treat. He converted us into Lifetime movie freaks. We watched the world premiere (they're very dramatic about premieres on that channel) of The Drew Peterson Story: Unstoppable. OMG. So. Good. Watch it. We also watched like 3 other Lifetime moves. Um, they're amazing, and they're all based on true stuff! A total hidden gem in the high channel numbers.

5.  I got these awesome red shoes and am now obsessed with them. Very Dorothy even though that movie still gives me the creeps. I think I've only made it all the way to the end once.  (From J. Crew)

6. Mike discovered his love for photobombing blog pics. I already have...hmmm...10 of these pics and its only the first month of blogging.  He's cute.

7. Poatsie had a ridiculously adorable moment, but whats new? Oh, if you only knew how many pictures I have of this dog. You'd have me committed. I think there's like 10 from this little session alone.

8. And, finally, I made this bracelet from Honestly WTF blog. Tutorial here. Those are hex nuts from the hardware store! Absolutely genius. The safety pin to the sock is my proprietary bracelet making trick. Secret's out now.

So that was January, full of chestnut-chubby-cheek-Lifetime-movie goodness. Not a bad way to start the year!

February Micro Goal:

Get a good pic of my mug for the sidebar. Something with no one else in the photo...I have surprisingly few of those! And yes, I do think it will take me a whole month to get one I like :).

It's About Time to Start a Resolution

I loooooove resolutions (not that I always keep them, but, hey, I do try). I love the clean slate feeling of a new year and all the promise and optimism it brings. I'm totally the kid who was stoked to get a new school planner and put all my goals and appointments in it as soon as I got it home. With color coding and everything.

This year, my resolutions are:

• more precise budgeting (using YNAB...love that program!)


• not to be lazy when getting dressed for work 


• wash my makeup off before bed (I am the WORST at this)


• host a yard sale (lots of duplicates because of wedding gifts, and Mike is starting to call me a hoarder)


• call my brother and sister more often (at least once a week!)


• Folksy Home

Yeah, that last one is this blog, and dare I say, it's my 'BIG' resolution for the year.

The reason I'm starting this blog is well...the reason most people start these kinds of blogs. I do lots of home-related stuff (at least I think I do) and I want to share my personal experience while keeping a diary to look back on (so when I'm old and gray and have no interest in what I did to that curbside-found-dresser in my 20s I can be comforted by the fact that *if*I did want to know what finish I used, I could look it up). On top of that, I read approximately 1 million blogs every day and it seems like a really great community to be a part of...so much sharing of ideas and constructive feedback and support seems to interlink the blogs I read, and selfishly, I want in!

So a little background: My husband and I met while in grad school in Boston and moved to Bucks County in 2009 after he got a job here. We 'acquired' our dog in January 2010

and got married August 20, 2011 (yes, the Kim K. wedding day).

We love to be home and do home improvement type stuff. We constantly have projects either in the works or in the pipeline. Though we rent, our landlord is tres awesome and lets us paint/personalize etc. We are saving for a home of our own, but we're not there yet.

However, I haven't always been so DIY. Here I am on my prom day (with Dad) before DIY was even a twinkle in my eye:



Neither of my parents are particularly into the DIY scene (even though they are awesome in a million other ways), but I do have a ridiculously creative grandpa, below, who would never buy anything when he could possibly make his own (he has more than 1 plastic bottle part attached to his lawn mower). Maybe that's where it comes from.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time doing homework, reading teen magazines, planning outfits and downloading from Napster. I kind of had a renaissance when I got to grad school in 2006, started being more conscious of my place on this planet, and taking more pride in intrinsic things, i.e. DIY, baby!

My husband compliments this revelation and often when I am unfamiliar or need his steadier hand, he will jump in and help. He has the experience; here he is working on the canoe he built:

So, long story short, this marks the official beginning of my blogging new year's resolution. Viva Folksy Home. Let's do this!

**btw, that pic at the top is of when Mike and I got back to the hotel room after our wedding. We were just a bit excited to be married :)