Looking Forward to What 2017 Brings

The past year has been one of the busiest but most rewarding years of my life. We welcomed Lucy into the world and things have never been the same since. Then with a newborn in tow, my mother and I started a lifelong dream of creating our own business, Cloverhill Flowers. Garrett and I relished in our new roles as parents and continued to work away at making the farmhouse into our home. Then there was this little ol’ blog to attend to, which crashed not once but twice due to so much traffic this fall. Even in the throes of trying to manage the tech support side of things, I couldn’t help but appreciate all the readers, old and new alike, who make it possible for me to keep this little corner of the internet going.

So what will 2017 bring? In an effort to get myself organized this year, I splurged on a new Day Designer Planner (on sale in Canada at Indigo). I used to use them all the time as I found it easier to keep to a schedule if it’s written down, but in recent years I’d turned to my calendar and notes on my phone. Now I’m back to paper and loving it so far. When Lucy naps, I have a limited window when I can get some work done and I like the idea of having a clear idea of what I’d like to accomplish with each day. Otherwise I end up on the couch with my laptop watching TV while I half pay attention to what I’m doing. Not terribly productive.

While I don’t have any specific New Years Resolutions this year I do have three main areas I want to approve upon – be more time efficient, be more organized and focus on the task at hand. For years I thought it was all about multi-tasking but I’ve since learned it doesn’t work AND it takes you away from focusing on the present. And we’ve got some fairly big projects to undertake in the near future, so I need all the help I can get!

For the first few months I know we’ll be working hard on three different room updates while I’m still on maternity leave. There is so little that we can do outside in the winter months and I know that the summer will be busy with our second growing season for the flower business, so we’re going to make the most of it inside.  Can you guess which rooms?

 

Craft Room/Guest Room

Back when we first moved in, we set up the third bedroom as a guest room with the headboard and double bed from our apartment. In the 19+ months we’ve lived here there have only been three nights when we’ve had guests stay in there. Garrett or I have maybe slept in there half a dozen times ourselves when one of us has been really sick, when I was at the end of the pregnancy and when Lucy was a newborn.

In the meantime, it’s become a dumping ground for everything that we don’t know what to do with yet. Bins of Christmas decorations, craft supplies, my old folding teak table that we drag out for extra space when we have company. It’s a total and utter mess. Keeping it real here, folks! For the longest time we’ve just shut the door and forgotten about it. Over the Christmas holiday I’ve been slowly transforming it into multi-purpose space. Somewhere that I can work on crafts and leave them out without taking up our whole dining room table downstairs. We’ll be keeping the bed for guests, but tucking it in the corner, and I’m adding some storage for craft supplies, books, etc. It’s right across the hall from Lucy’s room, making it a perfect play space for when she is older too.

I’m still in the early days of getting it organized, but I’ll be sure to share it when it’s done! I’m taking some inspiration from my Office Space & Craft Room Pinterest Board and trying to use things we already have on hand to make this a low budget project.

 

Master Bedroom

After we decorated Lucy’s nursery, I realized how nice it was to have a finished room. Everything has a place and it makes it so much easier to keep organized and tidy. I’d say that most days her bedroom is the tidiest room in the whole house because cleaning it up takes all of five minutes.

It got us thinking about our own bedroom. It’s nice enough, with its two closets, DIY window seat and some dressers, but it is in no way a cohesive look. Our dresser and nightstands are hand-me-downs that have seen better days. With only one window, it is quite dark, which lends itself well to sleeping in during the summer but makes it feel cold in the winter. The wall behind the bed is stuccoed (for real) and the builders trim from the added closets take away from the beautiful thick baseboards in the rest of the room. There is usually a laundry basket of things to go away, a stack of books I’ll never get to beside my bed and at least once dog sleeping under the covers. Hardly the oasis one hopes will beckon them to sleep. I’ve already started working on two big projects for the space with more on the way, with some new bedding, artwork and fixtures to transform it into the dreamy room I’m hoping for.

 

Powder Room

Right off the kitchen we have a small powder room with a massive window. It’s bright and light, but also cramped and poorly laid out. We’re gutting almost the entire room to reconfigure everything and add in new fixtures, beautiful woodwork and a new floor. It’s the biggest interior renovation we’ll have ever taken on ourselves and in the smallest room of the house.

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When Christmas was first over I started to get that post-holiday emotional downswing but making a list of these things that we want to accomplish and starting to work on new projects got me amped up about the new year. When the snow has melted and the springtime flowers start popping up, I hope to have this house in much better shape and ready to take on the exciting challenges of our second season as flower farmers. Some days they feel like lofty goals and other days it’s all excitement and sledgehammers. I hope you have a lovely January as you start to plan your own dreams and goals. Here are some posts to help you get cracking: