Category: Current House

This giveaway is no longer accepting entries.  See who won here.

One of our newest sponsors, Scissors, Paper, Mouse, has an array of bright, funny, and cheap artwork.  And there’s something for just about every room in your house.

Rock at Picking Clip Art would be perfect in an office.

Sew Freakin’ Awesome fits a sewing or craft room.

Hang Home Sayings Melody in your entry to greet everyone walking through your front door.

Teach your kids it’s okay to be different with Don’t Give a Hoot.

When Life Gives You Lemons is a good kitchen reminder.

The colors in Don’t Give Up are perfect for Valentine’s Day, but would look great hanging year round.

You know that saying, “Birds of a feather flock together”?  Well, it seems that’s true for reader Jessica and myself.  Jessica saw our bird, tree, and feather gallery wall and liked it, so she created her own gallery wall.

Here’s what Jessica said:

I commented on your “Birds of a Feather” gallery wall a few weeks back.  After that, my husband and I decided to create our own gallery wall. I posted about it on my tiny little blog (homebegins.blogspot.com). I started the blog this past summer when my husband and I transferred to a new city for his job. I have been so inspired by your blog and others that I have recently decided to devote more time to it. Slowly but surely right?! 🙂 

Anyway, I posted about our gallery wall, you can check it out here. I didn’t intentionally plan on this, but our gallery wall looks SO similar to yours.

While we were arranging the frames, we saw a bare spot in the bottom corner. I love what you did with the flowers on your wall so decided to do something similar. I found small plates at Goodwill (5 for like $2!) and I am STILL amazed with how much they mimic the look of your flowers.

For our first attempt at a gallery wall- we really like it!

I never would have thought to do a gallery wall or use Goodwill frames if it hadn’t been for you and all the other blogs I love to read! Thanks for your help and inspiration!

Didn’t Jessica and Brandon do a great job?  I love the asymmetrical layout, the personal art, incorporating the thermostat, and how cheap the project was; only 35 bucks!  For a quick change, they could swap the art, or keep adding to the arrangement.

What do you think of Jessica’s gallery wall?  Do you have a gallery wall in your home?  Want to be featured as part of our new Reader Write-In series?  Send us an e-mail at ourhumbleabowed@gmail.com.

A week ago, we shared our 2012 resolutions and asked you to take a ten question survey.  Today I thought I’d share the results and elaborate on a few comments.

Sixty generous readers took the survey, offering up valuable insight.  For instance, 56 readers found our blog through another blog.  While only three found us through a search engine.  That’s interesting.  I didn’t realize how dramatically other blogs directed traffic our way.  And, I now know nearly 50% of our readers follow through Google reader and only 20% are subscribed right through the blog.

Twenty-five percent of our readers have referred Our Humble A{Bowe}d to friends or family.  Thank you so much!  Seventy one percent are daily readers while others visit weekly.  A few people read more often if we’re working on an interesting project.

Your comments about what keeps you coming back left me smiling for days.  Seriously, we have the greatest readers.  Ever.

Here are a few examples:

• I love seeing how quickly and beautifully you update your house. The little craft projects are also really creative and fun (especially the cute christmas ones recently). Also, your kids are adorable so the little pictures of them are great.
• Its consistence, its regularity, it appeals to my interests, the cuteness of the four Bowes, everything (I love the Etsy recommendations also)
• My husband and I did board and batten and since you and your hubby do such a great job, we got a lot of inspiration from that! Just general interest as well- can’t wait to see the kitchen! 🙂

• All the detail you provide, budget friendly projects, real life scenarios, your positive attitude!
• ‘That’s what she said’ jokes in your posts :). But seriously, I like that your blog has the same caliber of projects as the big ones, but you’re more low-key (type A, but low-key) and don’t overdo it. No one needs 2000 words on a cabinet-painting post. You post the details, good photos and a brief tutorial, but don’t ramble. I like that.

See what I mean?  Wonderfully sweet, encouraging, supportive readers.  I cannot thank you enough.  And I guess you want to see more of our projects and lives.  Whew, that’s a relief.  I thought I was going to see a lot of checks for guest posts and giveaways.  I promise to keep our inspiration, building and craft projects, and organizing solutions coming.

A few requests I found interesting and I’ll try my best to accommodate:

1.  A cabinet building post.  It’s already in the works, we’ve just got a few cabinet doors to build, then you’ll get to read about the entire process.

2.  Recipes.  In all honesty, I’ve stayed away from this because I don’t have any original-it-was-my-creation recipes.  I didn’t think you’d want to read about the Gordon Ramsay or Rachael Ray recipe I cooked.  And I don’t consider myself to be a good cook and I’m definitely not a baker.  Don’t get me wrong, I can make something edible, but nothing that is ground breaking or special.  In fact, 99% of the meals I cook are planned by rummaging through the fridge and/or pantry and tossing something together.  But because several requests were made, I’d be happy to share an occasional recipe.  For those interested in only house stuff, don’t fear, this will never turn into a cooking blog.  Cross my heart.

3.  More pictures of me.  I know, I know.  I’m terrible about getting in pictures.  But I’m guessing none of you wants to see me bra-less, in my pajamas at three in the afternoon.  Okay, usually I have the decency to put a bra on before ten, but you get my point.

4.  Videos.  Again, I’ll try my best, but I’m usually home alone with the boys, which means there’s no one to do the camera work.  I’d love to hear video content suggestions, though.  Something to better explain a sewing project?  How Ben builds something?  Lay it on me!

5.  More quick, easy, and inexpensive projects.  Once we’re done with the kitchen I’ll have more free time to work on little projects.  I’ve got plenty to do, just need the time.  Don’t we all?!?

6.  Don’t waste a post by announcing a giveaway winner.  I hear ya.  Usually on Fridays, we’re busy running around so I quickly write up a post.  Every other Friday, when I announce the giveaway winner, I’ll also add a little something.  You’ll get to peek into the insanity that is my mind.  This could be anything from a recipe, window shopping, pictures of our lives, a super quick project, inspiration images, something from Pinterest, or a themed round-up.

Now, I don’t want to seem defensive in this next part (I know, I asked for your honest opinions), but I do want to address a few comments I received.

1.  You do a great job with updating daily with lots of pictures and coming up with interesting ideas for the home! Maybe have a bar on the side of the blog with categories (living room, kitchen, entertainment center, vacations, etc.)?

If you look on the left side bar, there’s a ‘Topics’ drop-down filled with categorized posts.  🙂

2.  I would really love it – and think it would make more sense – if you would write personally (i.e., “I”, “me”, “my”) instead of “we” since you guys don’t seem like a blogging team – or if you are, that doesn’t come across!

I totally understand the ‘we’ versus ‘me’ thing.  The main reason I say ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ is because Ben plays just as much of a part (bigger, actually) in updating our home.  Sure, he isn’t the one writing up the posts (I cringe watching him peck at the keyboard) but without Ben, we wouldn’t have this home.  And without this home and the updates we’ve done to it, I would have no reason to write a blog.  Let’s be real here, Ben is the star of the show; if you could choose one of us to work on your home, I can guarantee it would be Ben.

3.  Don’t remove comments that are meant to be as constructive criticism, unless they are filled with profanity. It might be helpful to others readers what ‘others’ think and can either defend you or agree in a nicer way with the constructive criticism.

I can think of only one instance in which I’ve deleted a negative comment.  And it was in no way related to our house.  Rather, it was an attack on me personally.  I don’t think that’s helpful to anyone, but every house related comment has been published, good or bad.  Positive or negative.

4.  I really mean no offense, but your pictures are often dark and blurry. I feel it would greatly improve the look of your blog if you invested in a better camera. I’m sure you could find a good deal on one if you looked around online. Best of luck growing your blog, I think it’s great!

I’m two steps ahead of you.  Actually, I had already ordered this Canon T2i camera package.  I just got it in the mail Friday afternoon.  You can bet I’ve fiddled around with it all weekend.  In fact, I’ve already updated ‘The Grand Tour‘ page with some new pictures.

Old camera:

New camera:

Thank you so much for taking time to answer my questions.  Truly, I reeeeeaaaalllly appreciate and value your opinions.  If you want, the survey is still open and I love reading more from you.  Oh, and for those of you who did take the survey, did you like the format?  Last time readers left answers in the comment section…

With the formality out-of-the-way, how was your weekend?  Do anything exciting or different?  We mostly relaxed, but we did get a little kitchen work done.  Details (and better, brighter pictures!) to come tomorrow!

This is a tad late, but I wanted to share my 2012 resolutions, which requires your help, too.

1.  More family time and vacations.  A fair (or unfair, depending on how you look at it) amount of our time is spent working on our house, cleaning, and doing other work related things.  While we definitely love to update our house, sometimes we feel stuck at home because we’ve got a project to finish up.  Which means we don’t do nearly as much fun stuff as we’d like.  So, we’re going to try to balance our time better.  Whether we take an extended vacation to another state, a small in state trip, or a day at home doing something fun.  I’m a workaholic, so perhaps setting up a schedule and sticking to it will help keep me off the computer doing blog business.  Basically, enjoying a little more of this:

2.  Simplify.  I usually clean, declutter, and organize our house (or certain rooms) three or four times a year.  After returning home from Minnesota, I got in a mood to clean while taking down the Christmas tree.  I sorted through the boys’ toys, putting baby toys in storage, getting rid of anything with broken or missing pieces, or things with  more than three pieces.  Vincent is terrible at picking up his toys and I finally had enough.

I can’t wait to get the kitchen organized when we’re finished.  Then I’d like to turn my attention to the neglected basement bedrooms.  We’ve been stashing large and random stuff in the closets, some of which doesn’t have another place.  But we could get it organized.

3.  Lose 20 to 30 pounds.  Hopefully putting this out there will encourage me.  Before having kids, I would have been happy losing 15 pounds.  But, I still haven’t lost the weight I gained when I was pregnant with Everett.  Apparently my body hits a plateau, gets comfortable, and stays there for several years.  Which would be great if I were already at my goal weight.  Hopefully next year (or sooner!) I’ll look 30 pounds lighter than this:

Perhaps more of number one will help with this.

4.  Work on new art designs.  When I feel I’m going crazy, I find a creative outlet to helps me cope.  I’ve already added two more prints and three cut out designs to our Etsy shop.  Hopefully I can think of something pretty to share with you in 2012.

5.  Finish lingering projects.  We ‘finished’ our basement nearly two years ago, but we’ve still got details to wrap up.  Nothing major, which is  why we’ve been able to put if off for so long.  Just touch up paint, adding door knobs, closet doors, and functional furniture.  Ben and I are the masters of 95% completion.  If just takes an eternity to get that last 5% done.  Maybe this is the year.

6.  Update the blog to make it better.  Over the last few days, I’ve been fiddling with the arrangement, trying to make navigation easier.  That includes our projects page; I’ve added category headers for definition and I’m in the process of adding photos for each project so you know what you’re getting into before clicking.  But, we can always make the blog better.  And here’s where we need your advice.  Would you mind taking a few minutes to answer our questions?
Take Our Survey!

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So, we’ve shared ours, want to share your resolution(s) with us?

This giveaway is no longer accepting entries.  See who won here.  

What better way to celebrate the first Friday of the year than with free pillows?  Milk and Cookies Canada has a great selection of designer pillows, like: