I just love the Little Women movie — the 1994 version. We're talking Winona Ryder as Jo. We're talking Christian Bale as Laurie. It's one of my favorite holiday rewatches! The original book takes place in a quiet Massachusetts town in the 1860s, and I just picture their home as continually wintery. I heard someone […]
I love a holiday home tour. It's so fun stepping into someone's house to see how they decorate. The scents they chose to represent their home in the Christmas season. Even the way a fire in the fireplace creates cozy shadows on the wall—it just changes the vibe. After we decorated all the rooms for […]
Every year I say I’m going to do less when it comes to the holidays...I’m going to decorate fewer rooms. But then I go and decorate even more rooms than usual! I guess I can't explain it any other way other than the Christmas spirit overtakes me! (Visit our CLJ Holiday Shop for some of […]
Chris and I have always said that if we don't feel 100% all-in excited about a project—both of us—then we probably haven't found the solution yet. I think that's been the tale with our primary bathroom renovation as a whole. We feel excited about doing the project, but it's been YEARS in the design phase […]
I was so excited to share new photos of our entire house exterior a couple of months ago. But lately, the leaves are showing off their fall colors and the golden afternoon light has been a paid actor against the brick, ivy, and landscaping. There really was no other option: I had to take you […]
Some years, I go very spooky, gothic, dramatic Halloween, but this year, you may notice that I didn’t really decorate for Halloween at all. I stuck more with fall-themed decor as opposed to Halloween, because I could feel my energy running thin. Just a reminder: You don't have to do it all! Decorating for fall […]
There's nothing like kicking off fall with a new house tour! I love making these videos. They feel like a bookmark in time, capturing the mood and the feeling of our home in the season of life we're in now. I have some newly redone spaces to share (the mudroom! Greta's bedroom! The landing! The […]
This year has been the (slightly unexpected) year of our exterior renovation! And, honestly, the house has never felt more us. Let me take you through a tour of what we've accomplished this year! All the renovations we've done to our "Modern Colonial" North Carolina home feel like they represent the elements that I loved […]
Our mudroom renovation has been quite the journey... a year-long journey to be exact! One of the factors making this a more complex (and lengthy) project was that it involved significant changes to both the interior and the exterior of the space (if you remember, this was a laundry room before!). After adding an exterior […]
Throughout my house, I'm always changing out switch plates to either 1) blend them into the rest of the room or 2) elevate them to reflect other accents in the room. One way to do that is with paintable switch plates. For instance, if your switch plates are on a baseboard where you don’t want […]
If I could go back in time to over a year ago when I started mocking up colors for my front door, I would have told myself to just try painting the colors on the actual door! It was so much faster for me to paint the front door three times than just thinking about […]
This post is sponsored by Neighborly, Your Hub for Home Services Our neighborhood has a lot of beautiful mature trees, but it can also make the houses, driveways, and streets feel darker at night. Which is great for sleep, but a little nerve-wracking when you're coming home late or leaving the house super early — like […]
With every change we make to our house, we're always looking to solve problems and make our home work for us and our family in the most beautiful way we can think up. This time, a door was (literally) opened when we turned a window in the former laundry room/now mudroom into a functional entryway! […]
I had been itching to paint our front door ever since we had our exterior trim painted back in May. I picked a color (Farrow & Ball De Nimes) and we applied for HOA approval (it's a long process and one we've had to do a lot...) that finally came in a couple weeks ago! […]
Greta's room is the bedroom that I always knew would get another round of redesign. We did a few small updates right when we moved in, like updating the flooring and painting the walls as you can see in our last update. It's a beautiful space. But as an official teenager, Greta is over the […]
A few weeks ago, I shared in Love Letter (sign up here so you don't miss any future revelations!) that I got this overwhelming feeling that I want to design a beach house. It happened while I was snorkeling on a recent trip to Bora Bora, and the colors that I saw just inspired me, […]
It's hard to believe we're three years into designing our moody modern traditional home. Sometimes people will ask me, "What are you gonna do when you're done?" I can't think about that yet — I'm not even close! While I feel great about so many rooms in the house, some are still on the "to […]
It’s been over a year in the making, but our exterior windows have been replaced and now painted!!! (The interior of the windows are black and the exterior we opted for paintable so we could paint them whatever color we wanted!) I have a slew of photos to show you, and I feel like the […]
You know you're in April when every week I try to schedule our house tour to be filmed, we get clouds and showers. Plus, our contractors decided to start installing the windows on the same week we wanted to photograph, so we literally were working around ladders. (All the behind-the-scenes drama that you don't see!) […]
It's always so much fun to do a house tour video for you to see things you may not catch when looking at photos. It feels like hosting a bunch of friends over to see what you've done to the place — without the clean-up afterwards....only lots and lots beforehand. As much as this house […]
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Welcome to our online community where we've posted home, DIY, style, renovations, and family since '09. Renovating our #cljmoderncottage in Idaho and headed for new adventures in Raleigh, NC. #cljfam #cljtransformations