Before & After of my dining room Buffett

 

A fun little "before" & "After" of some thrifted furniture! As we've been putting our dining room back together after the kitchen remodel, I've tried to keep it minimal (which for me is HARD! haha). However, I did want to find a long and narrow buffet to add a little more storage to our space for the kids crafts (easy access next to the dining room table!). I had seen an inspiration pic on Pinterest that I liked, and kept my eyes out on FB marketplace. 

One day, as I was looking...I saw this piece! It had great bones and fit the bill for the space! I did have to drive a little further to get it, and it was covered in these huge nasty big spiders (which deterred me for like two seconds, but I had already driven 30 minutes so wasn't turning back haha!) I carted it home and then decided to paint it white, so I picked up my favorite chalk paint from Home Depot and went to town! 

I love using chalk paint because I'm not a perfectionist and I hate prepping things (ie: sanding, etc). So chalk painting allows me to just do a quick dust and then start painting ASAP! (a quick dust and a few minutes to spray and kill all the spider, ewww!) 

I really loved how it turned out. It's a nice addition to the room, and now provides awesome storage for all our kids craft bins! Woo hoo!! 

Happy Fall Ya'll!!! A fun little snippet of Fall ideas, recipes, books & decor

Last week, Avonlea looked at Kevin and passionately declared,,,

“Dad, it’s not fally enough. The leaves aren’t changing, they aren’t falling off the tree, nobody is decorating, we’re missing all the parties, we’re missing all the groups over. It’s just not fally!!!”

Swedish Midsummer Party

 Our second Swedish Midsummer party is in the books! Being half Swedish, and having celebrated midsummer with my Swedish family IN Sweden, I felt it was high time to throw my own American Swedish midsummer party. So last summer I looked up what was needed for a proper midsummer and I patched together what we had to make it work haha! (You can see last year's party here). 

This year we seemed to have the odds against us in having this party. During late June, when Midsummer is actually celebrated, my kids had hand foot mouth, soooo we clearly had to push it back. Then, come August when we rescheduled,  our party got moved to indoors as the wildfires were raging here in Northern California (we ate inside, however snuck out for a bit to do the traditional dancing and take a few pictures...). Even though we had to eat inside, we still had so much fun dressing up and wearing the traditional Swedish flower crowns! And please check out how adorable my parents are in their Swedish clogs, hahah! 

I've memorized exactly one Swedish midsummer song (Små grodorna) about a little frog, complete with hand motions. I taught it to everyone last year, so we brushed up a bit on our Swedish and our hand motions, and danced around the pole a few times to the song haha! 

We at the traditional food of fish, potatoes, and the delicious strawberry cake! (If you need an amazing salmon recipe, this one is THE BEST, for reals!)  Kevin even made some elderflower mules for everyone which was a fun Swedish touch! I love my heritage and adore celebrating new traditions!! 

Do you have any traditions from your heritage? xoxo