2013: A year in (blog posts) review

I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful holiday season. From a work perspective, this whole holiday-in-the-middle-of-the-week thing is for the birds, but I certainly enjoyed having a whole weekend in between Christmas and the new year with no social engagements. It was a fruitful weekend as far as projects and personal rejuvenation goes.

But before I start telling you about what's new, I thought it would be a good time to look back at 2013. It was a good year as far as blogging goes. I published more posts than any other year since I started this blog (in April 2009!). This blog started as more of a journal and a way to keep track of my garden but it has transitioned to something else entirely. I now do projects I don't think I ever would have taken on otherwise if only to just tell you about them. As always, I strive to show you the good, the bad and the ugly, and there's been plenty of each.

Let's take a look at what happened in 2013.

In January I showed you a lot of the ugly when I bared it all in my laundry "room." The laundry basket system we installed still works really well for us to corral the clothes, but I have to admit that the clean clothes bins only really get emptied when they are overflowing and nothing more can be shoved in them.

Remember what it looked like before?

February was a productive month. I started by doing a little redecorating in the living room. We got a new area rug and I had a chair and ottoman recovered. It was a welcome change after many years of sort of a French Country color scheme.

One day in February, I came home from work and painted the back door black. Sometime that afternoon I got the urge and the next thing you know I was doing it. I still love it and wish I had done it sooner.

And at the end of the month I did some more painting, but this time on fabric when I painted the cushions on the chairs in front of the fireplace. I'm happy to report the paint has held up really well and no one who has sat in them has noticed they are actually painted.

March certainly came in like a lion at our house. A late winter storm dumped a foot of heavy, wet snow on us, wreaking havoc on the landscape. The damage caused by that storm was a huge concern, but turned out to have a silver lining. We had to cut down several trees damaged in the storm and it turns out I don't miss them at all. In fact I wish we had cut them down (particularly the cedar that was leaning on the house in the storm) years ago. And it gave me an excuse to create a new garden!

Later in the month, I was chomping at the bit to get back in the garden, but the weather was not cooperating, so I came up with this list of things to do while biding your time waiting to get to serious gardening.

In April, I wrote one of my favorite posts of the year, Pinterest gardening tips NOT to follow. I think I need to do more of these because I continue to see absolutely ridiculous gardening tips pinned on Pinterest.

I also got overly excited about installing the slide-out trash bin in the kitchen.

Spring finally came in May and I was happy to finally get something planted. The onion starts went into the new raised vegetable garden.

I also launched the Garden Appreciation Society—my way of encouraging you to enjoy your garden in a new way, by bringing some flowers inside—in May. I had a great time with this and really enjoyed seeing all the amazing bouquets you came up with too!

And in the quickest, most thrown-together project I've ever done, I made a huge obelisk. It's still standing, by the way.

There was lots of gardening in June, but the really big news was inside where we finally finished the kitchen. We had our fair share of setbacks with it, but I'm so happy we did it. I just love everything we did in there.

In July I finally gave you a full tour of the garden, but it was an as-is tour. Realizing that if I waited until it was looking perfect, you would never see it, I just grabbed the camera one day and did it.

August got a little competitive when my mom and I tried to figure out who had the bigger Incrediball hydrangea blooms.

In September I showed you how the window box changed over the course of the summer. I was pretty happy with how it turned out this year. I can't wait to start planning what will be in it next summer!

Sadly, fall came (only sad because of what comes after fall) so I was mostly working on inside projects again. In October I shared how I salvaged a stained marble table top on a cute little vintage table I found on Etsy.

I must have had tables on my mind this fall, because in November I also redid the kitchen table and shared how to I got a weather wood finish on it.

And suddenly it was December. I might have put off Christmas decorating until the last minute, but when I see the projects I was busy finishing up, I can see why.

I started off the month by creating a custom storage solution for the junk drawer. Love it!

I also took advantage of some warm weather at the beginning of the month to finish the exterior Christmas decorations. I tell you, putting up that window box was one of the best things we've ever done. What would I blog about if it weren't for that thing?

I finished what is perhaps my favorite DIY project of all time (and I'll give you a tutorial on it after the new year)—my orange cane chairs. It was fun showing off my new chairs to our friends and family that stopped over during the holidays.

And the last big project was adding a new mantel "sleeve." It's been up for a couple weeks now and I feel like it's what the fireplace really needed and I'm looking forward to seeing how I do decorating it once the Christmas decorations are finished.

What a year! I'm actually shocked to look back and see how much actually got finished. Sometimes I feel like I'm starting a lot of projects and not finishing too many, but maybe I did OK after all.

Thanks so much for reading this blog, commenting when you do and for making me not feel like a complete geek for sharing it all with you. I hope you had a great 2013 and I wish you an even better 2014!