Our 2024 Year in Review

What a year it’s been! From the joy and blessing of becoming grandparents for the first AND the second time to our precious Forrest and Lila, to the heartache and sorrow of losing our beloved pup Jack, to the happiness of adopting our darling oup Finnegan and all the ways we’ve made this our home.

As I sat down to reflect on 2024, I felt deep gratitude. For our family, for this home and for the many memories we’ve made in the past year (as well as the three years we’ve lived here!).

Some of those emotions are still so tender, mostly surrounding the loss of our Jack, but there were blessings and gifts to be found even then. We miss him so much, but we’re grateful he didn’t suffer for long and for all of the wonderful memories we had with him. He was so loved by us and his friends on the internet. I know he’ll always be remembered with a smile.

Two babies in one year brought so much joy to our whole family (including my parents, that’s my cute mom with her two great grandbabies!). Their first Christmas was here in our home — the memories made are priceless.

If you missed our Christmas house tour, you can see that HERE. You can also watch our Christmas VIDEO here!

Now that the two new babies are here and our new pup, we feel like the renovation we finished up last year was definitely worth it! We had four dogs and nine adults and two babies staying with us in the house this Christmas.

Now we feel like we have plenty of room for people and pets! It’s still not a huge house, but the renovation really made the main floor work better for us. And of course, now we have the Tiny Cottage for my parents, too.

We didn’t start any major new home projects this year since we had just barely completed the renovation at the end of last year. 2024 was mostly about getting settled and situated. I am sure that’ll continue for a few years :).

However, last year we were working on our backyard garden areas, but we lost quite a few plants. It was a struggle. Ha! We never really got a chance to show any progress on the blog. The whole backyard had to be updated in part due to the renovation. At least we got some of the decks and walkways in, even if the plants died.

This photo was the in process mess before we got everything in place, so for sure I’ll share more garden updates and projects in the new year.

And I’m sure we’ll be planting new plants (again) this spring so we’ll have more to share. We also have plans for our front yard, so we hope to figure out at some point how to keep our plants alive. 🙂 We’re no gardening experts but we’ve never had such a hard time with plants!

Inside we started to think a little bit more about furniture as well as ways to arrange rooms better for the coming year. In fact, we did a little impromptu after Christmas furniture shuffling between the Tiny Cottage and my living room! I can’t wait to show you my plans and the changes to furniture arrangements in the new year (as well as in the Tiny Cottage).

We had given a lot away a lot of what we had when we moved here so we could fit into the house and not get overwhelmed (we gave most of it to our kids). I love to use what I have when possible so I kept what I knew would fit here so we’d have time to think about what would work the best.

We did do a few small projects and some organizing around the house this year. Some of the small projects I haven’t officially shared on the blog yet (I have been sharing some of my organization in process in HomeBody Gathering Place) but it’s been fun to be able to focus on smaller updates (and to be able to share them in the community in real time). I will for sure be doing a lot more organizing in 2025!

I still have lots of ideas for ways I can make the house work even better for us day-to-day and for family (including organization!) but it’ll take awhile to make them happen.

I’m planning on this being our forever home (at least for now ha) so we plan to just enjoy the ongoing process of making it ours. It’s fun to be able to make any space feel cozier, more welcoming and function better!

I’m a big believer in decorating a home using what you have and gathering what you love over time so it always feels like YOU! When you use a method that allows your home to evolve with you, it never feels stagnant or stuck in a time warp!

I will share my step by step decorating method for how to decorate with what you have and make improvements over time in HomeBody Gathering Place in the new year.

Speaking of decorating and furnishing a home one step at a time, I found a new to us bed on Facebook Marketplace this summer that I am head over heels for. Any time you can find your dream furniture on FB marketplace it’s a good day. I told the whole story in this post.

We also added a new rug, which I love. You can read about that update in this post. I’ve already thought of a few additional updates I would love to make in this room so the process will continue into the new year.

We are a little more settled into the Snug now using furniture we had (and some that was already in the house!) along with some new lamps, a rug and an end table! I have big dreams for this room, but we’re quite content with it for now. My husband and I watch TV in here and spent a lot of the evenings here, so it’s nice to at least have it feel put together, cozy and functional!

Even though our house doesn’t have a lot of rooms and they are all cute enough as they are, I feel like I still have plenty of ideas inside and out. I won’t run out of projects any time soon. Would that ever happen? I can’t imagine ever being finished, but progress is part of the fun!

Thank you for all your support in 2024…here’s to 2025!