Best of 2018 | Decor Projects

This is a look back at the best of 2018 here at SPP, with a roundup of the reader’s favorite decor projects of the past year.  

Hey friends!  Can you believe we are almost halfway through the first month of 2019?  I seriously need to get my shizzle together!  Right at the last few weeks of the year, our family had to deal with a crushing blow, which we are still not fully recovered from.  To be honest, it’s going to be a long journey, and just typing this sentence brings me to tears.  It really threw me for a loop, and then with the holidays and Christmas break (which was much needed) and the New Year, I am currently feeling like I have sort of lost my way.  I’m trying hard to get back into the swing of things with work and the blog, but sometimes things happen in life that really make you realize what is truly important, and in the big scheme of things, it’s not home decor or fashion, or any of that.

Although I am passionate about the things I blog about, I know that in the big scheme of things, what is really important is family, friends, and experiences.  So I am trying to give myself some grace right now, as I ease back into regular life.  I just feel a little behind, I haven’t set any goals for the new year or made any resolutions at all.  And right now, that is OK, because the focus is the healing of my family, and being there for my children, who are grieving the loss of their father.  So maybe it’s OK for that last sentence to be my goal for 2019.  Just to give myself and my family grace, and time to grieve and to heal.  I hope you guys, my cherished readers, will give me that same grace I am trying to give myself, and give yourself some grace through difficult times as well!

Last night, I took a look back at my most popular decor posts from 2018, and it did help me to see that the entire year was not a bust.  Just maybe the month of December.  I love to look back and see what resonates the most with you guys, because I want to give you more of what you like.  And sometimes, I am surprised by what goes over well and what doesn’t.  It is not always as expected, that is for sure.  It also is fun to see all that we accomplished in the past year.  Both my husband and myself love the feeling of getting things done!  So are you curious to find out what my most popular decor related posts were from 2018?  Let’s get started!  These are my 10 most popular decor related posts of the year.

The biggest and most exciting for us was definitely the kitchen makeover.  We made over the kitchen as part of the Fall One Room Challenge, and it was not only one of your favorites, but it was my personal favorite as well.  It’s still not my dream kitchen, but this is not my dream house, and I feel like we did a pretty darn good job of updating our kitchen without gutting it.  We pretty much worked with what we had, and made it better, and it now fits in so much better with my design style.

Modern Farmhouse Kitchen Reveal

My husband surprised me by bringing home this beat up vintage trunk one day, and it proceeded to sit in our garage for a good year before I finally got around to giving it a makeover.  And oh my lord!  It is one of my favorite pieces in our home now!  It must be one of your favorites too, because it made the top 10.  This trunk now holds extra pillows and blankets and sits in our mudroom area.

Vintage Trunk Makeover

Probably the most exciting change that happened in our home for 2018 was the new counter tops we purchased for our kitchen.  We actually replaced those in the spring, before we began the rest of the kitchen update in the late summer.  I absolutely love them, and a lot of you did too!

New Quartz Countertops

Our dining room also serves as our home office.  This is not the ideal arrangement, but it was a necessity when we moved into our home.  So we made it work for our family.  And that is what we should all be doing in our homes, making them work for our families.  Now that our daughter has graduated from college and moved to Miami, we actually have a spare room in our house, so we have plans to make that room into a guest room/home office, but first we have a lot of large bedroom furniture to deal with, so that we can make that happen.  In the meantime, we are still rocking the dining room/home office arrangement.  You can see our daughter’s bedroom that is now a guest room in this post.

I needed office storage, and I found these two file cabinets at Goodwill and gave them a makeover with a rustic wood top.  And my storage problem was solved!

DIY File Cabinet Makeover

And then there was my painted buffet, which was also part of my dining room/office refresh I did last January.  I have owned this buffet and the matching mirror since 1992, and I gave them a makeover by painting them.  I hesitated to do this for sooo many years, but I finally took the plunge, and oh I am so glad I did.  Because I love them so much more now!  Both of the pieces were purchased for me by my two oldest children’s father, who passed away in December.  So now they are all that much more special to me, and I plan to pass them on to one of the kids one day.  You can see what our dining room, and this buffet used to look like in this post.

Painted Buffet

We made over our kitchen island by adding a rustic wood top to resemble butcher block, and I still swoon over it on a daily basis.  It totally warms up our white kitchen with the rustic wood, and I love it!  This is actually the 3rd and final makeover I have given this kitchen island.  You can see the first one in this post, and the second one in this post.

Kitchen Island Makeover

The post I wrote about my wallpaper saga turned out to be one of the top 10 of the year!  Unfortunately, I ended up having to remove this wallpaper because it just refused to stay adhered to my wall.  To be honest, it sucked a–!  I wall papered this accent wall for my dining room/office refresh last winter.  But over the summer I ended up removing it and painting the wall.  Which is sad because if it would have just adhered to the wall, I loved the way it looked.  Big. Huge. Bummer.  You can see a glimpse of this wall after I removed the wallpaper and painted it in this post.

My Wallpaper Saga

You guys really seemed to like my Classic Christmas home tour, and I loved it too!  So thank you for putting it in my top 10 this year!  You can also see my Christmas kitchen in this post.

Classic Christmas Home Tour

It seems like we all sometimes have to scramble to get our homes looking clean once in awhile.  So I wrote this post about how I make my home look clean fast, and you guys seemed to like it.  I did get a couple of comments that my quick clean is their full clean.  And that’s Ok!  You do you, Boo!  I do a lot more steps than this for a deep clean, but no two people are alike, and that just the way the world goes around!  If you like my posts about cleaning and organization, I have a whole slew of them for you to peruse!

How To Make Your Home Look Clean Fast

I saved this one for last, because it was my most popular decor post from 2018, my dining room/office refresh that I completed last January for the $100 Room Challenge!  I am so happy that you guys seemed to love this room.  Or, maybe it was the most popular because I wrote it at the beginning of 2018, and it had more time to get traffic, who knows.

Wanna know something ironic about this post being my most popular of the year?  I am currently giving it another makeover for the winter 2019 $100 room challenge!  Why, you ask?  Well, mainly because $100 is a pretty tight budget, and I was unable to fit it into my budget and my time allotment to make over our dining table and our office furniture.  So this year, I will be making over those pieces, and adding in a new rug because ours got a giant ink stain on it that I was unable to remove.  Please, please follow along?  I am already into week 2 of this challenge.  You can see week 1 and week 2 by clicking the links!

Dining Room/Office Reveal | $100 Room Challenge

I simply cannot thank you enough for reading my blog.  This blog, and the things I blog about, are my passions.  They are the things that help me to escape from my career as a school counselor, and the stress that brings.  I am a homebody at heart, and I love to make my home a cozy and pretty place for my family to make lifetime memories.  I’ve been blogging now for 6 years, and I cannot put into words the ways it has changed my life for the better.

I wish I had the time to do more with this little blog of mine, but I have to work a full time job, so it limits me with the amount of time I have to work on projects and blogging.  But the fact that I have made it this many years is all thanks to the lovely people who read my posts that I write.  So thank you for being here for me.  I read every single comment and message that I receive, and I love every single one of you.  You are very valuable to me.  I have so many goals I want to achieve through this blog, and it is my prayer that one day God will pave a path for me to be able to blog full time.  I am planning on writing a post with my 2019 house goals, just as soon as I can get to it, so stay tuned for that!

Which home project was your favorite?  Are you tackling any in your house this year?  You can find more of my decor projects here.  Happy New Year to each and every one of you!