Months in review and winners!

Well hello! I’m been slacking on the months in review and I know that makes you sad. ;)

Seriously, I just forget to do it, but I like recapping posts every month or so just in case you missed something! This time I’m going through two months so I won’t link to every single one cause I know you have lives.

First, I need to make sure everyone who won recent giveaways gets their winnings! I haven’t heard from a few of you so here we go:

Go here for the Evgie Nev wall art winner 
Go here for the Target winners
Go here for the Lia Sophia winners
(The Canon Rebel winners were emailed.)

Congrats! Email me at thriftydecorchick (at) gmail (dot) com if you see your name or email. :)

OK, let’s get started – first up, more than 515 awesome posts were linked up at the April Before and After Party!

I shared why we’re moving our laundry to the basement here. (Can’t. wait.)

My Dad and bro came to help start the dining room redo:

We used upper cabinets as the bases for (for what will be) a bookcase and then had lights installed above. (It already looks so different since that post!)

Next up, we finally got walls in the basement!:

It’s so fun to look back at pictures – it’s been four months since we started but it seems like FOREVER since the basement was a wide open unfinished space.

I loved the next post – I told you how I wanted to add some glass to our front door and you all shared your thoughts – lots of them!! It was fun to see there are so many front door ninjas like me. (Go here and you’ll understand.)

You all shared 200 gorgeous dining rooms at April Show Us Your House party.

I talked about why we are calling this our forever home for now:

Then I got out outside in the beautiful weather and started sprucing up our new patio:

Remember the to do list I wrote April that I had hoped to finish up by the end of May? Yeah. That didn’t happen. ;)

I walked away from the basement for a while and got into a new DIY project when I redid our kitchen island…again:

Then I talked here about how much hydrangeas hate me. They do. Reeeally. But I’m slowly but surely starting to befriend them. I have ONE bloom people! And I may have squealed out loud (my neighbors think I’m crazy) when I saw it. :)

You all had some great advice in the comments on that post and I will do a follow up post soon.

I showed you how I created a very simple succulent terrarium:

I have been seeing these all over the place, in some very cool glass containers. The sky is the limit with these cute little plants!

There were 500 projects linked up at the May Before and After party – check them out here!

I found a super simple banana bread recipe:

OH my, my mouth is watering just thinking about it! I picked up some extra bananas today to make a couple more loaves this weekend – one for us and one for a new neighbor. :)

We showed off nearly 300 kids rooms at the next house party:

You all made me realize I am not alone in (one of) my “collecting” issues – the catalogs and magazines here. Thanks again for that. ;)

A couple weeks ago I showed you the refreshed living room with changes I’ve made  over the past year:

Next up, I tried out a very funky combo and made my first ice cream. It was SO YUMMY:

It was made with avocado and banana and trust me, it’s good. :)

And last week, I finished painting the family room in the basement and shared how I picked out all of the paint colors for the space:

Whew! That’s April and May in a nutshell – did you miss a post? I’ve got SO many projects in mind for the summer that I can’t wait to get moving on! I’m usually a bit of slug in the summer but (so far) I’m psyched to get a few projects started.

Thanks again for coming along for the ride – I appreciate your comments and emails and messages so very much!!