How to get your Magnolia to bloom!

I can't quite believe it! I finally got my Magnolia to bloom!

I really wanted to have a Magnolia, because I've never had one and I thought it was going to be easy. You just buy one and instantly get pretty blossoms! Some pretty pictures for your Instagram and blog and a beautiful flower to admire. But no, that's not how it goes at all!

First I bought one branch, and I did exactly as they said in the flower shop, room temperatured water, one teaspoon of suger and changing the water every other day. Nothing happened and eventually all the buds were dried out.

But I of course wasn't going to give up this easily so I went to another shop. They also told me that it needed room temperatured water. But they told me not to add any sugar in the water, they said it could prevent the Magnolia from blooming. They also advised me not to change the water too often, that once a week is fine.

So I tried this and it took a really long time! I checked the receipt and it looks like it took one whole month before anything happened! So you need to be really patient.

Also what I find interesting is that only this one bud is blooming, and this bud happened to end up behind a painting, so it got the sunlight trough a white canvas painting. Wonder if that has anything to do with it.. But if it did, it would probably be good to have the Magnolia branches behind curtains and not in direct sunlight.

I hope you found something useful in the instructions I was given.
I think I might try this again next year... but I'm not sure because this was a complete struggle!

Have you ever had a Magnolia? 

How did you take care of it?

Floral Beauty

I'm just popping in to say hello. Right now there is not much else happening in our lives except for the renovation that's going on. And every blog post can't be about that (update coming later). So today I'm just sharing some floral beauty.

Have a great day!

The Hell of Living in the Middle of Renovation

As you saw in my last blog post, we have some upgrading dreams for our home. The first one on our list we already got started on during Easter. We are redoing our stairs and also the hallway on the second floor.

But after the holiday when everyday life takes over and you are left with minimal time to finish the project, it just gets super dragged out! So far we teared down wallpaper and panels, we filled holes in the walls, sanded it down and yesterday Ben washed the walls. So there is some slow progress going on, but never the less: progress! And today we are painting the ceiling.

But living among a remodeling chaos is everything else but fun! The first thing I get aggravated by is the amount of stuff everywhere. I thought this was going to be easy peasy since we didn't store anything in the stair and not that much in the upstairs hallway. But oh my what a mess it makes anyway! We immediately put up one ground rule: nothing, and I mean NOTHING, goes into the bedroom! We at least need one place of serenity! And that has worked out fine. But here in our home office it is completely crammed, so it feels a bit stressful sittning here writing right now.

So stuff everywhere stressing me out. And then we come to the remodeling chaos. Right now, even though it has been vacuumed, there is dust all over the renovation are. You can probably imagine what it's like living with dogs and of course walking through it yourself: it means you have dust all over the house. Oh my!

But we are both super happy that we finally got rid of the last piece of wallpaper from the previous owners. They had wallpaper on every single little bit of surface! And of course layers and layers of wallpaper. It was a complete nightmare when we moved in, since we wanted to get rid of it all!

So that's that about the nightmare! There are also plenty of positive stuff while remodeling. Of course the number one reason that people do renovate: to get something better, more beautiful, something more like you. Making a house your home! I love the planning part, the searching for ideas on Pinterest part and having an eye out on Instagram. This is going to be so beautiful when it's done! I can really imagine it!

Here you can see how far we've come on the stairs. The first picture is before the renovation and the second picture shows our progress right now. I'll keep you updated during the process!

And of course I need to leave you with some eye candy and tips on remodeling stairs! 

Pics found on Pinterest, links behind each picture. Enjoy!

I hope you all have an amazing weekend!

My Top 5 Interior Dreams

Do you have stuff you would love to get done in your home, but time and perhaps also money gets in the way? Because that is something I really can relate to! I'm that kind of a person that has to have everything happen immediately. I go mad if I get an idea and then I have to wait to implement it. It's totally my worst quality, I'm very impatient.

So here are my five interior dreams that I wish we could get done right now this second!

1. Stairs

On the top of the list I have stairs because we have this really ugly carpet covering our stairs, that's been there since the house was built in the 80's. Not cool at all, and it's a beige-brown-grayish kind of color and I don't even want to think about if it's the original color or something else..

Anyway, I want to freshen them up and put some wood on top of the stairs and some ornamental pattern on the stair risers. This is the first thing we're going to do on my list. We already begun this huge project during Easter: we teared down the wallpaper and the panel. But as you can imagine it's going to be a big project before we are anywhere near done.

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

2. Bathroom

This is also something I wanted to get done already when we moved in (2016), but it has been postponed for a long time already, because this is something we can't fix ourselves. We would need to hire some help and help is always expensive. The worst problem with our bathroom is the bad floor planning. The washing machine is blocking the sink. You can just try to imagine what it's like brushing your teeth there. There is also not enough storage space, cords everywhere and I really hate the see trough cabinets. And of course I'm not in love with the tiles, but that would be too big and expensive to get done, so they'll just have to do. I thought about painting them, but the shower is in the other end of the bathroom, so I think it might be a little bit tricky.

So what I want to do is turn the sink so it's beside the washing machine. I also want to add more storage space by adding cabinets above the washing machine and both above and underneath the sink.

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

3. Painting the celings

This is not that expensive and we can do this ourselves, but oh my what a big project this is! We don't have such a huge home, but still, this would take a really long time, with moving furniture from one room to another and covering up the rest. But it's going to get done for sure, as soon as we get around to it! It will freshen things up amazingly!

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

4. New counter tops in the kitchen

When we moved in, I painted the wooden counter tops black to get a more modern twist to it, but it was a temporary solution. What I really would like is counter tops made of stone, preferably black or light marble. But that is crazy expensive and as you can see we would need al lot (485 cm to be exact)! But since we only have early morning sun in our kitchen it is pretty dark the rest of the day, so maybe some white laminate counter tops could lighten things up a bit. But I'm not sure, I really like the black so we'll have to think about it.

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

5. New floors
And for my last dream it would be getting new floors. I love laminate floors because they are so easy to maintain! Easy to clean, doesn't get scratches and they can handle some amount of water. Love it! We do have laminate floors right now, they are not bad, but they are definitely not the color I would've selected and the moldings are a complete mess! Upstairs there are double moldings that are unnecessarily wide and they are taking up a lot of the floor space. So new lighter laminate floors and new floor moldings would be awesome!

(The first picture is of our home and the second picture is inspiration found on Pinterest)

What interior dreams do you have?