How We Did in 2011

If you're a long time reader, you'll know B and I like to make a list of projects we'd like to complete each year. We know that we won't necessarily complete every single project, but we try, without putting too much pressure on ourselves. 2011 was a crazy year with the arrival of our little girl in July, but I'd say we still did a pretty job of crossing things off of our list. Here's our year of projects in review...


- Create a Nursery for our Little Girl - DONE!
     - The nursery that we put together for our Halle is filled with so much love. With DIYs that we put together ourselves, as well as a ton of handmade pieces from other family members. We love her little room... I think it's my favourite in our whole home! If you missed this one, you can check out our nursery reveal right here

- Create a Proper Master Bedroom - DONE!
     - Okay, well, the room itself is not 100% completed, but it's a much better master bedroom than it was before and we definitely accomplished a lot including adding some personal artwork and making our own headboard!

- Add Half Glass Wall to Basement Shower - Not Started
     - We have been using this bathroom while we renovate the upstairs bathroom. Since all of our money is going into that reno, we just have a temporary shower curtain in the basement. Hopefully we can get that glass wall up this year!

- Finish Trim in Basement Bathroom - DONE!
     - Yeah, I didn't post about this one, but it's not very exciting. I hope that at some point this year I can do two weeks of proper posts on each room in our home, with more photos and some more details on what projects we've tackled. 

- Finish Trim and Paint in Basement Living Area - Not Started
    - Can you tell that basement has been low on our priorities list recently?
- Create Storage for Basement Living Area - Not Started
    - This needs to happen in 2012!
- Get Basement Seating Bench Cushion Covered - In Progress
     - Well, I finally picked out the fabric and even brought the fabric and the cushion along to my parents... unfortunately it's not done yet! Eventually though...

- Add Doors and Trim to my Craft Room / Office - In Progress
     - There may not be doors yet, but B started adding trim to the room when we were working on some laundry room projects this past summer.

- Get Proper Storage and Organize my Craft Room / Office - In Progress
     - Last winter we picked up an IKEA dresser which has added a great deal of functional storage to my space. The desk that B built helps as well, but this is something that can still be improved upon. I guess it's kind of an ongoing thing...

- Landscape Front and Backyard - In Progress
     - We were definitely far too ambitious to think that we would landscape both areas this year. The backyard pretty much needs a complete overhaul, but at least we got some great landscaping done out front this year!   

- Complete Closet in Front Entrance - DONE!
     - This was happily one of the first things we crossed off of our to-do list for this year! You can check out the reveal of our front entrance interior right here.

- Better Utilize Storage and Shelving in Kitchen - In Progress
     - B started this when he added some shelving to our large kitchen pantry. It's definitely helped with storage, especially with the abundance of baby stuff we're not storing in the kitchen. I am however, unsure about how much better we can make it without renovating the entire kitchen... which is further down the line than we would like.

- Finish Front Exterior Work
  - Complete Siding  - DONE!
  - Paint Front Door - DONE!
  - Paint Aluminum Siding - DONE!
  - Add Window Box and New House Number - Not Started
  - Get New Mailbox up - DONE!
... at least all of our hardwork paid off, as the front of our home is looking far more inviting these days...

- Renovate Second Floor Bathroom - In Progress
     - It's been slow going since we began demo back in November, but hey - at least it's happening... and hopefully we can cross it off of our 2012 list later this month! 

- Put Up Railing on Main Floor and Basement Stairs - Not Started
     - This will come as soon as our bathroom is done. Pretty important considering someone is getting ready to start crawling!

- Finish Recovering my Garage Sale Chair  - Not Started
     - But I think that I have finally found the right fabric for it!

- Get Our Personal Artwork Framed - DONE!
     - You can check out our artwork that we got framed right here

Wish List Items: A few things we'd like to see happen around here, but we didn't count on actually getting around to...

- Build a new back deck - This has been moved to next spring / summer
- Stucco the old brick on our home
- Paint the Garage Doors - DONE! (Thanks to B and his Dad!... yeah I still need to get a picture of that)
- Finish Painting our Kitchen Cabinets White - Not sure this is worth it anymore...


We had a grand total of 17 items on our list and we finished 6 (+1 wish list item), started 6 and will be moving the remaining 5 to this year's list. Not too shabby considering we also threw in having a baby and a few other unplanned projects like our new kitchen table and the living room refresh project that we tackled.

Was your 2011 a successful year for projects (either home related or personal) that you wanted to accomplish? I'd love to hear how you felt your 2011 went, and what you have planned for the coming year...