Fortune Cookie Friday 001

Fortune Cookie Friday is a series of posts published every Friday of things I'm loving, stuff that inspires me, music I'm listening to. Really just random stuff. Why call it  "Fortune Cookie Friday" you ask? Well, you never know what's gonna be on that piece of paper inside that delicious crumpet of sugary cardboard do you... Or it could be that it is the only thing on my desk that started with an F, but whatever the first reason sounds better. P.s. Any extra fortune cookies, send them to me. I will devour them.  So expect the randomness to be random except that it will be consistently posted on Friday (haha). 

The house is coming along slowly but surely. We have pulled up all the carpet and started cleaning the hardwood floors. I am painting the trim and doing some touchups. Just have to finish the baseboards and go over the top trim in the living room again. Than all that's left is to paint the cabinets and put in the other side of the counter top on the other side of the kitchen. So let's say a month before we get in there? That's optimistic with our busy schedules, but guys, it. is. so worth it. We have already seen a huge change in the house and we can't wait to get in there and fix it up bit by bit.

This laundry room is serving as major inspiration right now. Wallpaper may be expensive, but it can totally transform a small space. Future dreams of the outdoor utility room maybe?

I just ordered these Large Working Glasses from Crate&Barrel. I can't wait to use them in our new house along with this set of Lids and Straws that goes with them. There are 3 sizes for the glasses, I will probably end up getting a set of 4 of both the Tall and Short Working Glasses.

One of my  new favorite blogs to follow: Hej Doll. Jessica has great content and a dreamy minimalist wardrobe that I go crazy with on Pinterest.

Found these AWESOME frames that are big enough to fit both of our diplomas on the wall in the office. At first, I thought displaying them would be tacky, but as I thought more about it, I realized I shouldn't diminish our accomplishments. We both worked hard to get through college and I don't ever want our kids to think what they've achieved isn't worth anything, even if a degree has become a check box.

Need an upscale basket for a low scale budget? I've got one right here for you.

If you have anything stainless steel, or anything that gets fingerprints, you realize how hard it is to clean without leaving streaks. With these utility cloths it makes the job painless. And who doesn't want a fingerprintless fridge, am I right?

These Glass Mixing Bowls are the perfect gift for newly weds. We got a set from the wedding, and they are sturdy and come in 10 different sizes. It's $40 that will go a longer way than a $40 gift certificate to a restaurant.

JUST ordered this pillow because it got a price cut of 75%! I wasn't about to pay $80 for a pillow cover, but I can handle doing $20. Even though my palette for color is almost gone and I want a neutral house, throwing in the greenery of house plants, the browness of natural wood, and a colorful boho throw and pillow is a definite yes.

New Cabinets and New Countertop!

We finally got our new cabinets and half the countertop in! An by we I mean my dad and Auston. They look great and I can't wait until we get a coat of paint on those bad boys. The cabinets were 30% off (when we opened a card) when we walked in to Lowe's, so we decided to go ahead and snatch them up even though we weren't planning on buying them that day. We ended up with a 24", 12" and 30" with uppers to match. We still need to cut the hole for the range on the new side and install the counter top on the old side. We're just waiting to be done with painting before we put the new stuff in. Right now it's handy to have a counter top by the sink where we wash the paintbrushes that we don't have to worry about getting dirty. Thankfully this kitchen was covered in outlets, at the right height, so we did not have to install any of them ourselves. 

Since the first pictures were taken we also got our track light installed (bottom picture)! We decided on track lighting because it was cheap but had that upscale(ish) look. Recessed lighting would have been the #1 on the wish list, but it just started to climb out of our budget range as we would have had to rewire and drill holes etc. We ended up grabbing kits from Home Depot for $30; one track in the kitchen and one track in the breakfast room. My only condition with these is that they could not be LED, so we got some great ones that held incandescent bulbs. The kit comes with 3 heads already, so factor that in when your purchasing your kit. We did not and we ended up buying 6 extra because we didn't know the kit came with any. You're thinking, well what else does a "kit" have other than the things you need to make something work, but hey, we were just excited. We actually ended up keeping 2 of the extra heads so we have 4 heads on each track.

Kitchen Mood Board

The kitchen is one of my favorite places to be. For whatever odd reason I get a ton of satisfaction from having a clean kitchen (which doesn't necessarily mean it is clean). That is part of my goal when I think of how I want our new kitchen to feel; clean and organized. The house only came with half of a kitchen (see on the house tour here), we bought and installed stock cabinets from Lowe's for the other side. The hardest part of this mood board was deciding on what color(s) we wanted to paint the cabinets. At first, I was leaning toward all white with black hardware because the area does not have a bunch of natural light. But as I saw the cabinets installed with the counter top that we had gotten (it's white laminate with black speckles), I felt like all white would be too overpowering. I knew that I wanted the backsplash to be white subway tiles, which might even run across the whole wall that holds the doorway. My other choices were two different grays, one gray, or black lowers and white uppers. 

I finally decided on black lowers and white uppers. I love the clean and crisp feel and the black breaks up the white so it doesn't look like a serial killers house (Auston said that was his one request when I was picking out colors; don't make it look like a serial killer's house Elizabeth. Haha, okay?). The gold hardware brings a warmth and cohesiveness to the space while still keeping it modern and clean. Even though the idea appliance color is stainless steel, the place came with a perfectly working black range. We bought a black microwave/vent to go over the range so that we would have more counter space. It also came with a first generation Whirlpool fridge/freezer in the nice "once used to be white but is now a dirty yellow" color. We will either end up replacing it with a black one or DIYing our own paint job.

Pendant Light | Faucet | Subway Tile | Gold Pulls | Sink | Range

New Paint + No More Carpet

The past few weeks have been crazy! Prepping the walls takes more time than you plan, but it is so worth it. We decided to paint the whole house one color (minus the bathrooms). This was mostly because it is going to be  a rental in the future (hopefully) and we wanted a neutral color that could go with anything. We finally settled on Sherwin-Williams' "Repose gray." My other choice would be the shade darker than Repose; "Mindful Gray". I went with the lighter Repose because I thought it would look better in the kitchen and breakfast room. The whole house has windows but is still pretty dark, so I didn't want to go too dark.

Our new paint is just magical. It makes even the carpet seem cleaner (just a tiny bit). "Repose Gray" for the win. After I finally painted all of the trim in this room, we were finally ready to tear up the carpet in the living room to see if the hardwoods were salvageable. And oh did we hit the jackpot. The wood is almost perfect, only having a few spots that will sand off; meaning that we won't have to buy flooring for the whole entire house, just the kitchen. Having hardwoods is something that new buyers/renters like to see because it feels cleaner than carpet and takes less work to keep them that way. The wood makes the room feel bigger and lighter as it slowly transforms into our living room. And isn't that huge window amazing?

Our First House

Things Change

You may have noticed the new changes to the blog. New name, new look, new post types. Over the past few months I have gone through many milestones; graduating college, starting my first big girl job, buying a house, getting married, dealing with my first family crisis, and both my dogs passed away. All this to say, my life has changed tremendously, including my style, design taste, and goals. This blog reflects all of things, so as those things change, so does the blog. These are some of the big things that have evolved:

1. My Style. When I started this blog, I was only beginning to discover my personal style. I liked preppy, colorful, and classic styles. Pineapples, patterns, lots of jewelry, and colorful shoes were my thing. I don't know what exactly happened, maybe it was the pressure I felt to have a huge closet or being tired of having a ton of options, but I found myself wanting a smaller closet with better quality pieces. Now, I am less drawn to colorful outfits and tend to want a neutral closet that has iconic pieces. Instead of a pink, I now will grab a light blush, instead of a yellow or green, I will go for a gray, black, or white. I want quality over quantity. I used to hate going into my closet and seeing so many clothes and yet feeling like I had nothing to wear. Now, I know I can grab my gray t-shirt and mix it with any of my jeans and any of my shoes. Having a closet that is so mixable is a quality that many girls overlook or under rate.

 Personal style is an incredibly hard thing to develop! It takes time, effort, and a lot of iterations. Many people wonder how I know exactly what I like (and what I don't like), and what they don't realize is that I put a lot of time pinning on Pinterest, following blogs, looking through Instagrams, and researching different styles. When it clicked that I wanted minimalist, modern, and monochromatic style I found people to follow that had the same style. Here are some examples of some people that I used to follow and who I keep up with now.

Bloggers I used to follow:

• Southern Curls & Pearls
• Covering The Bases
• The Sweetest Thing
• Jimmy Choos & Tennis Shoes
• A Spoonful of Style
• A Lonestar State of Southern

Bloggers I follow now:

• FIGTNY
• Sincerely Jules
• Hunt for Styles
• Blank Itinerary
• Fashionably Kay
• Pam Allier
• Dressed to Kill

2. My Design Taste. Something major that also has changed is my design taste. As you can see from the change of the blog, I went from colorful to monochromatic, from preppy to simple. Like I said, I used to want the white and navy and now I have evolved into a modern industrial style. I used to want the scalloped edges and now I would rather have clean shapes and lines. My taste for patterns has almost diminished, especially for the really girly flowers or preppy patterns. When I think about how I want my home to feel, I would have said in the past that I wanted fun, pretty, and colorful, but now I would say I want more of the clean, modern, and easy going home. Here are just a few of the home design blogs that I am currently following (I will add more as I find them).

Some favorite home bloggers:

• Chris Loves Julia
• Yellow Brick Home
• Shanty 2 Chic

Here are a few pictures that encompass what my home design taste has evolved into:

   

3. My Goals. Previously, my goals were for this blog to focus on fashion and post cute outfits. I saw where the bloggers I followed were and what they were doing, and I wanted to get there. It's not until recently I started thinking about where I wanted this blog to go and what I wanted it to be about. Before I was just focused on posting cute outfits that would hopefully inspire people (which I still aim to do), now I wish to concentrate on renovating our new home and sharing what we are doing in life! This is partly why I changed the most fundamental part of the blog; the name. Before, Jesus, J.Crew, & July was a fashion blog which reflected my style.  Jonesville is an appropriate name because it is based on my new last name; Jones! Me and Auston are a team now (yay!) and buying houses and fixing them up is something we hope to do more of in the future. I love the idea of putting some love into a house that not everyone would want to take the time to flip, and this blog hopefully will be a place where I can share those things.

So things are changing around here and we hope you stick along for the ride. Me and Auston are really excited about the potential that our new house has. We hope to share our success stories and without a doubt our fail stories. You guys are the best.