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Your Designs This Time – No. 28
Welcome to Your Designs This Time – No. 28. If you are new here, we’re so happy you stopped by and to our old friends who have been here before, we are glad you are back! We love see what projects are shared each week. It is so inspiring!
We’d love for you to follow your hosts is some way!
Elizabeth Joan Designs 
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Little House Of Four
Blog – Pinterest – Facebook – Google +
Restless Arrow
Blog – Pinterest – Facebook – Google +
Brepurposed
Loving the look of this barn box makeover Lindsay took on! 
This fall mantle Marie styled is perfectly put together!
You KNOW, this thrifted fall decor makes my budget friendly house happy!
And how adorable are Courtney’s coastal mod podged pumpkins!!! What a great way to use non-traditional fall colors to tie in with your own décor!
If you were featured, be sure to grab a button and thanks again for sharing your projects! It’s always so hard to choose because SO many projects are fabulous! 
– Each week, a few of our favorites will be featured on all of our blogs. By submitting a link, you authorize Brepurposed, Elizabeth Joan Designs, Little House Of Four, and Restless Arrow to feature your project on our blogs and social media. (This includes a photo from your project’s post and a link back to your blog.)
– Link up only YOUR OWN new designs, projects, or ideas.
– No Etsy stores, giveaways, or link parties please.
– We love seeing your latest projects, and by linking up you are giving authorization to be sent a weekly invitation to Your Designs This Time.
– Please feel free to add our button to your blog or a visible link back to the this post, so others can join in.
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Together Again
Last week, Erin and her family came for a visit and stayed Tuesday through Friday with us in New York. Then on Friday, we all made the long trip to Erin’s house for the weekend.
Here are our latest adventures:
When Erin and I get together, it’s always a good time. It usually involves garbage picking, speaking only in fake accents, and a couple glasses of wine. This trip pretty much followed suite. Erin and I recruited our husbands one evening to watch the little kidos as we took her 9 year old daughter on her first
trashtreasure hunt.For Erin’s daughter, we hit the jackpot. We found an adorable white wagon, a pink folding papason chair, and a teal lava lamp. She was so excited and we all had such a blast together.
I was extremely excited when we came across a couch that appeared to be in excellent condition. Erin and I, without hesitation, agreed that we were not going to be able to get this couch in the small car we were driving. So, we headed back home and
beggedasked our husbands to pick up the couch in one of our larger vehicles. Like the wonderful amazing men that they are, they drove to the sofa’s roadside location and loaded it up.
Once they got it back, we all realized that sometimes things are too good to be true. What looked like a great piece of furniture that would clean up just nice turned out to be a disgusting sofa bed infested with mice. None of us were lucky enough to physically see these furry little rodents, but the droppings that were left behind was enough proof. Yuck!
In the morning, after the guys had already left for work, I told Erin that this thing needed to go. After several attempts to lift this bad boy to the curb and us not even getting it an inch off the ground, we slid this beast down the driveway, across the sidewalk, and left it roadside just in time for Mr./Ms. Garbage Man. Buh-bye creepy repulsive couch!
On Thursday, Erin and I decided to spurge and get a babysitter to watch all four of our kids. Luckily, I have a pretty fantastic babysitter that was up for the challenge. During our child-free break, we enjoyed a quiet lunch together, went antique shopping, and checked out some amazing furniture pieces at a local store from our blog friend, Brepurposed. She’s so talented.
On Saturday, when were all at Erin’s, we met up with our parents at the zoo. Overall, this trip was a success. The kid’s each went on a pony ride and loved it.
Everyone enjoyed seeing the animals and hanging out with each other.
Finally before heading back to New York, Erin and I were able to squeeze in a much needed photo shoot. If you remember, way back in November Erin and I tried to get a few pictures together for the blog. Man, did they turn out bad! If you want to see for yourself, check out this post, Two Sisters, Bad Photos. This time they weren’t too shabby. Come see our about page to view a new pic of us.
We really enjoyed our time spent together and agree that it doesn’t happen nearly enough. How did you spend your weekend?
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Tour Through Blogland
We are so excited to be participating in the Tour Through Blogland today. First and foremost, we want to thank Kristi from Making It In The Mountains for inviting us to join. If you have not checked out her blog yet, let us tell you, you don’t want to miss it. Her blog is full of so many fantastic DIY projects. One of our favorite projects of her is her DIY Painted Chargers. These are so cute and creative.
We are so honored to be a part of this series. It is such fun way to get a peek into what happens behind the scenes here at Elizabeth Joan Designs.
So, are you ready? Things are about to get real.
This is us. Emily (on the left) and Erin (on the right.) Two sisters who had a crazy idea to start blog and share our DIY adventures. To find out more about both of us, check out our ABOUT page.
Our Houses Erin – We’ve owned our home for 8 years, but we’ve only lived here for 4 1/2, thanks to several interstate company transfers for my awesome husband. We’re back now, with an extra kid this time, ready to dive in and fix this place up. Check out what we’ve accomplished already:
Emily – My amazing husband and I bought our home 5 years ago, when I was pregnant with our oldest son. The whole house is pretty much a work in progress. Here is a peek inside of what we’ve completed so far:
Now, on to the interview questions.
1) What am I working on?
Emily – I have been working on changing up my boys’ bedrooms. From baby to big boy! When everything is all said and done, their dressers will each have a new look. Both kids will have a desk and some sort of fun shelving in their rooms. My inspiration? Vintage cars for my youngest and vintage airplanes for my oldest. I am so excited about showing all of the fun projects I have been working on with you. I am hoping that in September I will be able to start sharing them.
Erin – We are currently up to our eyeballs in projects. The big one is our kitchen, which we are completely updating to our tastes. Bu-bye faux wood and almond colored cabinets! We are whipping up something cool for our son with some fun paint colors (check back later this week.) Also in the works is our patio, which will be getting some beautification, thanks to some extra wood from our Cable Spool Clock project. In addition to that, our daughter’s room, the bathrooms, and the pantry are all on the list of things to start.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Divide and conquer. There are two of us and we have the ability to bounce ideas off of each other, offer support, and split up blog work. Because we spend way too much time on the phone with each other, this may take a little more time in the long run. But by having the support of one another, we are both usually a lot happier with the results of our work.
3) Why do I write/create what I do?
Our Mom was so super duper creative, our Dad has an amazing talent to able fix anything, and our Grandfather was quite the woodworker. Creativity was just passed down in our genes. We both thoroughly enjoy taking something ugly or old and transforming it into something beautiful. Saving money is always a motivator and just makes cents. Haha.
With us being several states apart, we originally started this blog to share our
ideas with each other, our family members, and friends. We never imagined there would be others out there that would want to see our projects. Having this blog together has just been amazing and has really brought the two of us closer together.4) How does your writing/creating process work?
Emily – My writing/crating process is always all over the place. Whenever I have a minute free, I am usually trying to squeeze in work on a project or post. To get inspired, I also take frequent trips around neighborhoods during garbage day to see what inspiration may be laying on the curb ready for rescue.
Erin – My head is always spinning out ideas and it really is just a matter of getting those ideas down on paper or on to the computer. Plus, I’m a total list maker, so you can imagine that I tend to have random notes/scraps here and there with an assortment of ideas on them. Typically, we will take a couple of ideas from my lists and plan out how to do them with all of the supplies, measurements, etc. Then, it is just trying to find time to work everything in, you know, because of life. I always love how projects can start with one vision and end up something completely different, yet loved.
Enough about us. Now, we get to turn the spotlight onto the three talented bloggers we’ve selected to join this series. Check out their amazing blogs and look for their tours on August 18th!
Aimee from It’s Overflowing 
“Aimee, a mom of three, living in Dallas, Texas is the founder of It’s Overflowing, a blog about Simply Inspired DIY & Decor, House Tours, Organization Tips, Favorite Recipes, and SLR Camera Tutorials. Aimee considers her 10,000+ It’s Overflowing Readers her sweet friends!”
Cat from The Rustic Willow 
“Hi friends! Thanks for stopping by my little hangout spot on the Internet. Here you’ll find easy (and affordable) DIY crafting and cooking projects along with some weekly tidbits and fun ramblings. I hope you stay a while :-)”
Katie from Little House of Four
“For years I’ve read blogs and tossed around the idea of starting one myself. About a year ago, I finally took the plunge and ‘Little House of Four’ was born. My day job allows for zero creativity, so this is my space to share decorating ideas, DIY projects, my favorite recipes, and organizing ideas in hopes of inspiring others.”
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A Few Blog Changes
Hi, Friends! You may have noticed that our posts have been a bit sparse this week, but I just wanted to pop in quick and give a few details of what we’ve been up to.
If you ever check out the menu bar along the top of the blog, you will notice some new buttons. For several months now, we’ve wanted to have PROJECTS and PRINTABLES galleries for our readers to enjoy. (We do all of the technical background design stuff ourselves.) After struggling with the quirks of the plugin we were using (Catablog), we found this easy to follow tutorial and spent the next few days getting everything set up. Right now, the PROJECTS page is in chronological order, but eventually we would like to get everything categorized. Hopefully, these changes will make navigating the blog a bit easier.
We also revamped our ABOUT page with a little more info on who we are and why we chose to start this blog. Maybe one of these days we will be able to add some photos of our families, if only we could get everyone to sit in the same vicinity for more than two seconds. (If you are interested in learning more about our quirks, check out the questions and answers at the bottom of this post.)
Lastly, we’ve added a button on the sidebar for Google Plus, right between Facebook and Twitter. Feel free to connect with us on any of these social networking sites. We would love to hear from you!
Don’t forget to join us on Mondays at 8:00 am EST for Your Designs This Time. We can’t wait to see what amazing projects you will share with us this week!
