Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the California farmhouse! This blog is about the adventure of turning our 1980's California track house into our dream home, our California farm house. I decided to move my  old blog to a new one because it became really clear to me that all of my wild ideas were going to take well over one year.
About out little family.
I am Ali. I am a California born and raised girl who loves to do home renovations. I am married to my high school sweetheart and we have 3 boys. We got very lucky and bought our first home in a great neighborhood in 2006. I have always looked at certain houses or gone to certain places and dreamed of living there. We have said a million times that we would love to live out of state. Well, it has come to reality that since I am going to be in California for the rest of my life it was time to stop dreaming and make my dream house here in the home I already own.
I was raised in a house that had a country feel with wonderful antiques, baskets, vintage paintings and other amazing items that I always loved. When I got my first place with my husband in the 1990's everything was country blue. I think our dishes, bedspread, etc. were all the same blue. It was everywhere. My style or what I thought was my style has gone through modern, french, classic, etc. I have always gone back to the country feel of my mom's house and loved it. I for some reason thought of country as a bad word when it came to decorating. It made me envision country blue,  gross fake flowers, a wooden chicken, etc. I am starting to learn that Country isn't a bad word at all if you make it what you want it to be.
My style is what I call country farmhouse meets cottage. I like light, bright, cheery, curtains that blow in the breeze, a quilt over the arm of the couch a book open to save it's place on the side table of the bed, fresh fruit on the kitchen counter, you get the feeling.
I live in this house.

We do not ever have snow. This was the one and only time it has ever snowed in Southern California my entire life. I could have posted a better picture but that would require me going outside on a rainy morning in my pajamas. Nope!
You get the point from the picture. We live in a track neighborhood where all of the houses look the same. I love the area but to be honest I drove past my house all the time when we first moved in because it is just another tan house on a street of tan houses. We have a flag for each season that hangs outside now to let people know it's our house.
Anyways, we have lived in our house for 6 years and in that time we have simply lived in it. We keep it clean and have painted a few rooms but the bones of the house are the original 1989 bones. We have a few closets that are still drywall with no paint ever. The house is awesome and I am so glad we bought it but it is time to make it ours!
I started with the idea of a project a day on 2012 but here it is early February and I am loving redoing things so much and have so many ideas that I decided to make not only a 2012 blog but a long tern blog for making our house into the house we envision. I am thinking of using the blog not only to document my journey but also for inspiration pictures and ideas. I am having so much fun and to look back at what we have done will be awesome. So with that being said I hope you enjoy the blog and all of the craziness that comes with it.
Thanks for reading,
Ali B.