It seems most mother’s day gift ideas are for gifts from children to adult parents.  Well…I’m an adult woman with no children and an even more adult mom who happens to be a big fan of simplifying.  And I would still like to give my mom a gift for Mother’s Day!  I’m not a very good gift-buyer in the first place, so coming up with last-minute mother’s day gifts for a minimalist mom is definitely not what I call “fun.”

Here’s some proof that my poor gifting skills have been life-long:

We were told in class to write down words that we thought of when we thought of our moms.  That’s all I had.  Oh mom…hello, you are exolint.

But back to 2018.

Of course, the first stop for ideas is Pinterest.  It’s a gift idea goldmine, right?  I got pretty excited about all the results…until I read all the posts and common recommendations were:

1. A really good hug!
2. Flowers
3. A day of doing the chores
4. Flower-y weeds from the yard
5. …(I was done reading at this point)

I might be crazy, but I don’t think a hug counts as a gift.  And as much as I love flowers, it just never seems worth it…it’s a lot of money for something that only lasts a couple days, and a florist almost never delivers what you actually ordered.  And maybe it’s just me, but it seems like being an adult and going to clean your adult mom’s house as a mother’s day gift would just be a little awkward.  Besides, my parents live 10 hours away.

So what do you buy last-minute for a lady who doesn’t want stuff?

(5 of these 8 ideas can be purchased as late as Mother’s Day itself. The other three might need a day or two.)
Some of the items listed are affiliate links.

Here are my last-minute mother’s day gifts for a minimalist:

Just have everyone send a phone video and merge them together (there are tons of apps and free programs that will do that).  Then upload it as an unlisted video to YouTube and send her the link.
I did this for her a couple years ago and she LOVED it.

If you’re crafty, you could knit a pretty + functional dishcloth.  Here’s a very pretty one from Nourish and Nestle.  These work amazingly well, guys, everytime I give one to someone they can never go back to a regular dishcloth.  

Make a quick (quick as in 10 minutes) and easy earring organizer.

A surprise flying card.

If she likes to learn, you could buy her unique, local one-day classes from Groupon.  You could also gift great online classes.  CreativeLive offers gift cards so the recipient can choose their own class, and Craftsy offers a “Gift This” option for any of their classes.

Update: Craftsy just announced two Mother’s Day specials. 

1. They are offering $25 in Craftsy coupons if you sign up for a monthly subscription that allows you to watch all the classes you’d like in a month (I would probably take a few days off and binge learn/craft), or $100 in coupons if you buy a one-year subscription!  (Craftsy also sells craft supplies, so Mom could use the coupons to buy supplies for a class she wants to take.)  Click here to check out the deal. (Expires May 16th)
2. A Mother’s Day Watchathon.
   You can watch all the classes you want COMPLETELY FREE this weekend (until midnight EST on Sunday).  If you live near mom, this would be so fun to do together!  I’m actually jealous if you do.  

So she can take a trip or use it for one of their newer “Exepriences” in bigger cities.  You can buy a gift card here.

The Q&A a Day journal just asks one question that makes you think each day, with spaces to answer for 5 years.  It’s fun to answer in the first place, and even more fun when years start going by to compare previous years’ answers.  We love ours and keep it on the nightstand.  They’re meant for one person, but the Hubs and I both like to answer (when we remember to).

If you’re a Prime member she’ll get it by Sunday!  You can also pick it up in-store at Anthropologie.

Buy special versions of things she already enjoys.  For example, a coffee subscription with really high-quality coffee like Go Coffee Go offers.

Subscriptions are always fun because she’ll continue to get to try new things every month.

Amazon has a new-ish offering called Amazon Home Services and you can hire people to clean, set up smart home devices, computers, assemble furniture…pretty much anything she wouldn’t want to do.  Does she have a room she’s been dying to have repainted for a while?  Have someone do it for her.

Who really has a mom who hasn’t been frustrated by setting up a computer or smart home device?  Even we get frustrated with them.

If she has a Kindle, you could get her a Kindle Unlimited Membership Plan.

Hopefully there are some actual gift ideas in here you can use too.  And whatever you end up getting, don’t forget to tell her how exolint she is.

The post Last-minute mother’s day gifts for a minimalist appeared first on Little Victorian.

We are still alive.  I’ll update you with what’s going on here and intersperse it with some updated photos of our bedroom.

The Hubs does have a job again.  It’s local, but it’s a temporary one, and that’s fine with us.  We are still expecting to put the house up for sale when he finds a new job.  (Thank you all for your thoughts and nice notes!)

We’ve been working on lots of things.  From big things like replacing parts of the roof, to little things like caulking baseboards, and patching and repainting walls.  We’re currently working on replacing the kitchen and mud room flooring, but that’s taking a while because we have to stop and fix a partially rotten sub-floor.  None of it has been pretty enough to share, nor would it be particularly helpful information for you.

We’ve also been traveling and taking breaks for fun things lately too.

The major motivation for renovating the house for the last (nearly) 5 years was that afterwards, we would have a house we loved living in.  So staying motivated to get the work done is much harder now, knowing we won’t get to enjoy the fruits of our labor.  And frankly, not even knowing if the next owners will.  They may walk in like we did and make a list of all the things they’d like to change and promptly undo all of our work.

We’re getting things done though…slowly but surely.  I’ll be back later in the week with more projects!

The post We’re alive! And a bedroom update. appeared first on Little Victorian.

Looong absence, huh?  I’ve been working on a few small projects, but we’ve just had a really, really busy summer.

I finally finished patching and re-painting the bathroom ceiling.  For a couple years, it looked like this:

Shameful.

But you know, you get used to things like holes in the ceiling pretty quickly and just forget they’re there.  The hole was there because we had to fix some electrical work.  Then for a few months, it looked like this:

And in the mean time, I got SO tired of patching drywall.  That has been one of my least favorite parts of fixing this house up.  I was also testing colors on the wall there.  The darker color is what we ended up using on the ceiling (it’s the same as the powder room) and we painted the walls our favorite white.  Now it looks like this:

It feels good to have it finished! (If you missed it, see the practically free and dramatic vanity makeover here.)

We also hung the mirror back up vertically after I painted.  It’s a long story that I’ll tell you in the next chapter when we actually get this room done.

Here’s a reminder of the before, just because it’s so different:

Also, something big happened this week too: the Hubs’ company downsized and he lost his job.  The chances of finding new work in this area are pretty slim.  Which means, our work on the house might turn from fun things into finishing projects to getting it ready to sell.  Either way, it might continue to be quiet around here until we get settled again.

Unfortunately, this also means I will not be able to host the Undersized Urbanite contest this year.  The time and resources just aren’t there.  I’m really bummed about it, but it’s just not possible.

I’ll be back as soon as we have either news or another finished project!

Click here to see the whole house tour

The post A small bathroom update appeared first on Little Victorian.

Monday, around lunch time, I posted our platform bed for sale and we had a full-price offer almost immediately, for delivery yesterday.  So I went straight to work dismantling it and building the new frame that’s been sitting in the corner of our bedroom for quite a while.

We wanted a bed higher off the floor than the platform, but not something too high (only partially because it would be a huge jump for the dog).    Instead of a box spring, we got the fancy bed slats from IKEA.  Which consisted of over 200 pieces and took 10 times longer to put together than the actual bed frame.  After sleeping on the cheapest IKEA slats for the last 6+ years, these new ones are AMAZING.

We got a new rug too!  It was a dream rug of mine–I had pinned it on Pinterest as inspiration, never intending to actually buy it because it cost way more than we were willing to spend on a rug.  But, back in the clearance section of Crate & Barrel, where they put the floor models, there it was, for a fraction of the cost.

Originally, I was considering a patterned, fabric headboard, but not with this rug and blanket.  I’m crazy about this headboard from Anthropologie, but again, way more than we want to spend, and we only need a headboard anyway.  The blanket was given to us by my parents many years ago.  It’s also Crate and Barrel (amazing how much that store’s style has changed).

A big bonus of having the bed off the ground is that the dog’s bed slides (mostly) underneath during the day, which makes the room feel so much bigger and easier to navigate.

Still to do in the bedroom:

• Paint the ceiling
• Find a headboard
• Buy (make?) nightstands

PS: the rope project is still underway–it really shouldn’t take this long, but it will, someday, be installed.

The post Bedroom update appeared first on Little Victorian.

Our new sofa has finally arrived.  We went without one for a month and a half after selling our last one, and let me tell you…that was not fun.  But it’s here, and it was worth the wait.

We love the worn look the leather has even though it’s brand new.  We got samples of the different leathers this sofa came in, and we beat them all up.  Scratched them, rubbed them, crumpled them.  The other samples looked okay, but this one looked better the more it was used.  Of course, it was the more expensive option, but it was worth it.

The new living room chairs are finally in their place too.

I’d show you the whole room, but there are some other changes I want to make first.  As much as I love the rug, I’m not really loving it in this room, mainly with the new chairs–they just don’t go together well.

While the old sofa was great, this one is perfect for us.  WAY more comfortable, easier to keep clean with the dog, it will only look better with age (unlike the last one that was starting to look pretty rough), and it’s just more our style.  I’ve just been giddy the last couple days over it.

The post It’s here, it’s here! appeared first on Little Victorian.

Victorian is not exactly our preferred style.  It, like every other style, is beautiful in its own way, but it’s not our favorite.  We never looked for any particular style of house when shopping, just one that we both loved and saw great potential in.  And in spite of Victorian not being our favorite, we both fell in love with this house right away.  It didn’t make sense to me at the time, because at the time, I didn’t realize that there were many types of Victorian homes.

Once I learned what type ours was, it made perfect sense.  What I always pictured as a “Victorian” was actually the Queen Anne type of Victorian.  The beautiful, highly detailed, ornate, rich-looking homes.  Like Nicole’s at Making it Lovely, or this:

I’ve mentioned it before, but ours is a Folk Victorian.

The difference, in a nutshell, between a Queen Anne Victorian and a Folk Victorian is that the Queen Annes were built by the upper class and the Folks were built by the middle class.  Hence, the smaller size, less ornate details and lack of towers in the Folks.  This suits The Hubs and I much better (except for the tower–I’d really, REALLY love a tower).

Queen Annes were often designed by actual architects, but since the middle-class had a smaller income, they generally hired a local carpenter to mimick the look of a Queen Anne in a simplified and affordable way.  This is why our house had things like 4 inch floorboards, whereas a Queen Anne often has boards between 2 and 3 inches, and simpler, more Craftsman style moulding, verses fluted moulding and rosette corners.

Folk Victorians are also sometimes called Victorian Farmhouses.  And in the area we are in, ours was likely a farmette house.  But the more and more we uncover of the original architecture of our home, the more it feels like a farmhouse.  And that, we love.

The post Victorian or Victorian? appeared first on Little Victorian.

I was going to wait until the entire deck was finished to show it to you, but due to the weather, it’s taking waaaay longer than we expected.  We’ve had rain almost every day for the last two weeks, and it is supposed to continue until this weekend.

The sky did give us a break yesterday evening, though for a few hours and we got some more railings built and installed.  And now we have 14 of the 16 sections of railing done.

We got to this point when the rain and thunder started rolling in:

So close!  It’s hard to tell, but Hubs is standing on a staircase that goes down to the back yard.  To give you a better idea of the whole-picture, here is the layout of the deck:

We just have 4 small sections of railing, and a gate for the front steps left to build.  It could all be done in an afternoon.

The railings definitely do distract from the view we love so much, but, they also make the deck feel both cozier and larger.  We’re probably going to be spending a lot more time out on the deck this summer since it’s so much more pleasant, so we’re working on a couple ideas to make it even more fun.

I’d love a hanging chair, or 4, but the cost is just not in the budget. 

The post Railings, railings, railings appeared first on Little Victorian.

After another 12-hour day yesterday, the back section of our deck is finished.  All we have left to do is build the railings (which will be sad, because we’re loving the view without them–but it must be done).

Here is what it looked like Sunday morning:

And this morning:

We enjoyed dinner and wine here last night on the bistro set we borrowed from the front porch.  It was lovely after all that work.

I do have a tip if you are going to do a large project where you will be driving a lot of screws (our deck took 20 pounds of them): buy this tool for your driver.  (That isn’t an ad, but it is an affiliate link, just sharing because it made a huge difference in our project.) We have had it for years, but I was indifferent to it until re-building the deck.  Now I love it.

The black part is a tube that slides down to cover the screw.  Once you put your screw in place, you slip the little cover down over it, and drill.

What it does is ensure that your screw goes in straight (especially helpful when using long screws) and that your driver doesn’t slip off the screw while you’re driving it and put a big gouge in your new deck boards.  I may or may not have done that several times when I wasn’t using the tool.

Now, if we can have a few rain-free evenings this week, we may just be able to get the whole thing finished.  Then we get to the really fun part: decorating.

The post The deck is almost done appeared first on Little Victorian.

After two 12 hour days, the deck is half-way there.  We started Sunday morning with this:

The Hubs pulled up the old boards while I built the railings.  And then we cut, and installed the new boards together.

By the end of the first day, we had this:

And now we have this:

We still have the back section (and a lot more railings) to go:

The forecast is calling for storms today and tomorrow, so we’ll get back to it on Thursday evening.  And we are not complaining about the forced break either, our muscles will seriously enjoy the recovery time.

The post Major progress on the new deck! appeared first on Little Victorian.

I haven’t shown you much of our deck or back yard.  Because it’s a little embarrassing.

The deck and yard were two of our favorite things about this house before purchasing it.  The deck is pretty large.  In fact, at 600 square feet, it’s larger than my first apartment was.  As a friend said, we “bought a deck with a house attached.”

Once we moved in and the snow melted, the deck had to be re-painted.

I painted every single one of those spindles.  With a brush.  It took forever.  But it looked so pretty!

This was in early spring, and by that summer, it was all peeling up…badly.  As you can imagine, I had no desire to do all that again (especially if it was only going to last a few months), so it’s been peeling up ever since.  But as it turns out, the deck boards are at the end of their life expectancy anyway and they’re all beginning to rot.

Here’s what it looks like today.

Nasty, huh?  This is why you haven’t seen it.

So, I bet you can guess what we’re doing this weekend!  Or beginning to do this weekend anyway…it will probably take longer than that to rebuild the whole deck.  Of course, I will keep you updated on our newest project.

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