Rather than celebrate these last two days, I immediately did something else.

I covered it up.

Talk about taking away the fun of a freshly finished project, huh?

We found some old plastic when we were decluttering the hangar. It’s perfect for keeping remodeling crumbs that could scratch the flooring (like drywall crumbs, dirt, or bits of wire) off the floor.

Then I put down cardboard scraps to create a cushion between ladders, dropped tools, stepped on screws, and all the action of remodeling that we have left to do.

The cardboard is all scraps from decluttering the hangar and our 720 square foot remodel.

And because we’re nothing if not concerned about damaging our flooring before we actually get to use it, another pilot found this heavy duty plastic in his hangar. It was 12 feet wide, just like our home. What luck is that?!

I rolled it out and taped it with painter’s tape.

Now for the part I’m most nervous/most excited about. The wall opposite the windows has not been textured or painted. I only primed it because…

We’re putting up wallpaper!

I snagged this Amy Butler wallpaper during a 25% off sale recently. It’s girly. It feels like a really great way to compliment our huge windows and bring your eyes back into the living space.

“What do you think of this wallpaper, Martin?” I asked, pointing at my computer screen. I just knew he’d reject it. I mean, just look at it! It’s flowers and lace. It’s baby blue. There is nothing manly and airport-esque about it.

Maybe that’s why Martin merely said, “Well do you like it?”

“Yes,” I said, still awaiting for his groan of rejection. It didn’t come. We ordered the sample you see above, and I showed him my vision.

He said, “Let’s do it.”

“What if other men give you grief?”

“We live in a giant man cave. It balances out.”

And that, my friends, is how my husband agreed to lace and flowers all over his living room wall.

Have you ever managed to get some girly flair into your home? How did you do it?

I recently attended my first Girl Scout event. (Did I tell you I just signed up to volunteer with the organization? I thought, “Hey, I don’t need a daughter to get involved.”)

My first official task involved a staple gun and a swarm of Cadette Scouts. They started telling me about all the activities they’d done with Scouts. Their leader snapped photos of their enthusiastic storytelling, and that’s when I knew our next goal.

Our latest Storycatching Challenge on Facebook went live last Wednesday. The challenge?

Photograph yourself with your journal. 

It’s the perfect way to piece together you as the writer with the stories you’re keeping.

(Here’s me + my For the Record blank notebook where I dream up all of the new writing prompt books for the shop – like the wedding card scrapbook that just came out!)

Imagine seeing your mom’s journal 10 years from now… and inside is a picture of her writing it! Or envision a young child looking at her baby book years later, and there’s a snapshot of her and her mama with the book in hand. Who wouldn’t go crazy about that?

A photograph of you + your journal is the epitome of sharing “this is who I am and where I am”.

Want to take the challenge with me? With all of us?

Yes… all of us!

Snap a picture of you with your Gadanke journal. Or a child with her Gadanke kid journal. Or whomever with his or hers.

As an extra motivation to pause in front of the camera, send me your photo to share with people, and I’ll send you a 15% off coupon for your next journal. The challenge (and discount offer) ends on Wednesday.

Journalers shown are: Julie, Lisa, Jenn, and Jane‘s cat. 15% off coupon valid for 90 days.

The radiant floor heating has been wrapped back and forth on the ground between strips of pine.

Now it’s time to make some beautiful changes to this hangar house, and I hope you’re ready!

I don’t remember which idea came first: white walls or dark sustainable flooring. Luckily, we have such a small home that sustainable and real wood can both be options in this home. Yeah for small spaces! If we were building an “average sized” American home, there’s no way we could afford to make a lot of the decisions we’re making because we’d have four or five times as much square footage to cover.

We started researching sustainable flooring in February.

We purchased this strand woven bamboo flooring by EcoTimber from a locally owned shop for the living room/kitchen and bedroom. We’re always torn between using local materials versus sustainable products made in China. This time, the Chinese product won for a couple of reasons:

• the local business we purchased it from is brand new, and it’s a risky thing to open a green home building store in this economy
• this bamboo is plantation-grown, not harvested from wild forests
• it requires no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers
• the bamboo matures in 5-6 years instead of decades
• it doesn’t off-gas with toxins in our home (After all that work to create a vapor barrier between the hangar and home, we don’t need to be off-gasing a whole slew of fumes in our house. Or at least we’re really trying not to!)
• we love it!

After another hour, I wrap up my projects and head home to make dinner. The sun is setting, and all I can think about are the colors of spring I see all day. How do I express that in my journal from Gadanke?

Not words.

Watercolors.

Last night, I pulled out the tags from all my journals and started painting. My watercolors are an Artista set from high school.

Yesterday, I saw spring in:

• the early apple trees blooming
• miniature rainbows shooting off of crystal like a ballet
• a sunset stretched across the valley
• the rush of vehicles towing boats to the river for the year’s first float trips
• the exuberance of airplanes and bluebirds floating and diving across the air

I’ll probably write mini journal entries or just a brief title on each of these tags. Other additions? I’m thinking black jell pens, white labels, stamps, and date stamps.

Journal tags + watercolors. I need to do this more often.

Before we paused for a brief vacation, I got all the walls and ceilings painted white. Simultaneously, we glued down this high density foam board on the subfloor. (The foam board is made locally from little particles like salt crystals! Crazy and awesome.)

The next layer is reflective foil.

These two layers serve as an insulating barrier between our subfloor and this:

Can you guess what we’re up to now? Or did the title of this post totally give me away?

It’s time to get the radiant floor heating in!

We figured that next winter when you all come up to play in the snow, you’re going to want a warm house in an airplane hangar to come sip hot chocolate in. Right?

Here we are, getting ready for you. Yep. It’s May, and we’re putting in a heating system.

As you can see, we’ve already got a couple friends that we owe some serious mugs of hot chocolate to next winter for all their help.

Why radiant floor heating?

Hot water heat is the most comfortable, consistent form of heat. It costs more to install than electric or forced air. However it is much cheaper to operate. Forced air is always a good choice if you want a system that can convert into an air conditioner. Most homes around here don’t need air conditioning. (That’s what folks say windows are for!)

My dad always told me, “After a long day of work, a house with hot water heat is the only home I want to go home to.” Again, that’s because we live in such a cold, snowy place. It tried to snow on Saturday.

It feels so good to roll up our sleeves and get back into this project! We’re going to go full speed from here until move-in day.

Let’s see how long it’ll take to get our floors in!

What’s the optimal heating system where you live? (Wait a second. That sounds really nerdy, doesn’t it? Let me try again…) Is it air conditioning or heating season where you live? We’re so used to having the heat on in May. No joke.

(doodling in a Become journal)

Ajoy! (“Hello” in Czech and Slovak.) Martin and I are back to work at the hangar today. Yahoo.

Over the past two weeks while I’ve been vacationing from hangar loft home remodeling and journal shop operating, two things have been happening at Making This Home.

1. A lot of kind, questioning women have been emailing me about living a life you love and blogging it, especially when your life seems unconventional.

2. The comments left on this blog have dropped. (By dropped, we’re talking plummeted.)

It’s an interesting parallel to experience while I was on vacation because rather than sweat about comments or feel overwhelmed, I grabbed my bike and went to the ice cream stand. ha! Vacation or not, I want you to all know: You can measure your blog by the feeling it evokes for you, or you can measure it based on statistical data and numbers.

I believe:

Blogging from the heart has nothing to do with how other people view you or how data aggregates label you. (It’s like journaling!) Listening to the beat inside you isn’t about comparing your beat to anyone else’s. It’s all about following your own dreams and doing what makes you happy. When you share that happiness, your blog starts to grow. You start connecting with people around the world.

I’ve got some tips to making sure you’re keeping the happiness as you blog:

1. Remember that most people tend to share the really awesome parts of life online.

At first, this point was titled “Don’t Compare Yourself to Other Bloggers”. We’ve all heard that. We might not always remember it, but we’ve certainly heard it.

I’m going to put a spin on that point and remind you that most bloggers only talk about the amazing parts of life. They don’t talk about their weaknesses, their sadnesses, or misled expectations. You and I don’t seek those things in the blogs we read; we seek inspiration and pleasure. It doesn’t mean that your favorite bloggers’ lives are always sugar and spice. They may have some really tough stuff going on in the background or three part-time jobs to make something you see online work. Who knows!

Remember a blog is just  a part of someone. It’s that person reaching out to you. It isn’t accurate to compare that one piece of someone to the entire you.

2. Don’t pretend you’re writing a post about your day while you’re out there living that day.

You know what I’m talking about. You have these moments where you find yourself narrating what you’re doing, as if you’re writing it on your blog.

Guess what happens? You become obsessed with making sure the experience is perfect. You get anxiety, just trying to make sure the experience looks perfect and everyone sounds perfect. When everything doesn’t go flawlessly, you start comparing yourself to other bloggers. (see #1)

As a result, these moments aren’t even that fun. You’re using them for writing material; you’re not embracing the people around you, the little details, or the real power of that experience. There isn’t any exhaling.

3. Decide what you want to share and what you don’t.

When I started blogging, Martin and I made an agreement. I could photograph our Berlin kitchen a bajillion times. (And boy did I!) But I would not share our bedroom. In our two room house, one space was public; one was private.

I’ve never regretted that decision.

4. Don’t count comments.

Read comments. Leave comments. Make connections. But don’t count them.

Think of it this way: you don’t say, “I need four more friends to validate what I’m doing.” That’s a crazy stretch. Or is it?

5. Just be wonderful you.

Think you’re a little weird or a bit too imperfect? You know what I always say at Gadanke. “An imperfectly told story is better than a story that’s never told at all.”

Tell it and celebrate who you are.

(And if you still feel weird expressing who you are, just remember the girl living in a house made out of hundreds of tires. Now that, my friend, is weird.)

How do you blog from the heart?