Best of Driven by Decor 2018!

Happy new year!! How were your holidays? We spent the first half of our Christmas break in Virginia with my husband’s family (we are on an every-other-year Christmas rotation with my family and Jeff’s family) which also included a quick visit to my sister who lives nearby. We’ve been home for the second half of our break and I can’t believe it’s about over – the time went by so fast! I’ve done a lot of decluttering and purging (I finally convinced my girls to give up a huge chunk of their stuffed animals that have been sitting in a closet for years – major accomplishment!) and washed piles of laundry but also spent some time doing nothing but lounging so I’m definitely feeling refreshed and ready to jump into the new year.

I’m excited about everything I have planned for the blog in 2019 but first, I always love taking a look back at the blog in 2018 and sharing the posts that ended up as reader favorites! If you’re new to Driven by Decor, now’s the perfect time to get caught up with the happenings on the blog and if you’re a long-time follower (thank you, I appreciate it!), you might just find a post or two that you missed along the way. Let’s get to it… (affiliate links included in post – full disclosure statement available {here})

Favorite Decorating Tips

I love sharing decorating tips and tricks with you and for 2018 one of my reader favorite decorating tip posts was {this post} about styling bookcases. There are LOTS of posts out there on this topic but I did mine a bit differently – I broke it down into several easy to use formulas that make having beautiful bookcases a no-brainer! I’d love to do some similar “here’s a formula that works” posts in 2019 – if there’s a topic you’d like some help on, let me know!

Another popular decorating tips post was {this post} on my favorite white paint colors – it includes four different whites that I’ve used in our current home (including Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White in our family room pictured below) along with some favorites from a few blogger friends!

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Favorite Room Makeover

This was an easy one! My reader favorite room makeover in 2018 was our kitchen remodel. For those of you who followed this super challenging project, you know that it was a little lot more than a simple makeover – it was a total gut job involving demo down to the studs and even excavation of our floor. I still cringe looking back at some of the in-progress photos – having a conveyor belt taking away rubble from our excavated floors was fun times!

It was all worth it in the end – we have loved and used this space so much since the renovation! As the heart of our home, it’s not only this room that feels different – it’s actually made our whole house feel lighter & brighter and more “us”. You can check out the “before” and “after” pics of our kitchen renovation {here} if you missed them. 

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And also don’t miss the reveal of our kitchen eat-in area {here} that was part of the same renovation:

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Favorite DIY Project

The makeover of my old, ugly side table was the reader favorite DIY project of the year and it was definitely one of mine too! I had held on to this side table for years because of sentimental value but I didn’t like the mahogany stain and the top of it was badly scratched.

In early 2018 I finally refinished it and shared the step by step tutorial {here} – I’m so happy with how it turned out! 

Favorite Organizing Projects

I did a lot of organizing projects in 2018 (pretty much our entire house was a disaster after the kitchen remodel!) but the reader favorite was the makeover of our garage that you can see {here}. And I can’t tell you how happy I am to have done it – we had accumulated multiples of everything because we couldn’t find a thing in our previously disastrous garage and would need to run out and buy things we knew we already had (pathetic, I know!). Now everything has a home and we finally have both cars in the garage which is a definite win!

One of my personal favorite organizing projects was the organization of our bedroom that you can see {here}. From under-bed storage to organizing my jewelry and my drawers, I was able to maximize every square inch of the room:

Favorite New Home Accessories

I narrowed down my 2018 home purchases to three favorites – first are {these gorgeous poufs} that I bought for our family room. They’re a great price and come in several different color options (mine are the “neutral textured”). My original plan was to use them in our family room over the holidays and then move them to the foot of my oldest daughter’s bed in the new year but I’ve loved having them in the family room so much that they may just end up staying put!

I also love the new pair of USB lamps (found {here}) that I put in our guest room – they have a built-in USB port in the lamp base so it’s super easy for guests to charge their phones while they’re on the nightstand.  I’ll take pics of them in our guest room soon to share with you but for now, here’s one from their website:

And last but not least, I love my new kitchen rug found {here}! In fact I loved it so much after buying this one for in front of our sink that I bought a second one for under our kitchen table! It’s indoor/outdoor so holds up well to traffic and spills:

Favorite Instagram Posts

And let’s wrap things up by sharing the most-liked Instagram posts of 2018 (if you’re on Instagram and not already following Driven by Decor, you can find me {here}). Four of the top ten were images of storage and organizational features of our new kitchen including our corner drawers:

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and our toe-kick storage drawer – they’re both so great to have!:

You can find out more details about these features plus see several more including our toe-kick vacuum and organized pantry in {this post} on our cabinet storage and organization.

Join My New Home Decorating Community on Facebook!

And with that… 2018 is a wrap! I’m kicking off 2019 with something brand new that I’d love for you to be part of – I’ve started a new Facebook Group (“Driven by Decor Home Decorating Community“) that’s designed for us to exchange decorating ideas, inspiration, and advice. If you’d love an opinion on a new rug in your dining room, what would look best in a bare corner of your family room, or anything else home related, you can post a picture in this Facebook Group and get input from the rest of us design lovers in the group! I’ll be popping in from time to time to answer questions too. To kick off 2019, I’ll be doing a series of organizational challenges on the blog (organizing your bills and mails, organizing your photos, & more) and in this group we’ll share ideas, hold each other accountable for getting our projects done, and share pics of our “afters”! It should be so fun! Here’s how to join:

1. Subscribe to get new posts on Driven by Decor by email if you’re not already a subscriber (the Facebook group is exclusively for blog subscribers):
   
   Get new posts by email!

   If for some reason the above sign-up doesn’t work, go {here} to subscribe. You need to be subscribed directly through Driven by Decor (not through a service like Bloglovin’ or Feedly). 

2. Request to join Driven by Decor Home Decorating Community on Facebook {here} – the more the merrier so tell your friends too!

What if you’re not on Facebook or don’t wish to join the group? No worries – you’ll see my posts as always on the blog! The Facebook Group is just a fun “extra” for us to interact and share our love for all things home. I have the best readers out there so I know it will be an awesome group!

I’m so looking forward to all that 2019 brings! Happy new year!