The Downstairs and A Gift

by Steph // Thursday, December 18, 2025 // Comments off

Once the painting job upstairs was finished, it made it much easier to choose the colors for the downstairs!

For the last eight and a half years, everything downstairs has been WHITE.

White, white, white!

I really loved the new color of the laundry nook, and so I decided to use it again in the downstairs bathroom.

I also decided to color drench this bathroom and really love how it turned out.

I also really loved the new color of the den and the great room too!

I didn’t think it would be the best idea to make the downstairs family/music room as dark as the upstairs great room.

That made it easy to choose the color of the upstairs den for that space – but I did go one shade lighter in that same color.

I chose the color Vale Mist by Benjamin Moore.

I think it turned out FANTASTIC.

For Eliza’s room, we talked about adding color there.

She really didn’t want color though – which is ok!

So we decided to use Pale Oak by Benjamin Moore.

This was a new find for me, and if I had known about it before the painters came the first time, I would have used it in the main bathroom!

It is a very subtle taupe color.

You can see the contrast compared to the white trim.

Wow, those photos just do not do the colors justice downstairs!

But I love how bright our downstairs is because it is a walk-out basement!

(Just for memory sake, I will make a note here that we left the boys room as it was.)

The other thing that happened during this huge painting transformation, was our master bedroom was finally finished!!

I first talked about this project here.

Scottie to the rescue AGAIN.

Bless that guy!

He finished our ship lap project while we were out of town one weekend, of all things!!!

I really think our master bedroom and bathroom are so pretty.

What a nice relaxing calming space.

Our bedroom and bathroom project was a Christmas gift last year from my hubby to me.

That makes it even more special.

Of course, Blake and I are already dreaming up another huge project – not sure if it will ever come to fruition or not!

But we could sure use the space as our family continues to grow!!

As with all things Moschel…time will tell.

I already sit in my quiet time in the early morning and wonder WHY God would allow ALL of this for us.

Why us?

Why do we have all this beauty to enjoy each day – and abundant food – and running water – and heat and air conditioning – do those things ever stop you in your thoughts too???

We are not worthy.

And I am so grateful.

It is my hope that all who come into our home enjoy these spaces too.

There is nothing better than sharing our blessings!!

Making Our House Our Home

by Steph // Wednesday, December 17, 2025 // Comments off

Every spring for as long as I can remember, Blake and I have a long prayerful conversation about our budget for the year.

Ever since moving off the farm and here to Twin Oaks, this conversation usually entails some talk about what to do next to finish our home.

We bought Twin Oaks when it was a half finished house, which was then quickly “finished” so we could move in.

We were and still are SO grateful for how all of that went – it is truly something we look back on in AWE!

We decided in our budget meeting as we talked about things that needed and could be done, that we needed to finish the windows in our home.

Our window casements had never been finished – they were still raw wood.

We decided instead of staining them, we would paint them white.

We knew we did not have the time or the skill for this job!!

I asked our oldest son about the painter that he used for his first home because she had painted his windows and all his trim.

I quickly got her number.

BEST decision EVER, by the way!

I had her visit us on April 8th to talk about the house and get an estimate for this job.

Before she arrived that day, Blake and I were discussing other things that were needing painted as well.

We have four “outside” doors that had never been painted – except for the front side of the two on the front of the house.

Our upstairs ceilings also looked so dingy already, so we talked about those ceilings too.

We decided to get separate estimates for all of these things and then decide what we would actually do.

The windows were still the most important goal, of course!

Blake and my last conversation before she arrived that day was about the walls in the upstairs.

Needless to say, I had A LOT of questions for the painter that day!!

Well, she came, she answered the questions, and we got on her schedule for the middle of June.

Guess what we were having her do???

Oh my goodness, you guys know us SO well!

Yep – the windows, the doors, the ceilings and the walls –

ALL of the windows (even downstairs), the four exterior doors, the upstairs ceilings and walls (except for the master and master bath).

I was SO happy this was all getting done WITHOUT my husband trying to squeeze it in to his already WAY too full life.

I had from April 8th to the middle of June to decide what colors I wanted to paint these walls!

I started looking through Pinterest, saving photos of things that caught my eye, and having my hubby bring home samples of paint.

It was a little stressful, ha, ha!

I made my girls help me, just so you know.

And I starting putting little swatches of paint all over the place – but out of sight so our home would not have paint swatches all over it for two months!

I knew I wanted a dark, cozy color for the main great room/kitchen area.

We had this new, darker rug in there already too.

I saw this second photo on Pinterest and loved the look!

I swatched that color with some others, but kept coming back to the darkest one.

In this photo, it is the color on the right.

When the painters arrived in June, they decided to tackle the windows first.

It was a good decision, and SO much work.

I really did feel bad for them – it was not an easy job!

Before they arrived that day, I cleaned all of the windows really well.

Some of them really needed it!!

We had a hiccup the very first day as the window casement paint color they had brought was not matching the existing trim like she hoped it would.

Thankfully we had a scrap piece of trim that she was able to take to Nelson’s to get the color matched.

Then they had to redo some of their work from day one.

I was so thankful with how thorough they were being!

This is not something that we will likely ever do again!

The ceilings were next.

This is when we learned that our ceilings only had primer on them!!!

It makes so much sense with how quickly things went when we were getting moved into Twin Oaks all those years ago.

It also made me realize why the ceilings were not able to be wiped – they just did not wipe clean!

I was very excited when I started seeing paint on the ceilings.

It was a transformation!

They turned out beautiful and are so clean and bright!

I honestly cannot remember at what point the doors were done!

They need a mention here though.

Going from unfinished doors to painted wipeable doors is a GOOD thing.

They are beautiful too!

Here are the colors I chose for the walls, and the before and after photos of those areas.

First is our little office/den that is across from the master bedroom.

I chose the color October Mist by Benjamin Moore.

Here are two before photos I found!

Very white.

Everything was very white.

Here is after the first coat of the new color, October Mist.

And here is after the second coat.

Look at that beautifully finished window too!

This is the room all put back together!

It turned out GREAT.

My main goal with all of these new colors was to be able to keep what we already owned in these spaces.

We did add new shelving above the desk there, and also a new exercise ball for the chair at the desk.

Next up was the main bathroom and laundry nook.

I could not figure out what to do with that bathroom!!

So I had her repaint it white.

That ceiling also underwent a huge transformation.

Everything looks so fresh and clean now!

Here is the before:

And here is the after!

It is a bright and cheery room!

In the laundry nook I wanted to do something bold and darker.

So we used Evergreen Fog by Sherwin Williams, and I had her color drench the whole nook.

It is so pretty!!

I love this color very much – and you will soon see that we used it again!

Here is the before, after my hubby took all of the shelves down.

Here is the after.

Don’t you love that color too??!

In the last photo you can see how the ceiling is drenched in color too.

Then for our main room/kitchen.

This is my FAVORITE!!

But I spend literally all my time in this space!

I chose a dark, rich color and I love it.

I also had her drench the hallway in the same color!

Here is the before – the grey that came with the house.

I chose the color Moth Wing by Sherwin Williams.

It is the color from that Pinterest photo!

And here is the after!

It is so pretty and cozy and clean and fresh!

The ceiling in this great room was the worst one – it looks so much better now.

Look closely in that second photo to see that color drenched hallway!

It was a great choice!

Even though the painters did most of the hard work, there was still plenty for us to do for this huge project!

I am thankful for my crew who helped every step of the way.

It was hard to take things apart and have a place to set everything that was out of the way.

So we backed the van out of the garage and put a clean tarp down to set things on.

It was a lot of taking things apart and putting things back together.

We also got new drapes for the living room area and they are very thick and beautiful too!

My crew here was a huge part in this, but Addie and Scottie helped too!

We got to hang at Addie’s place since we were literally in the way here at home when the painters were working.

I will take any excuse to hang out with any of my children!!

We had fun over at their place.

Addie makes the best iced coffee too!

Scottie was the real MVP of a project that I am SO thankful for!

We had a very blank wall right as you come in the front door of our home.

I have always wanted to put some hooks on it – not to have it full of coats – but just to use when we have family or company over.

Scottie took my vision and MADE IT HAPPEN.

You guys, that freed up some brain space for me because that has been in my head for eight and a half years!!

I LOVE IT.

It’s just what I hoped it would be and we use it ALL the time!!

Well, that was a long post!

But, guess what???

Once the painters were done with all that, what do you think we did??

Yes.

Yes, we did.

We hired them to come back and do the downstairs.

Crazy us!!

But it feels SO good to have this FINISHED!

My next post will show you all of the beautiful walls (and ceilings) downstairs!!

I also have to still tell you about our master bedroom and bathroom!

Stay tuned for those transformations – they are awesome too!

Let’s Preserve the Gardens!

by Steph // Monday, December 15, 2025 // Comments off

As promised, this post will be all about how we put up all of our garden bounty!

Of course, we used a lot of all of that produce as soon as we brought it in the house.

FRESH!

It has ruined me forever when it comes to buying produce at the grocery store.

It is just not the same!

One of my favorite things we used fresh were the pansies!

Pansies are edible, and we would put them on our salads.

It made them so pretty!

This watermelon balsamic salad, by the way, is DELICIOUS.

We also ate our strawberries fresh this year.

There were enough to freeze some, but we ate them anyway!

I cannot wait to get a fresh start on a strawberry patch this next year.

I also loved using the cabbage right away!

We do eat fermented food everyday – especially me – so I enjoyed making fermented cabbage.

There is nothing like cutting open a cabbage you picked two minutes earlier!!

The crunch, the air in it – they are so yummy!

We did pull the rest of the cabbage at the end of the growing season and bagged them for the fridge.

I am still using them, and they are still in perfect condition!

We have never grown cabbage before.

It is on my list already for next year – we love having it.

I also fermented about half of our jalapeño peppers.

The other half we kept whole and put them in the freezer in zip loc bags.

These fermented jalapeños were a hit!

I was hoping to put up five gallon sized bags of green peppers in the freezer.

I am thankful to say that we got that many!

And that is even after using so many as an ingredient in our canned salsa and pickle relish!!

We would just wash them, seed them, quarter them, and double bag them for the freezer.

First, though, when we would bring peppers in from the garden, we would just loosely bag them, cut big holes in the bags, and put them in the fridge until we were ready to deal with them.

This method worked perfectly and kept our peppers fresh for weeks!

We pulled our leeks at the end of the growing season.

I cut the green tops off, cleaned them in the garden hose really well, dried them really well, and bagged them for the fridge.

They keep well like this!

We are still using them and they are in perfect shape.

We love to use leeks in soups – it gives soup the most delicious flavor!

We pulled our onions the same day as the leeks, if I remember correctly!

We always lay them out to cure before storing them.

Our onions did not do as well this year as last year, but we already think we know why.

And we wrote it down in our binder, of course!

Even though these onions were little, they are delicious.

We are still using them!

We have had three so far that have gotten bad and had to be thrown away – but otherwise they are still great!

You guys, this is testing my memory, ha, ha.

I have to keep jumping up, find Tate, and ask him questions!

I was right in thinking that pickles was the first thing we canned.

They were delicious, by the way, and gone faster than fast.

This was the only batch of pickles we made – you will soon see why!

We found something much better.

Anyway – we made these four lonely jars of pickles – with just picked cucumbers.

We heard if you use the freshest unrefrigerated cucumbers that your pickles will stay crisp.

It’s true!

So four jars it was!

Unfortunately, one of those jars exploded in the canner.

That was the day that we decided we needed all new jars for this canning adventure that we were on.

We were currently using the jars from the farm, which was eight plus years ago already!

After those pickles, we were on a roll!

The cucumbers were coming in faster than we could deal with them!

So we decided to try our hand at relish.

I knew we would use relish a lot.

It was a good decision!

The only bad decision was making our first batch in such tiny jars.

We got smart, and our next batches were in quart jars.

We just had some of this with our lunch today and it is SO good.

This also was one recipe we were using green peppers in.

It seemed to take literally forever for our tomatoes to ripen this year.

I am not sure if we have decided why that happened, or if it just is what it is.

Tate was SO diligent with his tomatoes.

I honestly would have given up!!

He brought in almost ripe tomatoes everyday, sat them on the table, and babied those things until they were ripe.

Bless that boy.

Wait until you see what we got out of all his tomatoes!

First up was salsa.

We used to can salsa on the farm and I have notes about it all.

I have great photos of those days too….don’t let me get on memory lane!!

My last notes about canning salsa on the farm said we made 109 quarts in one growing season.

One. Hundred. And. Nine.

Goodness, we have such ambitious children!!!

Well, we didn’t do that many this year, but I am thrilled with what we accomplished.

We only made one large batch of salsa, because we had PLANS for those tomatoes!

Next up with the tomatoes was ketchup.

We had a good recipe – but let’s just say it is not good enough.

We used arrowroot starch instead of corn starch to thicken it, and it did not work.

So we have runny ketchup.

But it is ok – we learned a lot, and we use that ketchup in recipes all the time – and it is delicious!

Notice my method of counting how many quarts of tomato juice I had added to this pot.

One quart of juice poured into the pot, one fork put in the cup!

My brain is not able to keep track all on its own, you guys!

We also have twelve gallons of whole tomatoes in our freezer right now!

We have plans for those tomatoes too.

Maybe we will get to it over Christmas break!

We hope to make barbeque sauce.

We have a recipe where you freeze the tomatoes, thaw them, squeeze all of the water out of them before you use them, and then continue on with the recipe.

This makes a thick sauce easily!

Hopefully, anyway!

We are excited to try it!!

The last thing that we put up this fall we did not grow ourselves.

Addie found these apples on marketplace for a really cheap price!

We decided to split them and put them up together.

We put up Addie’s apples first.

It did not go perfectly, as most things don’t!

That beautifully curated photo below of the pots full of apples on the stovetop is deceiving.

After I took that photo, we sat down to eat dinner and those apples burnt and had to be thrown away.

I also lost that very good pot on the left there!

We could not get it clean – and we tried all kinds of things – so it had to be thrown away too.

We still managed to get all of Addie’s apples done in one evening!

I think she had twenty some quart containers for the freezer?

My portion of the apples sat in the garage far too long before Blake, Tate and I finally got to them.

I had seen another way to make applesauce and decided to try it instead.

We spent the time upfront washing, coring and chopping the apples, but leaving the skins on.

We also were careful to cut out bad spots.

We cooked our apples in two roasters.

Poor Blake manned those roasters by stirring them constantly like his life depended on it!

Tate helped with all parts of this too!

Once the apples were cooked, we ran the apples in the Vitamix blender to turn it into applesauce.

We poured the applesauce from the blender into the hot jars, and canned them.

The only thing I would do different next time is I would add some water to the blender too, as this applesauce is just a bit too thick.

But it is delicious!!

And SO worth the time it took!

We love applesauce and use it all the time.

Just look at all the quart jars full in that photo below!

Wow, did we really do all that??

It was SO FUN!!!!

I know that when spring is headed our way we will be looking back at these posts to trigger our memories about our gardens this year.

We make decisions going forward based on the way things have went in the past!

I am currently enjoying the holidays, winter activities, the cold and the snow very much.

Chad just said last night at dinner, “I am so glad we live where there are four seasons!”

Me too, Chaddy, me too.

God’s gift to us!!!

Any gardeners out there??

Isn’t it fun??!!

I do hope, though, that you guys are enjoying this winter season of “rest” like we are.

We are still busy, don’t get me wrong.

But it feels more restful than those summer months for sure.

I still cannot wait for our gardens in 2026!!

Our Gardens 2025

by Steph // Sunday, December 14, 2025 // Comments off

This is going to be a fun post!!

And another one that I will really enjoy looking back on someday!

This post will be ALL about Tate – we are just his “people” when it comes to the gardens!

Tate expressed an interest over the winter months at the beginning of this year that he wanted to start the gardens from seeds this year – growing seeds indoors, hardening the young plants off, and then transplanting them to the garden.

In full transparency here, I really thought buying the young plants that were already hardened off from the greenhouse was a good way to do things!!

I hesitated quite awhile in Tate’s desire to do things this way – it just sounded overwhelming and risky.

Silly me!!

Oh my goodness, silly me.

On a date night at the very beginning of April, after we had just returned home from Florida, Blake encouraged me to get what Tate needed and just let him run with it.

That’s exactly what we did!

I am guessing you all could write the rest of this post, because you already know how this went!!

We did also go to the greenhouse to fill in the gaps with the things we were too late to start on our own.

I really enjoy going to the greenhouse!

Tate and I think we need one in our backyard!

We like to dream big.

Tate did an excellent job taking care of his plants!

It was the first thing he tended to as his feet hit the floor every morning.

I just loved watching him do all of this!!

By the middle of May he was hardening off his plants getting them ready to be put into the gardens!

Everyday he would carry them all outside, move them around to the shady spots, and then a bit in the sun….

He was SO organized with all of this!!

Our strawberries started coming up, so we started watering that garden bed too.

We started planting the plants (and some seeds) into the garden beds on May 23rd this year.

That date is always something I am glad to know looking back!

I also pleaded with Blake that he must do something so that the bunnies did not get any chance to eat all of Tate’s hard work this year.

SO thankful that he purchased some fencing that he and Lane ran all the way around the garden beds – even staking it into the ground so that no bunnies could get through it!

You can see the fence in the fourth photo below and from any photo after that one!

We ended up at the greenhouse again to get somethings that did not get big enough to transplant.

We had not started our indoor growing project early enough!

But that’s ok!

Tate learned SO much with all of this!!

Tate and I also ordered raspberry plants this year!

I am SO excited about those raspberries!!

We ordered 25 plants, and received 27, so we planted them in three rows of nine each.

We had lots of helpers that day because it was a Sunday!

The gardens change quickly once they are planted!!

We started having strawberries quickly too.

The best part is bringing in all of the yummy things right from your backyard.

In the middle of July we had Blake bring us home some begonias to add one of the beds.

They looked beautiful and added color!

By the end of July our strawberries were done, and when I say done – I mean done!

We pulled all those plants and covered that bed with black paper to keep the weeds away.

Our strawberries had been there three growing seasons now, and they needed replaced.

By mid July we were reaping the benefits of all of our work in BIG ways!!

It was SO fun.

Tate would run to the gardens first thing every morning in his pjs.

I would stand on the deck and see the top of his head as he crotched down in those plants – weeding and harvesting and tending to everything.

It brings tears to my eyes just to think on it!!

Tate and I would spend our free afternoons in those gardens too – it was like a DEEP BREATH for me in this crazy season of life.

How dare I think it would be overwhelming!!

It was the exact opposite – it was life giving!

It is fun to look back at these photos even now – since we are currently covered in snow and living in below zero temperatures!

I plant marigolds in our garden every year.

They remind me of my Dad.

My Dad loved to take care of his yard, landscape and garden.

I would like to think I got my love for all of this from him.

We also decided to tackle canning this summer to preserve all that was coming out of those gardens!

I have not canned anything since our days on the farm.

But, why not??

What a GREAT skill to teach these younger children!

The older children know all about it – and Kayla still cans every summer as well!

My next post will be all about that.

I could not believe all that we would get from those three small garden beds.

It was incredible!

One of my favorite things to do with the fresh produce was to eat it fresh!

We made this garden salad often – just whatever we carried in from outside, washed, chopped, sprinkled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper.

It was so delicious!