Jessica_Beals Profile

Latest Blog Posts

• A Few Minor Changes
  on Jan 25, 2016 in Expat
  If you follow us on Instagram (and you should… we’re fun people!), you may have noticed a minor thing or two has changed around the Little House – nothing big though. Nothing like having a baby, changing/quitting jobs, or putting...
• Apricot and Bourbon Glazed Ham (aka. The Easter Piggy)
  on Apr 2, 2015 in In the Kitchen
  In honor of the holiday weekend, I thought I’d re-share my favorite Easter recipe: my Apricot and Bourbon Glazed Ham, known lovingly around the Beals household as The Easter Piggy.  I have made Mr. Piggy every Easter since we moved...
• After the Baby Carriage…
  on Mar 24, 2015 in Nursery
  …comes nursery planning!  I was going to put this post off a bit, but let’s be honest; I can’t wait to get started on Little Miss’ nursery! The nursery will be in our (only) spare bedroom (we don’t call this...
• Big Life Event #1
  on Mar 6, 2015 in Blogging Family
  If you caught our return-to-blogging post on Monday, you might be wondering what the two big life events we mentioned are. Here’s the first one… The Little House is about to feel a little bit smaller.     We’re pregnant...
• We Missed You!
  on Mar 2, 2015 in Blogging
  Hi! Little House. Big Heart. is back!  Hurrah!  We’ve missed you, by the way. Really. We’ve thought long and hard about whether or not we wanted to start blogging again. Life around the Little House has been a bit topsy-turvy...
• A Teaser And National Can it Forward Day
  on Aug 16, 2014 in Cooking DIY Gardening Giveaways
  There’s something about August that always reminds me of watermelon, tomatoes, and plum jam.  There are a surprising number of watermelon farms in Indiana, where I grew up, and the melons would be at their sweetest in the late summer. ...
• Reality Check
  on Aug 8, 2014 in Blogging Photography
  Let’s be real here, folks. Our bathroom reno has taken over EVERY portion of our lives.  We’re spending every spare waking minute working on that thing… which only leaves the sleeping minutes for writing stellar blog posts.  This...
• Save our Maters!
  on Aug 6, 2014 in Gardening
  Hey guys! Just take a second and look at how gorgeous our tomato plants are. They’re big, green, and…. they haven’t produced a single tomato all summer.  Sure, they’ve produced a few blooms (but not many), but as far as...
• The Warm Fuzzies
  on Aug 5, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel DIY
  For the most part, whoever built the Little House did a fantastic job.  For a 74-year-old pier and beam house, it’s remarkably square.  Instead of traditional plaster, the original walls are Sheetrock, a product that wasn’t used extensi...
• Venting My Frustration
  on Aug 1, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel DIY
  For the most part, our bathroom has been surprisingly painless (knocking on every piece of wood I can find).  We’ve not found any water damage other than what we repaired on the subfloor, no termite damage, nothing, really, that we...
• The Little House and the List of Doom
  on Jul 28, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel List-ness
  Last night, Kevin and I sat down to make a list of everything left to finish on the bathroom.  Our thought was that because we’re so close to being finished, it would motivate us to see how short the to-do...
• [Shower] Curtain Call
  on Jul 24, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel Decor
  Hey guys!  We’re going to start tiling on the bathroom tonight!  I’m so ridiculously, incredibly, little-kid-on-her-birthday excited.  Today is day 42 of the reno, so tiling feels like the light at the end of a way-longer-t...
• A Little Bathroom Reno: How to Repair a Damaged Subfloor
  on Jul 21, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel DIY bathroom renovation how to subfloor repair
  It’s been a couple weeks since we shared anything on our bathroom renovation.  To be honest, we’ve been so busy working on it, we haven’t had time to write about it.  Like we’ve said before, not having a functioning...
• Bathroom Confessional
  on Jul 17, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel DIY
  36 days. That’s how long it’s been since there has been a functioning bathroom at the Little House. We put up the last (and I swear by all that is holy it IS the last) coat of mud on the...
• Oh, Thank Haven [Recap 2014]
  on Jul 15, 2014 in Blogging
  You know you had a good weekend when it’s Tuesday morning and you’re still sleepy and wondering where the heck the weekend went… and that’s pretty much where I’m at right now.  I spent this weekend at the Haven Conferen...
• Ads
  on Jul 7, 2014 in Blogging
  Hey! We’re trying out something new on the site today… ads! Okay. I know it’s not exactly exciting, but we’re giving it a shot.  We’re going to give them a trial period and if they just don’t feel like us,...
• A Table for Two (Year Olds)
  on Jul 2, 2014 in DIY Family
  It might be all-bathroom-all-the-time around the Little House right now, but we don’t want to subject you guys to that!  We’ll have a few posts now and then that are completely unrelated to the crazy reno going on. We hope...
• A Little Bathroom Reno: Demolition Derby
  on Jun 30, 2014 in Bathroom Remodel
  Hey! Sorry we fell off the face of the planet (again)… the bathroom reno has been consuming every free waking minute of our lives (there’s something about not having a toilet in your home that motivates you to work on...
• Nice Rack
  on Jun 18, 2014 in Backyard DIY Handyman Wednesdays
  Hey, what else could I call a post about a firewood rack? “How to DIY a Cheap, Easy, and Fast Firewood Rack?”  Nah. Too boring. Some of you remember “Treemageddon” last spring here, here, and here.  It left us with...
• Safe & Secure
  on Jun 16, 2014 in DIY
  I’m not a city girl.  I grew up on an Indiana farm in the middle of trees and cornfields so far off the county road you couldn’t even see it.  Growing up, we never locked our front door – there...