As often as I can, I like to browse home decor magazines and blogs for inspiration and stress relief. I love to see what new home trends will pop up and how I can incorporate fun and interesting ideas into our little Chandler house. As blog commenters will no doubt tell you, many home trends become so ubiquitous, the sight of them annoys even the calmest of us all. However, these handful of overdone home trends, I just can’t get enough. Anytime I see them pop up on blogs or on the pages of my favorite magazines, I swoon. Sometimes you just have to do what you like, even if everyone else is doing the same thing.

Chalkboard walls: Yup, still love ’em. They incorporate both functionality and whimsy, reminding me always of the dusty smell of old school classrooms. None of that white board marker smell in here. They are especially beautiful in unexpected places and when the home owner has particularly good handwriting or drawing skills.

Wall decals: The perfect solution for renters or the commitment-phobe. I’ll be the first to admit I have an obsessive problem committing to home decor. I agonize over paint choices, furniture sizes, and the right depth of bookcase. Wall decals allow us to add some life to our space, without the scary permanence.

White ceramic animals: As a kid I collected animal figurines of all shapes and sizes. I adored dogs, wolves, and horses and had a full ceramic menagerie. Later I discovered that was, well, kind of lame. Enter the white ceramic animal trend. Now I can air my ceramic animal love out in the open, while appearing hip and contemporary. What a glorious day.

Keep Calm and Carry On prints: These are everywhere. But you know, it’s still as charming as the first time I saw it. Clear and concise with no extra fluff, it’s a message we should all keep in mind on a daily basis.

Brightly colored accent walls: Scared of choosing a non-neutral for you house? Simple solution: pick a bright color and pick a wall. It’s an easy way create focus in a room and bring that room to life. Change your mind later on? Luckily, you only have one wall to re-paint.

Faux taxidermy: I’m the first to freak out in a room of death (for all you Ace Ventura fans out there) and I cry at the thought of shooting an animal for a trophy. I do, however, love the trend of faux animal heads. Cardboard, paper-mâché, I don’t care. All I know is having a fake animal on your wall doesn’t bother me one bit.

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.”

With only eight days until my birthday, I’m making a mad dash to complete items on my 26 before 26 list. I’ve been working on this one for a while and finally completed it: #20: Digitally organize and archive all photos.

I took this opportunity to not only organize my photos, but all my documents and media. I picked up a LaCie 1 terabyte external hard drive and started filling it up. All my artwork, schoolwork, music, and movies were easy to transfer from various storage systems and now are all organized in one place. My photos were a different story. I had boxes and boxes of prints, CDs, memory cards, and negatives to sort through. Luckily, Target took care of most of it for me. I dropped off bags of prints and negatives and picked up some neatly stacked photo CDs. I now have digital copies of all my photos and even found some pretty good ones from the past (see below).

After a quick five weeks, I’m giddy to cross of another item on my 26 before 26 list: #13: Replace master bathroom shower.

Whoever put in the original shower in our house must hate all things good. They did everything wrong and chose the cheapest methods and hardware possible. The first thing I wanted to do when we moved in was replace the shower. Two and a half years later, we finally got around to it. After speaking with contractors, we were a bit disheartened at the high estimates we received. Our friend Paul stepped in and offered to help us out at night and on weekends. This morning I used the new shower for the first time and actually squealed with delight. No longer do I need to worry about water soaking into the walls, my products have a nice shelf to sit on, and I’m not embarrassed if someone sees it! And the absolute best part? We saved about $5,000 doing it ourselves.

I searched through all the photos I took when we moved in the house for a “before” photo, but I couldn’t find a single one. It’s probably for the best, because it was pretty gross. No worries, it’s beautiful now!