Hello and welcome! I’m Lisa Scibilia, author of this little slice of the internet for eleven years.
Shine Your Light is all about hands-on home improvement tutorials and simple, affordable interior design ideas. I love enjoying life with family and friends so you’ll find posts about entertaining from time to time as well!
My mantra has always been
if I can do it, so can you,
and my sincerest wish is that I can inspire or encourage others with what I share here.
I live in Massachusetts with my husband Mark and our kids, who were itty bitty when I started this blog,
and this year two have graduated from college and are living on their own and the youngest only has a year to go!
Over these years my blog has grown up too!
Projects from Shine Your Light have been featured on many online publications, and I’ve worked with lots of respected brands. I’ve also had the opportunity to get to know many other talented and creative DIY and design bloggers and serve my local community hand in hand with some of them on some very special projects.
How Shine Your Light Came To Be
I’ve always been a maker.
When I was a kid I had the cardboard version of the Barbie Dream House (yep! that was a thing) and spent hours coloring those cardboard walls with markers, decorating the rooms with leftover wallpaper from my mom’s stash.
As our own kids grew I painted many a room and piece of furniture, and eventually caught the renovation bug big time (this might have been fortified by HGTV and this new phenomenon called DIY blogs 😃). In 2010 we decided to sell our large, newer home and downsize so that we could do more living and less mortgage paying, and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to buy a house that we could make our own.
Mark was not as excited about this idea but somehow I talked him into a glorious 80s fixer upper that needed a ton of cosmetic updates. I couldn’t wait to get started and literally started painting all this peach and orange oak the day we bought the house!
My father-in-law is fond of saying that I shrink the square footage of our homes with all the layers of paint I’ve put on the walls through the years 😁.
Since we moved here I’ve honed my skills with the guidance of family, friends and many a Youtube video to also include demo, building, finish carpentry, wood refinishing, tiling, basic electrical and plumbing, landscaping and stonework. I’m still working on that list!
Sometimes Mark joins me on projects and sometimes we call in the pros for help, but much of the work I’ve done myself from installing moulding throughout the house to building a wall of bookcases, remodeling our fireplace and built-ins and installing a stone veneered fire pit and pea stone patio with surrounding garden.
PATIO PROJECT
AFTER – A DIY from start to finish
FLOORING PROJECT
AFTER – we did the demo ourselves and then had the floors professionally installed and finished.
Eleven years and a few million projects later,
we’re still working on making all our visions for this house come true, and having fun doing it! If you’re new here check out some of the most popular posts here.
Over the years I’ve also shared bits of our real life. In September 2019 our life changed dramatically when I was diagnosed with Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. My beautiful, vibrant, active mom was diagnosed with stomach cancer that is totally unrelated to mine just a few months after me and we lost her in October 2020. She was the center of our universe and we’re all devastated, but as she would insist we are moving on with JOY. She found joy in every day despite all the hardships of life and the best way I can honor her is to not waste a single precious day.
Shine Your Light is my happy place and I truly hope for you it will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to make your own house into the home of your dreams;
a lighthearted stop along your way.
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